Young children in donor-conceived families use origin stories to construct their emerging identities
Talking about donor-conception: Parents’ and children’s experiences of origin storytelling. (Navarro, 2025)
Navarro-Marshall, J. (2025). Talking about donor-conception: Parents’ and children’s experiences of origin storytelling. Infant and Child Development, 34, e70028. https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.70028
Geographic Region: Chile
Research Question: How do families with donor-conceived children talk about their origins with them and how to parents and children experience this storytelling?
Design: This qualitative study captured family conversations about conception origins in their real-life settings. Families recorded their own origin conversations at home using audio recordings on mobile phones. Parents then conducted brief semi-structured interviews with their children immediately after the origin conversation, asking five questions about the child’s emotional experience and favorite/least favorite parts of the story. The researcher next conducted semi-structured interviews with parents exploring context (who tells, when, frequency, terminology), their emotional experience of telling the story, and reflection on the recorded conversation through audio feedback. Data collection occurred between late 2024 and early 2025.
Sample: 45 participants from 17 donor-conceived families in Chile: 22 mothers, 4 fathers, 11 daughters, and 8 sons aged 3-8 years (average 4.9 years). Family structures included 5 heterosexual couples, 6 female same-sex couples, and 6 single mothers by choice. Most families (12) used sperm donation, 3 used egg donation, and 2 used double donation through fertility clinics with cryobanks located in the USA, Spain, or Chile. Some used anonymous open donors (contact information available at age 18), others used anonymous closed donors (no contact information released), and one family used an informal private donor contacted through social media without medical assistance. All families had already discussed origins with their children at least once or were certain they wanted to disclose and used the research as an opportunity to tell the story for the first time. Children in homoparental families were youngest (average 4.0 years), followed by monoparental families (4.7 years) and heteroparental families (5.9 years).
Key Findings
Parents arrived at storytelling with varying degrees of openness: 8 families were completely convinced from the beginning about transparency (particularly same- sex families, where 5 of 6 expressed this position), while 6 families decided to be open primarily to avoid potential harm from secrets or because they felt technology would reveal the truth anyway.
Parents universally struggled more with when and how to tell rather than whether to tell, addressing doubts by imitating others, seeking advice from people with similar situations like adoption, or waiting for children’s questions. 7 families could not identify a specific moment when they began telling, reporting it emerged spontaneously and had “always” been discussed, even before birth. Seven families said participating in the research provided deadlines and structure that helped them formulate their stories.
All families described stories evolving over time, starting with simple elements like “seeds” and progressively adding concepts like eggs, donors, and family diversity, with children asking more questions as they matured.
Parents expressed diverse emotions about telling: 4 families reported positive feelings like happiness and relief, 4 reported difficult feelings like sadness, fear, and anxiety, with some describing emotions that evolved as the story developed over time. 13 families made positive evaluations of their conversations, valuing spontaneity (3 families), children’s higher-than-expected contributions (4 families), and strengthened emotional bonds and trust (4 families). 8 mothers offered self-critical assessments after listening to recordings, feeling their stories were not fluid, forced, or contained too much information.
When parents conducted brief interviews with their children immediately after origin conversations, 9 of 14 children expressed positive emotions about their origin stories, though some responses were ambiguous (such as being “not bothered” rather than enthusiastic). Children’s favorite story elements mirrored general birth narratives (e.g., being born, the tummy, and having their mothers) rather than donor conception specific details. Parents’ perspectives largely aligned with this positive interpretation, with 10 families describing children’s reactions as happiness, tranquility, or security, while 7 families perceived neutral reactions, attributing this to children being too young to fully question their stories or getting caught up in irrelevant details. Donor conception specific concerns emerged primarily in older children, with three expressing discomfort: two older children (ages 7-8) disliked the donor despite never meeting him, and one child expressed sadness about not having a father and feeling lonely.
Young donor-conceived children were already engaged in identity work, or processing their origin stories and translating feelings into words. Rather than passively receiving information, children actively use narratives to construct their understanding of who they are over time. This demonstrates that origin storytelling is not just about conveying facts, but can serve as a developmental tool that helps children build coherent self-narratives that integrate their unique conception into their emerging identity.
Limitations: The study involved a relatively small sample of 17 families, which limits the breadth of findings. Father participation was limited, with only 4 fathers compared to 22 mothers, making the results predominantly mother-centered and potentially missing important paternal perspectives on origin storytelling, particularly given that the two fathers who did participate showed more ambivalence about disclosure than mothers. The children recruited were younger than originally planned, which meant the study could not fully capture the evolving complexities of origin conversations at ages 10 and older when identity work intensifies during adolescence. Children’s responses may reflect social desirability bias, as parents conducted the child interviews, potentially making children “guardians of their caregivers’ feelings” rather than expressing authentic reactions.
Applications: Parents should recognize that uncertainty about when and how to tell origin stories is universal, even among families committed to openness. Rather than seeking a perfect moment or script, parents can understand storytelling as an evolving process that begins simply and becomes more detailed as children develop cognitively and emotionally. Fertility counseling should address the “when” and “how” of disclosure, not just the “whether,” since all families in this study were committed to telling but struggled with implementation. Counselors should normalize parental anxiety about disclosure while providing concrete strategies for storytelling. Professionals should help parents understand that children as young as 3-4 can engage meaningfully with origin stories when told in developmentally appropriate language. Counselors should prepare parents for the reality that some children will express sadness, confusion, or negative feelings about certain aspects of their origin stories and help parents understand these responses as normal developmental processing rather than indicators of psychological harm.
Funding Source: Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (Chilean National Agency for Research and Development), grant number 21190581.
Lead Author: Javiera Navarro-Marshall is a researcher at Universidad Alberto Hurtado in Santiago, Chile, whose work focuses on donor conception, family narratives, and child development in diverse family structures. The author is a parent of a donor-conceived child.
Regulatory Context: Chile currently has no laws regulating donor conception or assisted reproductive technology. Fertility treatments happen entirely through private clinics, with each clinic following its own rules and procedures, though most clinics voluntarily adhere to standards set by the Latin American Network of Assisted Reproduction (REDLARA). However, proposed legislation would shift Chile from an unregulated environment to one with specific prohibitions on surrogacy and egg donation.
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