Children benefit from being told they are donor-conceived by age seven

Children conceived through egg or sperm donation or via surrogacy who were told about their conception before seven years old have more positive family relationships at 20 years old.

A 20-year study conducted by researchers from the University of Cambridge found that children from assisted reproduction families, born via egg or sperm donation or surrogacy, that were told about their conception before seven years old had more positive relationships with their mothers at 20 years old. The study also found there are no differences in the psychological wellbeing of both mothers and their children, or the quality of family relationships, between families who conceived via assisted reproduction and those who conceived without assistance.

'There does seem to be a positive effect of being open with children when they're young – before they go to school – about their conception', said Professor Susan Golombok, former director of the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge, who led the study. 'What this research means is that having children in different or new ways doesn't actually interfere with how families function. Really wanting children seems to trump everything – that's what really matters.'

The study, published in Developmental Psychology, is the first to investigate long-term effects of different types of assisted reproduction families and the age that children were told about their conception. It included 65 families with children born through assisted reproduction, including 22 surrogacy families, 17 egg donation families, and 26 sperm donation families, compared with 52 families who conceived without assistance. The families were recruited within the UK, and less than five percent were from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Researchers reported that 42 percent of sperm donor parents had disclosed to their children their conception by age 20, compared with 88 percent of egg donation parents and 100 percent of parents through surrogacy.

While family relationships did not differ between those who conceived via assisted reproduction compared to those who conceived without assistance, there were differences in assisted-conception families who told their children about their conception before or after seven years old. In families with children told after seven years old, 22 percent of mothers and 50 percent of young adults reported problems in family relationships. This is compared with only seven percent of mothers and 12.5 percent of young adults told before seven years old.

There were other differences identified between assisted conception families... Egg-donation mothers reported less positive family relationships than sperm-donation mothers. However, this was not reflected in the perceptions of young adults as those conceived by sperm donation reported poorer family communication than those conceived by egg donation.

A young adult who was born through surrogacy commented 'It doesn't faze me really, people are born in all different ways and if I was born a little bit differently that's OK, I understand.'