Origin Stories in Donor‐Conception
Helping Families to Promote Autobiographical Memories and Identity Development in Their Children
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21319993 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Javiera Navarro‐Marshall (0000-0003-1001-0168, Universidad Alberto Hurtado Santiago Chile, corresponding author), Antonia Larraín (0000-0002-1968-4516, Universidad Alberto Hurtado Santiago Chile) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 64 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | e70090-e70090 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Family Process (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0014-7370 • E-ISSN: 1545-5300 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/famp.70090 |
| PMID | 41198591 |
| OpenAlex | W4415980814 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 51 |
Family therapists, fertility counselors, and professionals working with children and donor‐conceived families may benefit from a deeper understanding of their conversational processes of origin storytelling—particularly the less examined question of how to talk about donor conception. Elaborative reminiscing (Fivush 2019)—a specific conversational style about the past that supports children in developing autobiographical memories and identity—may be especially relevant in this context. Therefore, this study explores how donor‐conceived families talk about origin stories. The sample comprised 45 participants belonging to 17 donor‐conceived Chilean families with children aged between 3 and 8, representing heteroparental, homoparental, and monoparental family structures. Parents recorded naturalistic parent–child conversations in their home setting, which were analyzed using an elaborative reminiscing coding scheme. The results show that these conversations were intimate, mother‐led, brief, co‐constructed, with asymmetrical contributions from parents and children. On average, elaborative turns accounted for 37.5% of the conversation with both parents (43.9%) and children (28.3%) actively contributing. Given children's average age (4.9 years), their degree of elaboration is notable. Three distinct conversational styles emerged: (a) thoughtful and imaginative conversations; (b) narrative conversations with magical elements; and (c) realistic conversations with classic metaphors. These findings suggest that conversational processes may inform the development of interventions aimed at enhancing autobiographical memory and identity development in donor‐conceived children
Autobiographical memory · Childhood amnesia · Conversation · Identity (music) · Narrative · Psychological intervention · Style (visual arts) · Child Welfare and Adoption · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · Reproductive Health and Technologies
Mother-Child Communication
Dialogical Self Theory
Approaching Dialogue
Young Minds in Social Worlds
Diversity's Impact on Defining the Family
Discovery of unexpected paternity after direct‐to‐consumer DNA testing and its impact on identity
“It’s Just Who I Am … I Have Brown Hair. I Have a Mysterious Father”
Conceptions of Self in Mother-Child Birth Stories
I Was Quite Amazed’
What Does Donor Mean to a Four‐Year‐Old?’
Telling donor-conceived children about their conception
A Tale of Two Mommies
International and Transracial Adoption
Rethinking the dialogical dimension of narrative productions beyond co-construction
Style and structure in mother‐child conversations about the past
Relative Values
A daddy is the same as a mummy
She chose us to be your parents
He was Our Child from the Moment We Walked in that Room
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |