When was the last time you saw a donor conceived character in a book, TV show, or film?
Think about it. You’ve probably seen characters who are adopted or in foster care. Characters with step-parents. Characters with same-sex parents. Characters from single-parent households. The cultural landscape increasingly reflects diverse family origin stories—except one.
Donor conceived people are nearly invisible in mainstream media. And when they do appear, they’re almost always in a story about scandal. Why is that?
The Problem
There are three interconnected problems with how donor conception is represented in media.
Invisibility. Most media doesn’t feature donor-conceived characters at all. Donor-conceived people — especially young people during the exact years when they’re forming their sense of identity — rarely find themselves in the stories they consume. They search for mirrors and find almost nothing. The implicit message is clear: people like them don’t exist in our cultural stories. This part of their identity isn’t worth representing.
Access to donor conceived characters and narratives can be quietly powerful, not just for those navigating big questions, but for those who aren’t. A donor conceived person who picks up a book and finds a character who is deciding whether to search for their donor, or who has a large donor sibling cohort, or who simply exists as a donor-conceived person without that being the whole point of the story, gets something important: confirmation that they’re not alone in an experience that rarely gets named. But there are so few of those moments.
Narrowness. Appearing in a story isn’t the same as being heard in one. The rare times donor conception does appear in mainstream media, it’s almost always dramatic. A plot twist. A scandal. And while donor conceived people might be present in these narratives, the perspective is rarely theirs. The story centers parents, donors, or outside observers. Donor conceived people are there as subjects — not as authorities on their own experience.
This is its own form of erasure. When donor conceived people try to express nuance — the curiosity, the grief, the confusion, the anticipation, the anger — narrow narratives drown them out. A culture that only listens when the story is dramatic leaves no room for complexity. And when real harms do appear — concealed conception, withheld medical history, violated trust — the narrowness of media framing transforms legitimate grievances into entertainment. Pain that deserves to be centered on donor conceived people’s own terms gets repackaged as shocking, surprising, and salacious.
Who Gets to Be the Default. The donor conceived characters who get attention tend to look a particular way. White. Cishet. Able-bodied. Economically comfortable. Navigating identity questions from a position of stability and support. That isn’t every donor-conceived person.
When a narrow demographic gets treated as the default donor-conceived experience, the implicit message reaches everyone. It tells donor-conceived people outside that default that their lives are edge cases. It tells broader society that donor conception belongs to a particular kind of family. And it shapes which donor-conceived voices get platformed, which stories get funded, and which lives get treated as worth representing at all.
The Broader Impact
When society encounters only a narrow band of stories, understanding gets distorted. They develop opinions about what donor conceived people should feel, want, or need, without actually listening to what donor conceived people are saying. They hear stories about donor conceived people, but rarely stories from donor conceived people.
Authentic range builds something different. When people encounter the full spectrum of donor conceived experiences through media and culture, donor conception becomes legible in its full complexity — not inherently scandalous, not inherently uncomplicated, but one of many ways families come to be. Donor-conceived people become visible as complete humans with varied lives, not recurring plot devices.
What Authentic Representation Could Look Like
Authentic representation of donor-conceived people could mean:
- The full spectrum of emotions and experiences: from curiosity about genetic origins to complete indifference, from contentedness to grief and anger, from connection to distancing
- All forms of donor conception (sperm, egg, or embryo donors), all donor identity arrangements (anonymous, identity-release, or known), all disclosure timelines (early knowledge, late disclosure, or discovery through DNA testing), and all family structures (solo parent, co-parenting, queer, multi-parent, trans)
- Intersectional representation that acknowledges how donor-conceived identity intersects with race, class, disability, and every other dimension of a person’s life
In short: representation that reflects reality, told with dignity and complexity.
Parts of Me: Addressing the Gap
Parts of Me exists to address this gap directly. We expand authentic representation of donor-conceived people across arts, media, and culture through three integrated approaches:
We curate existing representation. We identify resources—books, films, TV shows, podcasts, and more—that feature the full breadth of donor conceived representation. We’re making them discoverable and accessible, so donor conceived people and their families can find the mirrors that already exist.
We fund and amplify donor conceived creators. We support donor conceived artists, writers, musicians, and other creators—the people whose lived experience gives them unique authority to tell these stories. When donor conceived creators get funding and visibility, they produce work that reflects the actual complexity and diversity of donor conceived lives.
We work with media professionals to improve representation. We provide guidance, resources, and consultation to journalists, writers, screenwriters, and storytellers who want to include donor conceived representation in their work. Many are committed to diverse representation. They just need tools and expertise.
That’s the world we’re building.
Explore Our Work
- Browse our DCP Stories Collection to discover existing authentic donor conceived representation
- Meet Donor-Conceived Creators whose works are shifting narratives
- Access our Media Guidance if you’re creating or reporting on donor conception
- Learn about Creator Fellowships (launching Year 2)
