Explores the many routes prospective parents can take to bring children into their lives, including insemination, in-vitro fertilization, donors, surrogacy, and adoption. The book is organized into chapters covering baby-making basics, insemination, in vitro fertilization, beyond assisted reproduction, and donor-conceived perspectives. It combines real-life stories from diverse families with scientific diagrams, illustrations, and data to examine the medical and societal methods people use for family creation. The accounts from real people with wide-ranging backgrounds and identities highlight the roadblocks and delights of their quest to build a family, while shining a spotlight on the beauty and complexity of what it means to be family. Written for middle and high school readers, families, and classrooms, the book explains the science of both assisted and unassisted reproduction while celebrating diverse family structures and exploring what it means to create, find, and be family.
DCP Stories Collection
- Book - Non Fiction
- Ages 13-18 (e.g., young adult/teen), Ages 8-12 (e.g., middle grade)
- Rachel Ginocchio
- Egg Donor, Embryo Donor, Sperm Donor
Roads to Family: All the Ways We Come to Be
Review
What’s Done Well
- Gives donor-conceived people a voice. This book discusses many ways that families take shape, but in the chapters about donor conception, it makes a point to include interviews with and the perspectives of donor-conceived people. The interviews also cover a wide range of perspectives around being donor conceived.
- Mentions advocacy for donor industry regulation. This book also includes information about calls for regulation of the donor industry in the United States and the harm that a lack of regulation causes to donor-conceived people. This is something that is rarely mentioned in informational texts for youth about donor conception.