Written or Spoken Content

Information for journalists, media and content writers regarding written or spoken content

The following information has been collated in response to requests for detail about how to present information in a respectful way to donor-conceived people (DCP). Please do not hesitate to contact Donor Conceived UK for further information or for us to provide a review of content to provide any potentially disrespectful terms used.

The terms suggested below are recommended by Donor Conceived UK for general use.

We respect and encourage each donor conceived person to choose their own terms to refer to their family, and so understand if you are printing a direct quote from other people, including donor conceived people, these terms may be different. We are not suggesting to change any direct quotes. Please see our “Interviewing” notes for more information about Interviews.

We also understand the need, at times, to use some of these terms. Please speak to Donor Conceived UK if you need to do this, as we have a set of defined terms for this purpose. Most of these suggestions are also context based, so please reach out if you have questions.

Disrespectful term	Preferred Term
Donor baby/ Donor conceived child/ren	Donor conceived person/people (DCP) (NB. Child is ok when directly referring to minors, or directly referring to a donor’s offspring, eg “Donor A has 3 children, age 34, 35 and 39”)
Donor Dad/Mum	Biological/Genetic Mother/Father/Parent Most DCP refer to their raising parents as Dad/Mum
Sam’s donor (Where Sam is the DCP)	Sam’s parent’s donor Donor Conceived UK refers to the donor as the parent’s donor as the donor did not donate to the DCP, they donated to the parent/s
Social parent non-real parent step-parent Non-biological parent	Dad/Mum or parents The people who raise donor conceived people. Please be respectful to our raising parent/s here. The people who raise a DCP are our parents and see themselves as such. There is no need to minimise their role
Recipient or Intended Parent (RP or IP)	Intended Parent – intends to receive Recipient Parent – has a DC child Please do not mix these up, or use the same word for both
Parents	Parent/s many recipient parents are Solo Mothers by Choice (SMBC). Please don’t assume all parents are plural
Diblings	Siblings Donor conceived adults find this term babyish, unnecessary and disrespectful
Half-siblings Half-brothers/sisters Donor-siblings	Siblings, brothers and sisters Donor conceived people don’t have special names for their siblings, they are siblings like all our other siblings. Please respect this
Donor’s real children	Donor’s raised children All the donor’s children are real

Please consider the rights of the person created in this transaction, the donor conceived person, and when sharing their views, ask a donor conceived person or representative organisation.

Common mistakes people make include confusing IVF with donor conception. While many of these technologies come under the umbrella term of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) and many DCP have been created using IVF technologies also, it is not correct to say all donor-conceived people have been conceived using IVF, and only a small percentage of IVF-conceived people are donor-conceived.

Another common mistake is assuming that all donors are male, sperm donors. There are 4 types of donation, sperm, egg, embryo and double donation, and also surrogacy. Please ensure you are inclusive with your language.

Donor-conceived people read the same terms or phrases many times over so please be mindful of avoiding terms which can feel diminishing or dismissive.

Common phrases that the donor-conceived community finds offensive include:

• Suggesting donor conceived people are more wanted, loved or are ‘miracles’

• Saying that the donor, who is our biological father or mother, is ‘just’ a donor or comparing them to an organ or blood donor

• Suggesting all donors are selfless people who provide a gift to help people build their families – this is not accurate.

Please do everything possible to ensure accuracy of tone and content, including but not limited to asking follow up questions and providing a draft for fact-checking. Often some small phrasing can be used in a heading or in the article that that wasn’t meant to offend, but can cause offence to the donor-conceived community. For this reason, Donor Conceived UK request to see draft copies of text before publication to minimise the effects of trauma on our members, and wider community. We will only check the use of terminology and not change any of the tone or views of the article.

We understand this is not normal practice, however in the past, we have had journalists that are intent on publishing an article that is positive towards our cause that, when published, is full of terminology our community finds offensive and it ends up being a negative experience for interviewees and the community as a whole.

Whenever there is media coverage of this topic, whether positive or negative, we see a significant increase of traumatised people accessing our services. People continually tell us this is because parents will read an article or see a TV news story and turn to their adult children and say “I have something I need to tell you…” and divulge their conception status. At this stage both the parents and DCP are quite traumatised and have no idea where to turn for assistance.

For this reason, we request that any media add the contact details of our organisation (our website) to the end of your article for people to find out more information as we can assist people to find the crisis support they need. Often it takes weeks for them to find us, and sometimes it is too late. We are a non-profit charity, run by volunteers and do not make any money out of this, we are simply trying to ensure members of our community can find us faster when they need support, and we can get them to the professional support they need.

Please advise of the release date, and of the title and location/page of print articles, online articles, radio broadcasts or TV broadcasts.