Donor Conception, IVF and Surrogacy Family
Genogram of two same-sex couples who built families with a sperm donor, an egg donor and a surrogate. Shows donor, surrogate and adoption lines.
Interactive Donor Conception, IVF and Surrogacy Family
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About This Genogram
A three-generation genogram of a fictional Indian-American and French-American family with two same-sex couples who built their families through reciprocal IVF with an anonymous sperm donor, a known egg donor and a gestational surrogate, including a miscarriage and a second-parent adoption. Shows donor, surrogate and adoption lines next to the legal parents.
How to Read This Genogram
A family structure genogram maps household composition and biological or legal relationships across at least three generations using a standardized set of structural lines. Solid horizontal lines between two symbols indicate a committed partnership or marriage; a single diagonal slash through that line marks a separation, and a double slash marks a divorce. Children descend from the couple line on vertical drops, and their birth order runs left to right. Dashed lines or dotted horizontal connectors indicate step, foster, or adoptive bonds, so that a reader can distinguish biological parentage from the household arrangement in which a child was actually raised.
Reading a family structure genogram begins at the top generation and moves downward, noting who forms each household at each generational level. The key questions are: Which children grew up together? Which adults held parenting roles, and were those roles biological, legal, or both? Where do the generational boundaries fall? Households that contain members from more than one biological line, or that skip a generation, stand out visually and prompt the clinician to ask how those arrangements shaped each member's experience of family. Structure alone does not explain behavior, but it establishes the relational architecture on which emotional patterns are later mapped.
Key Patterns in This Genogram
Family Structure
How this family structure is represented using standard genogram notation.
Relationship Patterns
Key relationship dynamics and emotional bonds within the family system.
Clinical Application
How professionals use this type of genogram in assessment and treatment.
Family Analysis
This genogram centres on Priya Raman (42), a pediatrician married to Claire Dubois since 2014. The couple used reciprocal IVF: Priya’s egg, Claire’s pregnancy and an anonymous donor’s sperm. Their children Arjun (10) and Maya (7) share the same donor, and a miscarriage in 2018 is shown in birth order between them. Priya’s brother Karthik and his husband Ethan had their daughter Zoe in 2023 with a known egg donor and a gestational surrogate; Ethan completed a second-parent adoption the same year.
The chart separates three things families often run together: who the legal parents are, who contributed genetic material and who carried the pregnancy. Each relationship has its own line, which helps when children start asking about donors and half-siblings, and when a clinician needs to know genetic history for medical reasons (Venkat’s type 2 diabetes is relevant to Priya’s children but not to Claire’s side).
Emotionally, the genogram records Priya’s cutoff from her mother after she came out in 2013 and its repair once Arjun was born, and the continuing distance between Venkat and his son Karthik. Priya and Karthik are close. Grandchildren often become the occasion for repair in families that struggled with a child’s sexual orientation, and the chronology makes that sequence easy to follow.
Build a Similar Genogram
A practitioner documenting a family similar to this one would typically record three generations of household composition, significant life events such as births, deaths, marriages, and separations, any relevant medical or mental health history, and the quality of key relationships between members. That information comes from a combination of the client's verbal account, intake questionnaires, and, where available, collateral records. The completed diagram captures both the factual structure of the family and the practitioner's clinical observations about relational patterns, making it a reference that can be shared across disciplines or reviewed at future stages of treatment.
GenogramAI's AI genogram generator allows you to build a diagram like this one from a plain-language description of the family. You type or paste a narrative, such as the basic structure and any key relationships or health history you want to include, and the AI parses that text, places the correct symbols, draws the appropriate relationship lines, and arranges the layout automatically. The result is a fully editable diagram that you can refine, annotate, and export for clinical records or educational use. Try the AI genogram creator to generate your own genogram from a text description in seconds.
Genogram Symbols Used in This Example
The following standard genogram symbols appear in the Donor Conception, IVF and Surrogacy Family. Each symbol follows McGoldrick and Gerson clinical notation conventions.
Person Symbols
- Male (Square)
- A square represents a male family member.
- Female (Circle)
- A circle represents a female family member.
- Index person (highlighted outline)
- The person at the centre of the assessment is drawn with a highlighted outline.
- Sexual orientation marker
- An inverted triangle inside the symbol records a gay or lesbian orientation; other orientations have their own markers.
- Deceased (X)
- An X through the symbol marks a person who has died; birth and death years are written above it.
- Age inside the symbol
- The current age (or age at death) is written inside each symbol, with years above it.
Family Building
- Sperm or egg donor
- A dotted donor line connects a sperm or egg donor to the child, kept apart from the legal parents’ lines.
- Gestational surrogate
- A dotted line connects a gestational carrier to the child she carried.
- Adopted child
- A dashed child line marks adoption, labelled with the adoption year.
- Miscarriage
- A small filled dot on a child line marks a miscarriage, with its year below.
- Immigration marker
- A double wavy mark on a person’s line records immigration; a single wavy mark records living across two cultures.
Couples
- Marriage
- A solid line between partners; the marriage year is written on the line (m 90 = married 1990).
Emotional Relationships
- Close
- Two parallel blue lines mark an emotionally close relationship.
- Distant
- A dashed line marks emotional distance.
- Cutoff repaired
- A cutoff line with a reconnecting mark records contact that was broken and then restored.
Medical
- Medical shading
- The left half of a symbol is shaded for a physical or mental illness and the bottom half for alcohol or drug use; each condition has its own colour, listed in the key. Hatching means suspected, a partial fill means in recovery.
Related Resources
- Compare this chart with our same-sex parents genogram.
- The miscarriage symbol keeps a pregnancy loss in its place in birth order.
- Ethan’s second-parent adoption uses the adoption symbol.
- The cutoff repaired line between Priya and her mother records contact that was lost and restored.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you show a sperm donor or egg donor on a genogram?
How is a gestational surrogate drawn?
Why include a miscarriage in a donor-conception genogram?
Can GenogramAI draw donor and surrogacy families from a description?
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Three-Generation Household
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Create Your Own Genogram
Use GenogramAI to build your own family genogram with AI assistance. Describe your family and let AI do the rest.
Educational disclaimer: This genogram example is an educational illustration of genogram notation and family systems concepts. Examples based on public figures use publicly available information. They are not clinical documents. All examples are intended for learning genogram symbols and patterns.