Different Ways to Start a Family
Explore different ways to start a family, including partnered parenthood, solo parenthood, donor conception, co-parenting, IVF, surrogacy, and adoption.
There is no single sequence you have to follow to start a family.
For some people, the path is familiar: meet a partner, decide to have children, and conceive together.
For others, family-building involves donor sperm, donor eggs, IVF, intentional co-parenting, surrogacy, adoption, or becoming a solo parent by choice.
Sometimes the reason is medical. Sometimes it is about sexual orientation, relationship status, age, or personal preference. And sometimes people simply decide that the traditional relationship-first model is not the family structure they want.
The number of options can feel overwhelming, but most family-building paths become easier to understand when you first answer one question:
Who do you want to parent with, if anyone?
From there, the medical and practical choices become much clearer.
Starting a family with a romantic partner
For many people, starting a family still happens within a romantic relationship.
If both partners can contribute the sperm and egg needed for conception and one partner can carry the pregnancy, they may try to conceive without fertility treatment.
Other couples need medical help.
That could involve fertility medication, IUI, IVF, donor sperm, donor eggs, or other assisted reproductive treatment depending on the situation.
Being in a relationship therefore does not necessarily determine how conception happens.
A heterosexual couple experiencing infertility and a same-sex couple using donor conception may both end up receiving care from the same fertility clinic, even though their reasons for being there are completely different.
Donor sperm can create several family structures
Donor sperm can be used by single women, lesbian couples, people with male-factor infertility, and others who need a sperm source.
It may be used through intrauterine insemination, or IUI, or as part of IVF.
The donor may come from a sperm bank or clinic, or you may use someone you know personally.
Current ASRM guidance recommends structured medical, infectious-disease, genetic, and psychological considerations when donor gametes are used.
But choosing donor sperm is not only a medical decision.
You also need to think about donor identity.
Would you prefer a donor whose identity is known from the beginning?
An identity-release donor whose details may become available later?
Or a donor selected through a conventional bank with greater separation from your family?
Those choices can shape the information available to your child years later.
Donor eggs can make parenthood possible in different circumstances
Donor eggs may be used when someone cannot use their own eggs, when a couple needs an egg source, or when a single man or male couple wants a biological connection to a child.
Egg donation is medically more involved than sperm donation because the donor undergoes ovarian stimulation, monitoring, and egg retrieval.
The eggs are then fertilized through IVF.
For a single man or gay male couple, donor eggs usually form one part of a larger process that also involves a gestational carrier.
For other intended parents, an embryo created with donor eggs may be transferred to one of the intended parents themselves.
IVF is a treatment, not a family structure
IVF is sometimes described as if it were its own way of becoming a family.
More accurately, it is a medical technique that can support many different family structures.
During IVF, eggs are retrieved and fertilized in a laboratory before an embryo is transferred into a uterus.
IVF can be used by heterosexual couples experiencing infertility, single parents, lesbian couples, gay couples using donor eggs and a gestational carrier, or people using donor gametes for other reasons.
The family structure comes from who the parents are and what roles people intend to have, not from the laboratory method used to create the embryo.
Reciprocal IVF allows two partners to share biological roles
For some lesbian and other LGBTQ+ couples, reciprocal IVF offers another option.
One partner provides the eggs.
Those eggs are fertilized with donor sperm.
An embryo is then transferred to the other partner, who carries the pregnancy and gives birth. The HFEA describes this as reciprocal IVF or shared motherhood.
This means one parent has the genetic connection while the other has the gestational connection.
For couples who value both partners participating biologically in the same pregnancy, that can be meaningful.
For others, simpler options such as donor-sperm IUI may fit better.
Neither route makes one family more complete than another.
Solo parenthood is another intentional path
Some people know they want children but do not want to make parenthood dependent on finding a romantic partner.
A single woman may use donor sperm.
A single man pursuing biological parenthood may use donor eggs, IVF, and a gestational carrier.
Others may consider adoption.
Solo parenthood usually means becoming the child's only or primary parent.
That makes support planning particularly important.
A solo parent may have complete parenting autonomy, but they also need to think carefully about childcare, finances, emergency support, guardianship, and what happens when they cannot personally take care of the child.
Solo does not need to mean isolated.
A strong network of family, friends, childcare providers, and other parents can become an important part of the family structure.
Intentional co-parenting offers shared parenthood without romance
Some people do not want to parent alone but also do not want to wait for a romantic relationship.
Intentional co-parenting offers another model.
Two or more people decide to raise a child together without necessarily being romantic partners.
ASRM's current LGBTQ+ family-building guidance recognizes co-parenting as one of the ways people may intentionally form families outside conventional couple structures.
This could involve two friends deciding to have a child together.
It could involve a lesbian couple co-parenting with a man.
It could involve a gay couple and another intended parent.
The important distinction is that a co-parent is a parent, not simply someone providing sperm or eggs.
That means discussing parenting styles, finances, location, childcare, education, healthcare, future relationships, and legal parenthood before conception.
A donor and a co-parent are not the same thing
This is one of the most important distinctions across modern family-building.
A donor provides genetic material.
A co-parent participates in raising the child.
A known donor may still meet the child, receive updates, or remain available for medical questions without becoming one of the parents.
But if the person expects custody, parenting time, financial responsibility, or a say in major decisions, the arrangement is moving toward co-parenting.
Leaving that difference vague can create serious problems later.
It is much better to decide the intended role before conception.
Gestational surrogacy can make pregnancy possible for intended parents who cannot carry
Gestational surrogacy involves a person carrying an embryo created using someone else's egg.
That means the gestational carrier is not genetically related to the child.
This can be a route for gay male couples, single men, and people who cannot safely carry a pregnancy themselves.
ASRM describes gestational-carrier family building as involving separate medical, psychological, and legal considerations and emphasizes that the carrier maintains authority over her own medical care during pregnancy.
Surrogacy law varies considerably between countries and, in the United States, between states.
Anyone considering it should understand the applicable legal framework before entering agreements or transferring embryos.
Adoption creates another route to parenthood
Adoption is a different form of family-building because it does not involve creating a pregnancy for the intended parent or parents.
Eligibility, waiting periods, legal procedures, costs, and the types of adoption available depend heavily on the jurisdiction and program.
Single people, heterosexual couples, and LGBTQ+ couples may be eligible in many places, although the rules are not universal.
Adoption also involves considerations that do not arise in fertility treatment, including the child's existing history, biological family connections, identity, and experiences before joining the adoptive family.
For that reason, adoption deserves to be considered as its own path rather than simply as a backup when reproductive treatment does not work.
Family members can sometimes help with family-building
Some people consider a sibling or another relative as a sperm donor, egg donor, or gestational carrier.
These arrangements can preserve a genetic connection that might otherwise not be possible.
ASRM considers many adult intrafamilial donor and gestational-carrier arrangements ethically acceptable when everyone is fully informed, counseling is provided, and coercion is carefully considered.
But family relationships can create pressure that does not exist with unrelated donors.
A sibling may feel obligated to help.
Parents may strongly influence someone's decision.
The arrangement can also affect extended-family relationships for years.
That makes independent consent, counseling, and legal planning particularly important.
Family-building can combine several paths
These categories do not always stay neatly separate.
A lesbian couple might find their own known sperm donor and then use a fertility clinic.
A solo father might find an identified egg donor independently, create embryos through IVF, and work with a gestational carrier through a separate program.
A couple may use reciprocal IVF for one child and a different approach for another.
An intentional co-parenting arrangement might also involve donor gametes.
Modern family-building is often less about choosing one label and more about combining the pieces that create the family structure you want.
Think about genetics separately from parenting
One useful way to make these choices clearer is to separate three different roles:
Who contributes genetic material?
Who carries the pregnancy?
Who raises the child?
Traditional conception often combines these roles in the same people, which can make them seem inseparable.
Assisted reproduction shows that they are not.
An egg donor can contribute genetics without being a parent.
A gestational carrier can carry a child without being genetically related to them or becoming their parent.
A non-genetic parent can raise the child from birth and be completely central to their family.
Clarifying these roles makes many family-building decisions easier to understand.
Consider the future child's access to information
If donor conception is involved, think beyond the immediate treatment.
Your child may eventually want to know about the donor's identity, family medical history, ancestry, personality, or genetic siblings.
ASRM's current family-building guidance highlights the importance of discussing future relationships with donors or gestational carriers and of disclosing donor origins to children.
That does not mean every donor needs to become part of the child's life.
It does mean decisions about identity and information can have consequences long after fertility treatment ends.
Medical and legal planning are separate
A fertility clinic can tell you whether a treatment is medically appropriate.
That does not necessarily tell you who will legally be recognized as the child's parent.
Likewise, a private agreement between a donor and intended parents may clarify intentions without automatically determining legal parentage in every jurisdiction.
This becomes particularly important with known donors, co-parenting, surrogacy, and cross-border arrangements.
The more people involved in creating and raising the child, the more important it becomes to make sure the medical arrangement and legal arrangement support the same intended family structure.
Banbino can help you start with the relationship you actually want
Many family-building services begin after you already know which route you are taking.
Banbino starts slightly earlier: with the people and family structure.
Someone may be looking for a romantic partner who also wants children.
Another person may want an intentional co-parent.
A solo parent may be looking for a known sperm or egg donor.
A couple may want to find an identified donor rather than choosing only from a conventional donor catalog.
Those intentions should not be mixed together.
The clearer you are about the role you want another person to have, the easier it becomes to search for someone whose expectations align with yours.
Professional medical screening, fertility treatment, and legal planning can then follow when appropriate.
Start with the family you want—not the method
It is easy to begin with medical questions:
Should we do IUI?
Do we need IVF?
Should we use donor eggs?
How does surrogacy work?
Those questions matter, but they come second.
First decide:
Do I want to parent alone or with someone else?
If with someone else, do I want a romantic partner or an intentional co-parent?
How important is genetic connection to me?
Do I want the donor to be identifiable?
Who, if anyone, should carry the pregnancy?
Once those answers become clearer, the medical route tends to become easier to identify.
There are now many different ways to start a family.
What makes them work is not whether they follow the traditional sequence.
It is whether the people involved understand their roles, make informed decisions, and build a family structure they are prepared to support long after conception is over.