Being a ‘real’ mum: Motherhood through donated eggs and embryos

Women who become mothers through egg donation embody and reinforce cultural discourses of motherhood as part of womanhood and motherhood as enacted through women's bodies. At the same time, they have usually experienced the personal and social ‘failure’ of being infertile, and they disrupt the assumption of genetic connection between mothers and children. In this article I explore what it means to be the recipient of donated eggs or embryos in a culture dominated by the family narrative of genetically-related parents and children. Opportunities were provided for the 21 participating women to reveal narrative revision over several years. The tension generated by being positioned as both embodying and challenging dominant cultural discourses contributes to women's experience of varying degrees of discomfort with their motherhood, including a sense of not being a ‘real’ mother. As women enact motherhood in their daily lives, however, they tend to assert the priority of parenting and nurturing over genes as central to motherhood.