Cameron Diaz “has third child” aged 53

😱 that is utterly grim, Gilead-level stuff. It’s all about the “intended parents” and absolutely no mention of the woman whose body they are renting. Or the child who will be ripped away from the woman whose body has grown and nurtured it for nine months as soon as it is born 😢 Commodification to the sickest degree.

Good for her, men have kids at all ages.

Most people know having kids in your 50s requires help, and people can do what they like with their bodies.

While I do think surrogates need greater protection in some places, I'd never condemn another person's choice to use or be a surrogate. Wanted children are usually happy children.

Surrogacy can give some poor women power - over their bodies, futures and ability to look after their own children.

Lots of the criticism of surrogacy is rooted in homophobia towards gay men, and patronising misogyny.

We can treat cancer through drugs, not by purchasing body parts from a donor.

We can treat unemployment through the economy, not by purchasing a job from someone else.

We can treat infertility through IVF, not through purchasing a baby.

Adopting is no different. It's still a baby being taken away from its mother at birth.

Whilst I am sorry for anyone who can't have children naturally, and have to result to adoption, it really annoys me when people bash surrogacy and then celebrate adoption. In both cases, babies are taken away from their birth mother...

Adoption, is a woman who is unable to keep the baby because she's in a precarious position, often financially, or isn't allowed to keep it because her family won't let her. Surrogacy, is often a woman who is from a poor background and needs the money, and someone financially better off than her pays her to have their baby. (Some surrogates are not poor though.)

In both cases the baby is being taken from its birth mother. And in both cases, the birth mother is often not well off financially... At least with surrogacy the baby will often be biologically related to the parents when the surrogate hands over the baby. So there will be that genetic link. And she usually gets paid by the couple for carrying the baby.. A mother giving her child away via adoption gets nothing.

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with NOT being biologically related and I know you can love an adopted child as much as your own, but let's stop pretending surrogacy is this evil thing and anyone who uses them is a monster, and adopting is something utterly perfect. At the end of the day, when a couple adopts a baby and is happy and joyful at their new little bundle, a heartbroken birth mother who had to give up the baby lies in the wings, sobbing her heart out. The majority of surrogates will be happy to give up the baby, as that's what the plan was from the start, and the baby is often not genetically/biologically hers.

I get it, many on Mumsnet hate surrogacy, that is your right. But stop making out anyone who uses a surrogate is an evil monster who has used a poor young woman to service their wishes to have a baby 'for show,' and anyone who adopts a baby has 'saved a child' and 'given them a loving home,' and deserves a medal for it.

And saying gay couples use surrogates to gain a baby for an affectation. (Like just to show off, as some kind of new toy, to impress others?!) WTF?!

No skin in the game here, I have never used a surrogate, or adopted, but this 'surrogacy is evil' thing on here, and the anger and rage aimed at it is just ludicrous. Some women help couples have a baby via surrogacy because they want to.

I do think Cameron Diaz is too old to have had 3 babies in her late 40s/early 50s though.

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Adoption, is a woman who is unable to keep the baby because she's in a precarious position, often financially, or isn't allowed to keep it because her family won't let her.

Are you referring to the UK in 2026, or are you basing this on an episode of Call The Midwife you once watched? No, that isn't why babies are removed from mothers in the vast, vast majority of cases (and the large majority of children aren't removed as babies). It is done because there is an evidenced decision that the risk to the child of remaining with their mother is too high. Orders for adoption usually follow multiple failed attempts by social services to make interventions to keep the child with their birth mother. Voluntary relinquishment is rare. The strong guiding principle in social services is to keep children with their birth families wherever possible, and family are always looked to first as possible carers/adopters. Adoption is therefore the best option in a situation with no good ones. This is very, very different to surrogacy, most significantly because adoption is done in the best interests of the child and surrogacy is done for the wishes of adults.

Did you adopt a baby at 50, or an older child? Do you have a partner and are they younger? I do think that two 50 year olds shouldn't be adopting a baby, and suspect that isn't what happened.

Everyone always talks about the surrogate in these circumstances. Rightly so. But what of the biological parents? It’s unlikely that her own eggs were used at that age, no? I absolutely believe in the right of every person to know who their biological parents are. So in this case, the biological mother. It’s as if in these cases people think that by adding a step that removes connection (if you carry the child it’s not really yours because it’s not your egg/it’s your egg, but you didn’t carry or give birth so the child isn’t yours) it removes an inconvenient truth.

I'm not 'celebrating' adoption, ffs. Adoption is traumatic.

The difference is that someone adopting is helping a child. A serious and undeniable trauma has resulted in a baby being taken from its mother.

Someone buying a baby is traumatising a baby/child, on purpose.

Thank you, you explained it far better than I did.

Baby trafficking is abhorrent and wrong. Empowerment my arse.

Adoption isn't always the mothers choice? Think why that is for one second.

If my disabled son was a girl and got pg he'd not have any choice to keep it.

What he could do is refuse a abortion being forced on him.

I could step in a kinship care but im almost CD age.

He siblings could give up there future to care for it.

It's ludicrous to think this is 1950's Ireland where nuns are ripping newborns off unmarried mums. Who thinks a newborn should stay with a mum that will never have capacity to be independent themselves. or a drug addiction. Or a child abuser? Better to be with bio mum? Give over

As per @MoreDangerousThanAWomanScorned excellent post above, what you have written here about adoption is absolutely not the case in the UK in the 21st century (and hasn't been for quite a long time). Most children are not adopted as babies, for a start. And the hapless 16-year-olds with unwanted pregnancies, who seem to be the sort of people you have in mind, are far more likely to have abortions than give their babies up for adoption. It's not the 1950s!

yes exactly. And as the mother of an adopted child I was perfectly well aware of the impact on the birth parents of having their child removed. However I am also well aware that had my son been returned he would most likely not be alive today .
Adoption is not perfect of course as in an ideal world all children would grow up being loved and cherished by their birth families and cared for adequately but unfortunately that is sometimes just not possible.
And surrogacy is a system that separates babies from their biological mother at birth which we now know causes trauma to that baby . So choosing to create a family via surrogacy is going to negatively impact a child when it could of been avoided which is not acceptable imo.l

Yes, I’m not stupid 🙄

@TransParentlyAnnoyed "Lots of the criticism of surrogacy is rooted in homophobia towards gay men, and patronising misogyny"

Theeeeeere it is! Unable to make your point without accusing people of some phobia or other.

As someone new to this debate explain why surrogacy is looked upon as ‘vile’ . I don’t understand. I had 5 years of infertility which nearly broke my marriage and nearly sent me completely insane. It was a horrible time in our lives - especially as it was ‘unexplained infertility’. We were very luckily blessed with 3 children naturally but had we not been - and my sister did offer .. would it have been wrong for her to carry a baby for us made from DH and I ? I would certainly of offered the same to her if situations were reversed.

The overseas surrogates especially from much more economically deprived places , I can also understand why. I worked for an aid agency in my 20s and I can imagine a lot of women opting to do this as it would give their existing family a way out of poverty and give their kids a chance of education. With something that they can do without needing to pay to learn how to do it. I am perhaps being naive as I have not heard this debate .. I obviously need educating. Not goady . Genuinely want to hear the reasons for such strength of feeling in the matter by a vast majority of posters .

You would happily risk your sister's life?

Should poor women also be able to sell their kidneys?

Where's the headline .... Woman rents out womb , sells baby ..... ?

@toomanycoffeecups

I have also experienced unexplained infertility and was lucky enough to conceive through IVF. So I can absolutely understand the pain of infertility. I think carrying a baby for a loved one, within the family, is a very different scenario to commercial surrogacy where people are strangers. Not without its potential problems, of course, but a different situation.

Would you have a contract in place that if the choice was between death of your baby or death of your sister, you make the choice and your sister has no say?
If the baby was ill, you get to decide your sister has an abortion and she has no say?
What if your sister dies?
What if the baby dies? Would your relationship with your sister survive?
What if your sister is left with lifelong injuries?
What if the baby needs to be born early and might have lifelong consequences?

Most surrogacy contracts give the buyers complete control over both the baby as well as the mother. The mothers lose control over their body. The baby is removed from mother on birth, something we don't even do with newborn animals.

This is what is wrong with surrogacy. No other job is 24x7 for no money, a lot of physical consequences, a extremely high risk of injuries and a high risk of death. Even being a mine worker is better paid and lower risk

Who is she hurting? The surrogate wasn’t impregnated against her will, she was a competent woman who made a decision.

It amazes me that so many of you don’t see the irony in trying to control another women’s body because you know better.

The baby. The baby gets used to smells, sounds of voice etc. during pregnancy. Removal will have an impact. The baby is now with parents who are both around 50, so this child will likely loose their parents in 20s/30s. That is very young and will also have a traumatic impact.

We do not know what drove the surrogate to make this decision, unless you know her personally?