To think it is wrong for a surrogate to have a child for two men?

[Extremelychocolatey]

The men in question are Elton John and David Furnish.

link

It feels wrong on so many levels.

It's only wrong if you're a homophobe.

bupcakes

What an ignorant and sweeping remark.

Drivingmisscrazy, what an excellent post. I have been following this thread and I think there is the crux of it- in order to have a child, you must be not ideal, but good enough parents.

with a couple such as Elton/David and that other super-rich gay couple, the sex of the parents is surely irrelevant, since it will be the team of nannies raising the kids.

I imagine the sprogs are occasionally shimmied in front of the pareents for a bit of Hello-style lego building and whisked backed to the nursery at the merest hint of a dirty nappy or tantrum

To the OP: just how wrong does it feel? On a scale from 1 to 10, where 1= public farting and 10 = mass murder.

Oh, and why. We'd all like to know why.

My sweeping remark was a response to the OPs sweeping remark. Sorry you missed that.

I just thought some of you anti-surrogists would be interested to read this from a surrogate mother:

One Surrogate's Story

My name is Lauren and I live in Colorado with my husband and our three year old daughter. My husband and I decided to become a surrogate family after watching our close friends struggle with the devastation of infertility for three years. We thought it would be meaningful to help another couple achieve their dream of a healthy family and we feel so lucky to have this opportunity. I delivered my first surrogate baby in February 2010.

I was matched with an amazing family in January of 2009 and I delivered their son Luke in February of 2010. The pregnancy went extremely well, and the delivery was an experience I will forever remember and cherish. I was lucky enough to have my intended parents about 20 minutes away. They were able to come to my appointments, ultrasounds, and were there with me during the labor and birth. Throughout the pregnancy, we developed a great friendship and after the birth of Luke, we continue to remain in close contact. We frequently email pictures and meet several times every month, allowing me to spend some time with Luke and watch him grow.

I had a wonderful experience as a surrogate. My family and friends have been a great support and it is a good experience for my three year old daughter to learn about what Mommy is doing. Hopefully she will learn a valuable lesson about helping others and is able to take something from my experience and later apply it to her own life. I love that I was a huge part of this family and I love to tell our story.

I am extremely grateful for this amazing opportunity! This has been a life changing experience and I would definitely do this again!

I suppose also that one of the reasons why two parents are a good thing (aside from being able to share the stresses and strains) is that (as per my previous post) what children need from their parents changes as they grow: I'm not a very good parent for a baby (but my partner is), but am good at holding firm(ish) with a toddler (better than DP). We both have different strengths and weaknesses, as do any set of parents irrespective of gender. So the 2 parent argument for me is not about role models (by which people inevitably mean modelling gender roles - hmm, they've proved to be really great so far, haven't they?) but about complementarity and modelling, so that a child can see conflict, but also how it can be resolved through discussion, argument and extended bouts of sulking reason.

I say this all as the child of a single parent who I know really struggled and had inadequate wider supports (in the context of a supportive extended family this would be quite different I think), and this in turn put intolerable pressure on her relationship with me. I can't imagine how lonely she must have been at times.

YABVU. Its not wrong for a surrogate mother to have child for two men.

I'm sure they will be doting parents afterall, it is not the first time they have tried. This is not a whim.

What are you really asking?

five houses.

wrt the story k12 posted above, well that's all lovely atm, but...

Firstly I wonder how much she was paid to hand over the baby, 10 grand? 20? 30? presumably in the states the amounts are limitless so exactly what price can you put on a child?

Also, she currently has contact with the baby and the new family but what if that changes? Friendships change and evolve and there are no guarantees that this family will want to stay in touch for ever, what happens if they wish to cease contact and this woman then loses touch with her biological child? Or if this family (and those in the future) parent differently to her - no-one knows what kind of parent they are going to be until they actually become one, how can you watch your biological child be parented in a way which you would not approve of?

Also it is IMO a very romanticised view that the three year old understands and loves the fact that her mummy is helping someone else to have a child, that may well be the case while the child is still three, five, eight, young enough to believe in fairy tales and happy ever after, but what about when that child is older and her mother has sold another ten of her siblings to unfortunate couples and she has siblings all over the country that she does not have a relationship with because her mother decided to give them away? I know someone whose mother gave up a baby for adoption because she did not feel she could cope with another baby (pregnancy was unplanned) and she felt the baby would have a better life elsewhere. The damage to her older children now that they are adults is immeasurable, especially the older one who has had to have therapy to come to terms with the loss of his sister.

It can be argued that biology is unimportant but of course it is. Why else do adopted children try to trace their biological parents, seek out relationships with their siblings etc if biology is not important?

If a woman wants to hire out her uterus and carry someone else's biological child for them that's one thing, but to do it with her own child, to give away, no sell actually since money changes hands, her existing child's siblings is totally wrong.

Lots and lots and lots of ignorance out there still I see :(

I find it really offensive that people can make such judgements without walking, or even thinking about walking a mile in someones shoes.

ALso I spotted your commment Riven, I am sure you love your daughter no less because of her disabilities? Why would I have loved mine less? I have however, first hand knowledge of 2 people who have abandoned (literally refused to take home) disabled birth babies - 1 with downs and 1 with spina bifida. They were birth parents!! Now THAT I found shocking!!

Why are you assuming that 'Luke' is biologically related to the surrogate's dd? Surely a closer analogy is to fostering, which is also financially remunerated (I know some people also have issues with that). Where it is the surrogates free and informed choice I see this as being much closer to lending or perhaps leasing someone your womb rather than selling a baby, which seems very reductive to me. I think the baby farming type arrangements happening in some countries are deeply deeply wrong, but an individual choosing to help another family and being paid to do so doesn't seem particularly terrible to me. For the prospective parents the costs may be comparable to some fertility treatments, indeed given that many will have already been down that route it might just feel like a part of that continuum.

Newsweek article on surrogates in the US. A lot of military wives supplementing the meager family income are surrogates. They can earn more in one pregnancy than their Hs in the service earn in a year. They have good health insurance and support networks, and are mostly young. But they are poor, and I think that's usually the clincher.

K12Mom, that was a piece of saccharine that didn't really doesn't dig very deep. The continued contact subsequent to the birth is most unusual. And the experience of a woman anywhere in the US wrt surrogacy is going to be very different from that of a woman in India for example.

maybe luke isn't the biological sibling in which case the above obviously wouldn't apply. But certainly many surrogates do use their own eggs and already have children who would be biologically related to the surrogate child/ren.

And as this is still a fairly new concept, there is little evidence of the impact that these arrangements have on the siblings in later life.

wannaBe - I know you are responding generally, but I did make a couple of points about biology in my posts and I just want to be clear that I am not in any sense saying that it doesn't matter. But I am saying that it is not the only thing that matters, and the more these things are shrouded in mystery for a child, the more they feel that they are missing something. And I do think that we fetishize biological connections at the expense of other important links. I'm not a scientist, but the things I have read also assert that societies also need altruism - individuals who will care for others without a genetic imperative (aunts, single people, gay people...). Historically the only relationship that was certain was that between mother and child (e.g. prior to the availability of DNA testing in the 1980s - seemingly you can do one online for £100!) which is why the law elevates this relationship for custody/nurture purposes; prior to proven paternity the mother was usually considered to be financially responsible for the child as well in the absence of a father figure.

I'm as interested as anyone else in tracing who DD looks like in the extended family etc, but at the end of the day, she looks like herself. The fact that she doesn't look like me doesn't bother me, except when people make an issue of this (casual comment is fine, and simply an astute observation of the physical differences between us). I'm pretty sure that the most DD will have is a full sibling (fingers crossed for us, please!), but that she may well acquire some adoptive siblings further down the line.

tricky. if i say yes, i'm homophobic, but then, on the other hand, i would have hated to have grown up without a mum...... (without a dad, but that would have affected me less)

DD knows exactly who her birth mother is, knows she has a half brother, we keep in touch, infact she arrived in our town to stay with her sister today and we will see her in the week.
How many people on here endlessly post about toxic families? They don't see their parents or a parent, their siblings, cousins etc? There was a thread recently about whether someoene should tell their children their grandad was dead to stop any questions.
Maybe one day I will lose touch with her, maybe dd will lose interest (not that she has any!!) herself and stop any contact when she is an adult - I myself didnt have any contact with my step mother and step siblings for 15 yrs - just because she is a surrogate child doesnt mean she HAS to be in touch with them.. She has 2 family trees, mine and dhs and one with her birth mums info.