Surrogacy to get maternity leave and pay?

[coldandflu]

Light hearted and kind of a bit of snark at my company....
But they pay a good chunk of salary whilst on maternity leave and I didn't qualify with my first unplanned by a couple of days.... Needed to be at the company for three months only.

Anyway, would I be unreasonable to be a surrogate for someone and get a year paid of work?

Hmmm

I personally don’t agree that adopting a child makes you a mum.
In my opinion the mother of a child is biological, teachers and child minders care and look after children sometimes more than parents but they are not parents.

I was adopted as a baby and brought up in a lovely family but they were not my family and I still consider my biological parents who I share genetics with to be my parents even though I was brought up by lovely care givers.
I have a lovely relationship with my adopted family but the people who adopted me were never my mum and dad.
I have my own children now and that biological connection is what makes me their mum and having met my real family I could never tell my children the couple who raised me were their grandparents because they’re not.
My parents are and my husband’s parents are but I am grateful for everything they have done for me but to me, saying that’s my mum is like me saying I am my cats mum because I feed and house him.

Well I have twins so I reckon I should get another year of mat leave then! I only got half what most mothers of 2 kids do.
(I am joking here btw but I DO think there's a case for a longer mat leave with twins because so much of it is often spent with the babies in NICU because of being born early and the recovery is often harder)

That’s your own experience but there’s majority of people would of course see an adoptive mum as a mother. The act of giving birth is not what makes a mother, it’s the caregiving and responsibility. Same with fatherhood - any man can ejaculate but it’s raising and being there for the child that makes him a father. Some guy who donates sperm at a clinic is not the dad of every child who results. It’s also the case that women can give birth to a child not genetically related to them (egg donation) but would people honestly say they aren’t the mum?

Surrogate doesn't have a genetic link to the baby though. The intended mother whose eggs were used would.
What you said just enforces my point then that the mum is the one whose egg it was (and who will be raising the baby), not someone who just carried the baby.

A lot of surrogacies use donor eggs. So basically in that situation, the commissioning people are putting two women's lives at risk. Donating eggs can be highly risky. A pregnancy with a donor egg is much riskier for the mother than one where she uses her own eggs.

Go ahead, please do. It would be interesting to see if the year off was worth it.

Yes completely morally bankrupt to do that to a child, can forgive the poor exploited women who do it in misguided notion that they are doing some Nobel deed but to do it just to get a bit of time off work, honestly - would have more respect for someone who quit work and went on the game

I consider myself my DCs mother precisely because they grew within me not just as an egg donor, it’s not like carrying a bag of shopping!! 😂 no disrespect to adoptive mothers at all, I think they are generally amazing people

Any woman giving birth to a live baby or stillbirth after 24 weeks is entitled to the full maternity leave which I think is correct but don’t think it’s fair that effectively 2 sets it leave are claimed for the same baby, as in effect both surrogate and commissioning parent able to claim a year’s leave and pay but the rest of us only get 1 set of leave (even for twins!!)

Yeah but is it the growing inside you or the egg that you see as the important part? Who do you see as the mum if the woman giving birth didn’t use her own eggs? Is she the mum? Or is it the woman whose eggs were used but who never carried the baby but has passed her DNA on? Or is it the woman whose eggs raises the child? I think this discussion shows that there is no one single thing that makes someone a mum. Most of the time the person who carries, gives their DNA to and raises the baby is the same person but it becomes more complex when the roles are performed by different people.

This absolutely, myself and almost everyone I know had the love of a birth mother, no disrespect to fathers or adoptive parents but having had DC myself I cannot imagine this that love can compare to any other. Although without doubt my DH and my DF absolutely love and adore their children and bring something which is equally special in its own way. It still
seems cruel to purposefully bring a child into the world with a birth mother who has actively dissociates from the poor child from conception

Biological/physical parenthood matters. This is not to say that it's all that matters: a sperm donor is technically a father, but he is not a good father. But we have to acknowledge that being raised by people who are not your biological parents is very complex and can be difficult for some people. The ideal thing is to know both your biological parents, if they are decent people, so I would be very wary of putting my own needs ahead of a child's and deliberately bringing them into the world without access to one or both parents.

Having said that, the biological link issue isn't my main objection to surrogacy. I see surrogacy as indefensible because I think it rests on the assumption that newborn babies are a 'blank slate'. So it doesn't really matter if you take them from their mother. This actually isn't true - the evidence shows that new babies are born already attached to their mothers. So in the same way you wouldn't defend a practice of surrogacy that involved having the baby, caring for the baby for 6 months and then giving it away, I can't defend the practice of deliberately conceiving a baby to give it up at birth.

I see it ultimately as the one who grew/births the child, an egg donor is equivalent to a sperm donor/father, I can imagine if I had a child born of one of my eggs I would care deeply about the child’s
welfare and want to and enjoy being involved but as long as I knew they were ok I wouldn't feel the need to be with them in the same way. E.g. it wouldn’t bother me to go back to work with them as a newborn as long as they were being well cared for (although of course everyone loves a bit of time off to cuddle their baby) The bond would be there knowing my child but really more grow over time, I have grandchildren too and so suppose it would be a similar feeling/relationship. That’s also why I can’t really understand these fathers demanding equal paternity leave, sure if I was a dad it
would be nice to have some time off to adjust but I can’t imagine actually wanting 12 months off to do full time baby care, let alone the fact I felt needed a good portion of my leave for the fact that pregnancy is so exhausting and recovery from the birth but mainly because of a primal need to be with my baby

People always bring up adoption in surrogacy conversations.

Adoption is making the best out of a terrible situation for the child. And every effort is made to avoid permanent separation from birth family, adoption is legally the last resort. Every possible uncle / granny etc will be considered to keep the child with the family if possible. Literally all decisions should be made with the child's best interests paramount.

Even in relinquished baby cases, if mum doesn't want her family or baby's paternal family to be considered the court needs to agree to proceed, and there needs to be a good reason.

Surrogacy is done entirely for the adults. The baby is conceived and grown so it can be be removed from birth family. It's a complete anomaly that the UK allows this.

Yes yes and yes, I know people who have adopted a child and they are the most wonderful people (although would probably not want to be described as such as they just see themselves as so fortunate to have their dear child) if anything happened to us I would want out babies to go to someone like them. However they have been the saviours in a tragic situation, surrogacy is totally selfish. I have always thought this but have since subsequently known someone who acted as a surrogate and let’s just say that the media narrative is very obviously generally controlled by the rich people who tend to benefit from surrogacy, it didn’t end well and only reinforced the opinion I already had. You will rarely hear about such cases as they are within the realms of the private family court

Yes, there is straight surrogacy where the surrogate is the biological mother of the child, and two types of donor surrogacy, when either the commissioning mother or a third party is the egg donor.

Relevance to anti womb renting?

FWIW I couldn’t have children, but I’m still against surrogacy.

My DH missed out on 6 months paid paternity leave because our daughter was born 6 weeks before his company's new policy kicked in. He got the usual 2 weeks instead. Had worked there for 10 years, and his employer didn't give a shit.

Sometimes its just tough luck!

Poor kid

If I was a man and got 6 months paid paternity leave ( and of course a wife who was a lovely mother) I’d be wanting 10 children 🤣 getting all that time off without having to go through the pregnancy and birth and having a mother there who does the main chunk of the childcare too 🎉