Woman born by surrogate birth describes it as "a profoundly painful experience that disrupts the innate connections between birthing mother and child."

[User1775]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-12948247/surrogate-mother-childhood-unhappy-banned.html
She wants surrogacy banned completely despite having an immensely privileged childhood - the type so many who employ poor women as surrogates have.

I’m not sure that having no love from your parents is a privilege.

Well exactly, all the material things and no bond, no love and no warmth. It is a very sorry tale.

Unsympathetic comments. And they are right, there’s no counter factual.

I think it’s easier to blame surrogacy for an unhappy childhood than it is to blame her parents for being emotionally abusive and lying to her.

This certainly reads as more of an abusive parent or at the least very poor parent relationship than a surrogacy issue. (not that I agree with surrogacy.. its just not a good example)

Same here. She wrote she had nannies as a child, which is common amongst the very wealthy who prefer to outsource child rearing, which makes them distant and emotionally unavailable parents.

I think her adverse childhood experiences are very common for her socio-economic class regardless of whether the child was born naturally, via IVF, surrogacy or adopted.

At the same time, it's her life, she's allowed to interpret it as she sees fit.

I’m not at all in favour of surrogacy, but I don’t think this is a typical tale.

She had emotionally unavailable parents and that would be the case if her mother had been her birth or biological mother or not.

Would be interesting to see if the risk of these ACE (adverse childhood experiences) are higher if the child were born via IVF, via surrogacy or adopted compared to natural born? I think there should be research because the impact of surrogacy on the children is poorly understood. The neglect is part of what makes it a contentious issue- because it’s anecdotes, case studies, interviews. There’s not been any long term study that I know of other than ones that look at impact on the child’s educational attainment. That’s a really poor proxy for mental well-being.

… having read to the end of the article, this woman is also incredibly self absorbed, emotionally immature and lacking in empathy.

A lot of what she says would be deeply deeply offensive to adoptive parents and in fact older parents.

It’s also odd to refer to her biological family as the one she’s always wanted, given she’s never got round to meeting them, despite her wealth.

So I’m not sure she’s a helpful poster girl.

She's blaming surrogacy but the issue is that her parents were emotionally unavailable for her entire childhood. I doubt she feels different to any child with parents like that, biological or not.

Why would IVF be a factor? It's the method by which sperm meets egg and are usually "natural born"... do you mean because it takes more dedicated "effort" than some natural conceptions?

Well, I’m no psychologist, but she sounds desperarate to blame surrogacy for her bad relationship with her parents when it’s clear a lot of other things were also going on. 👀

Rather an unpleasant article to read. So very sorry for herself and yet zero empathy for, or understanding of, women suffering from infertility.

I’ve only encountered one case of surrogacy: a friend (after eight miscarriages) hired a surrogate. The child (who is not genetically related to the surrogate) is adored and has always known the truth of her birth, I can’t think of a happier family. Their surrogate had finished her own family, wanted to help create another, made a lot of money doing so and knew exactly what she was getting into. That situation may not be representative of most but it looked like a win-win to me.

I would totally disagree with the posters that call this woman self absorbed, unless you’ve been through it then I don’t think you can dismiss how she feels and she makes some very understandable points. Any decent adoptive parents go in from the start accepting that there is likely to be ongoing or potential trauma from that separation even it it happened very early on and no abuse had occurred. I know adoptive parents who are amazing people and are giving their children the most wonderful upbringing but they go through an awful lot of preparation and certainly do not have the expectation that their children will be forever grateful to them. Although you would hope their children will at least have comfort in the fact their adoptive parents tried to make the best of a bad situation for them

Look I suppose someone needs to do a proper study but isn't it more likely that a mother who acquires a child from a surrogate will find it harder to bond with the child because they haven't been through the process of pregnancy and birth?

I think we should listen to the feelings and experiences of people born via surrogacy and believe them. How the child may feel and how to best support them is something prospective parents should really spend a lot of time thinking about, similar to adoption.

I meant IVF with donor eggs or donor sperm- to see if a child not genetically related to their mum or dad or other mum or other dad makes a difference.

Adoption has been going a while

Hmmm my child doesn't owe me any gratitude for being adopted. I wanted to be a mom. It's that simple. I'm the lucky one.

I'm also adopted and she did what I see some adoptees doing. She is blaming everything on surrogacy.

My parents were abusive because they were abusive. Not because I was adopted.

I will add though donor eggs and donor sperm to me is adoption and should be treated as such. Children should know and they should also have access to info on their biological parents. I believe knowing where we come from is a basic human right.

Woman who is genetic offspring of lady who was unhinged enough to believe that “giving away her own genetic child via surrogacy would be a good way to get over the tragic death of her toddler and didn’t even tell her husband for a long time” turns out to be emotionally unstable from early childhood. Gee, I wonder why that could possibly be the case?

If this woman had stayed with her mum, I suspect she’d have a bunch of similar issues - only she would be blaming them on “being raised by a mother who was grieving for another child” and “having too many siblings which deprived me of parental time and care.”

The whole setup was ludicrous, and no decent surrogacy system would allow a grand multigravida suffering from grief and emotional issues to do this, let alone with her own eggs and without her husband’s knowledge, nor would they have allowed the adoptive parents to adopt at 50. I am iffy on commercial surrogacy (at most, I think it should be incredibly strictly regulated, but on balance, I think we should allow only properly vetted and very limited altruistic surrogacy within families) but this article does not constitute decent evidence of anything in particular.

I very clearly said they ‘don’t’ expect gratitude

I agree with the previous posters.

There is/was a lot going on in her life that is utterly unrelated to the surrogacy of her birth, but that has become the scapegoat for all else.

I remember seeing a study that said children born by surrogate are generally as secure as other children but that there wasn't much data for young adults or adults. Perhaps more of these stories will emerge as the children grow and mature and take stock. Given adopted children even if thoroughly loved can experience feelings of abandonment as adults which is well documented it's not a huge stretch to think the same might be true of adults born from surrogates especially when they are not known or part of the family.

You can't have looked very hard at the evidence base as there has been some high profile longititudinal work on precisely this taking place for years.

See this discussion for latest findings (the discussion as to the differences between donor conception and adoption which should stop anyone casually inferring from the latter to the former dead in their tracks):

https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2023-63676-001.html