Social Surrogacy - Views

[minimalism1407]

Hi folks,
New to Mumsnet. Have been looking around trying find a post for people who choose social surrogacy. Which is basically when a woman uses a surrogate because she doesn’t want to become pregnant herself due to a phobia, career, ruining her body or any side effects that come with it. For me it was all of those.
I ended up using the same surrogate for all four of my children a boy (8), girl (6) and boy/girl twins (2 months). Our amazing surrogate really enjoys being pregnant and has carried babies for lots of families. For her, she says ‘it’s almost an addiction’. She also gets a tidy sum of money each time. So in no ways are we exploiting her and it was a long thought out process.
I’ve only met a handful of women who have chosen this option and it seems to be becoming more popular these days. And I can only imagine in the future there will be artificial wombs or something.
Would any of you want use a surrogate because you didn’t want to become pregnant for whatever reason?

Three parties involved...you've forgotten the baby.

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Fellow surrogate here firstly... not many surrogates would carry a child for the reasons stated i can assure you. I have carried for a couple who weren’t able to have children. I’d also love to know what the courts said when it came to the PO if your surrogate is getting a good amount of cash - payment is illegal in the UK aside from the surrogates expenses - it is illegal for us to make a profit. Regardless of who’s eggs are used, the baby is NOT the surrogates. We are surrogates to help families and to make friends along the way :)

@NineInchSnail and is your concern regarding that being an issue actually based on any kind of knowledge or experience of surrogate babies?

Its always twins

C8 my thoughts exactly

I myself think that every woman should have the right to chose whether to be a carrier for someone or not. Maybe some women do not mind such shallow reasoning behind surrogacy. Some certainly do. I would not mind sacrificing my career in order to introduce a baby into this world.

L

I don’t agree with surrogacy on any level for a number of reasons but this is not the thread to discuss those.

However, using another person to carry a baby so you don’t ruin your figure makes someone a shallow despicable individual who I wouldn’t want to know on a personal level.

And neither would I want to know someone who was in the business of renting out their body purely for the sake of money with no thought to the fact that this is actually about human beings here. And there must surely be women who would do it purely for the money, as every occupation is open to that kind of thing.

I also wonder how the children of these rent-a-womb arrangements will feel when they get older and learn that their parent was so in love with themselves that they couldn’t even be bothered to be pregnant with them. It seems that none of these children have reached adulthood yet, but I can’t imagine somehow that they’re being raised in loving, nurturing households as it appears that they are merely trophies.

No woman desperate to be a mother and capable of becoming one would hire another woman to do it for them, so I can only assume that the children are purely trophy children.

I hope that reads nicely in your article.l

How disappointing OP has not received any great quotes yet. Or at least not the ones he/she wanted.

I always thought legally the child is the child of the surrogate and there has to be an official adoption?

No I’m not a journalist. Our surrogate already has a very steady income

How? If she has had 4 babies for you plus “lots” of others how is she not permanently on mat leave? Even if she takes the legal minimum how many employers are going to allow 3-6 weeks off every year plus pregnancy related appointments, sickness etc.

I cannot see how anyone can have so many pregnancies and hold down a min wage job, let alone one which comes with a reasonable income.

Plus surrogacy is particularly risky as it has been shown that a foetus with no shared maternal DNA has a mich higher risk. As many as o/p’s and I cannot imagine dr’s allowing it.

I suspect o/p is in the US where money overrides ethics in medical matters.

I suspect o/p is in the US where money overrides ethics in medical matters.

I suspect OP is in Made-Up-Story-Land

@GoGoGadgetGin yes, the baby is legally that of the surrogate and her spouse until a parental order is granted, which happens within the first 6mths of birth.

I wouldn’t trust my child to a stranger and I wouldn’t offer to carry a child for someone who was perfectly capable of doing it themselves (I have offered to be a surrogate to someone I am close to in the event of infertility so I’m not averse to surrogacy all together). I just find it weird. If you can’t gesay over ruining your body or whatever to have children then you don’t really want them that much do you?

prosecco yes.
There's plenty of evidence that separation from the mother causes stress in newborns. That's why they are not routinely put in hospital nurseries anymore, but kept with their mothers on te maternity ward.

There is also evidence that separating newborns from their mother leads to poorer outcomes for those children. I'm using the word mother here to mean the woman who carried the pregnancy, because the study showed that it was separation from that person that caused the issue: children who were not genetically related to their parents, but were raised by the woman who gestated them, were less affected.

"A team of British researchers, led by Susan Golombok, a professor of family research and director of the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge, has found that children born with the help of a surrogate may have more adjustment problems – at least at age 7 – than those born to their mother via donated eggs and sperm"

Full article here www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.today.com/today/amp/flna6C10366818

@NineInchSnail interesting, but based on my own personal experience, and witnessing the bond between my niece (whom I carried and gave birth to), and my brother and his wife, I beg to differ.

prosecco
I'm glad your niece is doing well and that surrogacy has worked well for your family. Sadly, the evidence shows that for other children this is not always the case.

Your situation seems very different to op's in that you carried a child for your sister, presumably for altruistic reasons (apologies if I have made incorrect assumptions here) whereas op seems to have had a more impersonal and commercial arrangement. It would be interesting to know whether these different types of arrangement affect the long term outcomes for children.

I firmly believe that people should have access to all relevant information, even if some of it makes them feel uncomfortable, in order to make a truly informed choice.