Gay surrogacy

[Queenieoh]

My male gay best friend and his husband are using an American surrogate to have a baby. I am anti-surrogacy and finding it so hard to be supportive about it. I want them both to be happy but I really don't think this is the right thing to do. I know my opinion won't change their mind and most of our friends think surrogacy is fine. I guess I am not looking for advice, just some solidarity in the fact that buying a baby (for a huge sum of money) is wrong! They're even choosing the sex which is just so creepy IMO. Also, they're both very busy professionals so will undoubtedly have a nanny to raise the child... Why do people think they're entitled to have children?!

Agreed my primary objection is centred around the child itself and the need for a mother.
The birth mother and or egg donor are also problematic in separate ways but the impact on the child is the core problem.

also at the risk of sounding like some 1960s american ultra conservative policiticans wife. I do think children need a mother. If I think about the best dads I know... I honestly wouldn't fancy leaving any combination / pair of them to raise my own children.

Seeing first hand how much little children need...I just dont agree with 2 men buying a baby.

I couldnt be friends with them.

Buying a human or any kind of trafficking is akin to prostitution.

Im extremely uncomfortable with surrogacy, and the industry is fucking rife with dodgy practices.

I hate this idea. It’s just another way of exploiting (poor) women.

So many people don’t question the ethics of surrogacy. I’d struggle to stay friends with them.

I have always felt uncomfortable about surrogacy but Mumsnet has, in the last year, helped me to put my finger on why I object to it. It’s wrong and I don’t think I could remain close friends with someone who purposefully brings a child into this world to live a life without a mother and who exploits women in this manner. It is human trafficking and I will only accept that it is something women willingly do when wealth, middle class women start doing it as a job too.

Leaving aside the surrogacy, do you think that couples who both work and have a nanny don't raise their own child?

How can you be allowed to pay someone to grow and birth a child and then give it away? That doesn’t sound humane. What if the child has difficulties, will the parent still take it? What if the surrogate has complications ?

Yes, but lots of children around the world are not created in order to be adopted. Surrogacy is a form of adoption but it doesn't come with the same safeguards and trauma training as regular adoption. Those who take part in surrogacy do not view it that way.

So while a child who has been adopted through the usual channels with be offered plenty of support when transitioning into childcare, the same cannot be guaranteed for children adopted through surrogacy.

So, as I explained, the child will be taken from their birth mother, adopted by a parent, and then spend the majority of their waking hours with another person. This person, if chosen very wisely, could be an almost permanent fixture in the child's life but that's no guarantee and there could also be a revolving door of carers coming and going. Either way, it's a recipe for attachment problems.

Firstly, most children aren’t and doesn’t make it right anyway. And those children usually have a mother who they would have become familiar with the sound of before birth and who they spend one to one time with over maternity leave. It’s unusual in UK for newborns to be in nursery. At my son’s nursery most children were at least about a year before starting nursery.

This, and the fact that they’ll have discarded fertilised embryos for not being the sex they want? They don’t sound like the type of
people who would care for any child with any level of additional needs or health issues. @Queenieoh whats their reasons for the sex selection?

I didn’t know she’s adopted. I like them all the more now.

Those children have a mother who they will still be spending considerable time with. This child does not. By design.

Isn’t it obvious?

Doesn’t make it problem free

I just feel any child created should have access to a female body - to lie against - feed from if wanted - this feels so wrong

No issue at all. 2 working parents over 21 years bring in more money than one, giving young adults more opportunities when they're starting out in their careers.

I've never been able to tell the difference between children who's mother's were at home and those where they have not.

This child’s mother is going to be nowhere

not comparable

you've skipped the whole bit where the child is raised and maternal preoccupation and bonding

I think our society massively underestimates how damaging the swift removal of a newborn from its birth mother can be. That’s my main concern about surrogacy.

I don’t agree with same sex couples raising a child of the opposite sex. Children are evolved to naturally start to orient more and more to the same sex parent from age 7. It’s how they learn to ‘be’ that sex.

My boys’ dad is not who I would choose for them, if I had my time again. But as they got older I could clearly see that they started to seek out his company, even though I remained their primary emotional attachment and support. Boys need dads. Girls need Moms.

Social theories and good intentions around equalities can’t undo millions of years of evolution.

Those children had mothers they started bonding with in uteri and who remained permanent lo loving presences in their life, spending considerable time with their children.

How is that the same as no mother and a nanny who is a part time paid presence who can leave at any time and never be seen again?

I don’t agree with it at all

Are there any studies on it? Or anecdotal evidence of issues as the child grows?

Nanny or not, this child in this example will have no mother to bond with which is very sad.

Broadly I just don't think it's fair to belittle mothers who work to give their children the best opportunities.

Hate to derail the OP

I am and am quite happy to be friends with people who have different interests, support different political parties and are different religion to me (that ones not hard since I don't subscribe to it). But this would be a bridge too far and I wouldn't be able to pretend to be happy that friends of mine had bought a person.