The mother of Tom Daley's child

[Pratchet]

Congratulations on a healthy baby! Hope the birth went safely and that you are recovering well.

I just hate surrogacy in case you can't tell

Saying a child is a gift doesn’t mean a commodity. My daughters name means “gift from god” in another language. It just means I appreciate her and love her and she is a wonderful addition to my life and to the world.

All kinds of parents are bad parents. Absolutely loads of children have terrible parents who are awful and f”ck them up. People act as surrogates for many reasons. If it’s their free choice it’s entirely up to them. Unconventional families are not any less happy necessarily than conventional ones. A lot of the comments on here seem like intolerance.

peak
It is extremely rare for people to give a child up for adoption these days

Which is neither here nor there.

The fact remains that even when a child is given up for adoption at birth, and there is no neglect, abuse or substance abuse, there is often a massive trauma caused simply by the separation from the birth mother.

And this happens regardless of who is raising the child.

@peakpants it's not unusual at all, I know plenty who were relinquished willingly, there is still a sizeable pro-life and/or devoutly religious minority in this country.

I think if anything I would feel more strongly if I'd been specifically created to suffer rather than it being an unintended consequence.

...continued
And therefore the same must be true in cases of surrogacy, only no-one wants to talk about that.

Also all these posts about how awful the birth mother feels- you have no idea how she feels. It’s just patronizing rubbish.

Children's rights do not override women's rights or men's rights.

Children Act 1989 says they do.

Lots of people are brought up by one biological parent only (as Tom Daley’s baby will be). with no trauma whatsoever. There is a lot of unnecessary hysteria here.

Zsazsa do you support commercial surrogacy then?

Surrogacy sits very, dry uncomfortably with me. As does deliberately doing everything possible to obfuscate a child’s biological origin and identity. I cannot imagine what it must be like to find out you’re the egg of one woman, fertilised by indeterminate sperm and then implanted into the womb of another woman. As I believe was the case with the sons of Elton John and David Furnish.

gariguette isn’t there some sort of Fathers 4 Justice forum you could join to slag off women with other likeminded folk? Or is it more of a power trip to sneer at women on Mumsnet?

I feel sorry for Gariguette he is clearly very damaged and almost certainly deserves our sympathy. If he chooses to damage his children in the same way that will be the real tragedy.

Just as porn has been corporatized into a billion dollar industry, and brothels are on their way to full corporatization complete with a slave trade, I expect surrogacy to proceed along those lines. It’s slready happening in the developing world, and the term of use is “surrogacy farms.”

Preach.

almost certainly deserves our sympathy

I failed female socialisation so er... NO.

it's not unusual at all, I know plenty who were relinquished willingly, there is still a sizeable pro-life and/or devoutly religious minority in this country.

In the UK? Or are you in Ireland? If you are in the UK, it is very unusual indeed for a woman to carry a baby to full term and give it up for adoption because it doesn't fit with her career plans or similar. In Ireland, I can well imagine that it is different. There are of course instances where women give babies up for adoption rather than the baby being removed, but it tends to be for much more complex reasons than interfering with career plans.

Thank you besmirchingmotherhood.

I do struggle as to why the issues aren't more obvious to people, and I envy those with little enough first hand experience to simply negate the trauma involved.

I've become far too invested in this thread - I've been so absorbed that I neglected to cook the child-free Sunday roast we'd been looking forward to all week with the kids at scout camp

@peakpants I'm in the uk.
Both me and my brother were relinquished.
I work voluntarily for a post adoption support charity. I see you work in child protection...
Slightly puzzled how our experiences of this don't match up!!
The bulk of people I talk to are aged 18-30, does that go anyway towards explaining the difference?

I assume you work for a LA?
We were both adopted through private agencies, as were around 40% of the adoptees I've spoken to.
I think private agencies are majority voluntary relinquishment, correct me if I'm wrong.

@broadbeans - relinquished for adoption is quite uncommon in the uk - less than 2%. When a mum can't care for a child she will usually have other family members look after it - grandparents and so on. This is why there aren't many babies available for adoption.

I don't have any objections to surrogacy as long as the egg provider and surrogate/tummy mummy are well treated. It's only going to become more popular as the price drops and with so many people failing IVF and not wanting to adopt.

Companies are working on artificial womb technology which I'm sure will be popular once perfected - it'll bring down the price of surrogacy and I suspect plenty of mothers will use it to avoid the stress of pregnancy - no need to give up drinking for 9 months or struggle with traipsing into work with a big bump.

Possessing a functioning uterus and overies does not give you the right to decide how other people have families

Classic example of narcissistic rage. It’s interesting because if it wasn’t for us uterus bearers then you wouldn’t have your children so why are you are so ungrateful and rude about women exactly?

I wonder what your sons would think about your attitudes towards women, do you hold the woman who gave your children life and brought them into this world with such disdain? Will you hold the same vile attitudes about future daughter in laws and granddaughters?

Well, my experience involves much younger children and during the time of the legal proceedings to obtain a care order and then adoption, and I guess also that if you work for a charity providing adoption support for adults, you are likely to mainly meet people who have been negatively affected by adoption rather than those who have experienced it in a positive way.

The sorts of reports I sometimes have to read would leave people in no doubt that removal and adoption is absolutely the right thing in many circumstances. They are truly the stuff of nightmares.

Another thing- do the adopted people you speak to always get told the 'reason' for the adoption? I mean, the adoptive parents do obviously- they get to see the reports and stuff, but who then communicates this to the child? If I was an adoptive parent, I think I would think long and hard about how to frame that to avoid upsetting my child. It's certainly not appropriate to go into detail about abuse and things. Or is this information they have been told from tracking down their birth families?

LangCleg I was being sarcastic....

LangCleg I have more sympathy for the horse fly bite on my left butt cheek than I have for the likes of gariguette

I don't have any objections to surrogacy as long as the egg provider and surrogate/tummy mummy are well treated. It's only going to become more popular as the price drops and with so many people failing IVF and not wanting to adopt.

Companies are working on artificial womb technology which I'm sure will be popular once perfected - it'll bring down the price of surrogacy and I suspect plenty of mothers will use it to avoid the stress of pregnancy - no need to give up drinking for 9 months or struggle with traipsing into work with a big bump.

You say all this like it's a good thing. Conveyer belt babies