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

@ovahere it was the "not many children available for adoption" that got me. available. Ugh.

I assume you work for a LA?

I am a private practitioner but work with LAs, but yes, it may well be a different profile of children from some private agencies, but private agencies deal with children who have been in care too.

I cannot imagine that many agencies have a majority of 'relinquishments' (although I don't have that much experience of private agencies). I guess it also depends on what you mean by relinquish. Adoption requires the consent of the birth parents (or mother if dad has no PR). Consent can be dispensed with where parents will not give it freely. However, some parents will formally consent. Not because they want to give up their child, but because they have been advised that unless they do it, the court will dispense with consent because there is no hope of them being able to look after their child. You can't call all these 'relinquishments' because the reason the care order was made in the first place was that the child was suffering or at risk of suffering significant harm attributable to the care given to him/her.

@Wherismymind

Thanks for your concern. I don't know what did it. Maybe it was being raped by a woman when I was 18. Maybe it was the daily sexual harassment from my 20 stone female boss in my first job out of university. Maybe it was my emotionally abusive mother. Maybe it was the female friend conning me out of £25k last year. Maybe it was the female friend I helped get a promotion at work who then tried to get me fired so she could have my job. Maybe it's the general level of entitled, aggressive bitchiness that now passes for feminism in the UK. I just don't know what has made me less and less sympathetic towards women as I get older.

To be honest there are more UNCRC articles that could apply but I think that’s more than enough.

UnderHerEye

Yes Gariguette will carry the same hatred for his future daughter in laws and his granddaughters. At first he will hide this with a fake love and he will be the jolly clown grandpa for a short time, it will be followed by spiteful jokes and general undermining soon, he will cause confusion and pain because he has two faces that interchange. Eventually the effort will become too much and the bile and hatred will spill out for all to see and expose his putrid thoughts and hatred. It will cause shock and hurt from all quarters including from his sons, and they will, one by one close him down.

Gariguette would do well to get some counselling and support now.

The biological process of growing babies is a bit more than 'just' the womb. Women use their entire bodies. I can't see how an artificial womb could ever replicate such a complex process and it would be hugely unethical and frankly a crime against humanity to ever experiment on babies in order to try.

I have a really hard time with this. I think every child deserves a mother. I think homosexual couples can make great parents.

I just don't know what has made me less and less sympathetic towards women as I get older.

But buying a womans womb and newborn child is totally ok though despite your hatred of women

I am sure science will try to replicate making babies in labs, in truth, I doubt it will ever be perfected.

The reality is that women make 'perfect' babies already completely naturally and willingly. I enjoyed my pregnancy and even childbirth. I can not see a moment in time when it will be replaced (in some cases it would be wonderful for those trying to conceive and are unable to) so it has positives. Ultimately creating babies is an incredibly privilege and the bonding, the flow of DNA the entire and complete process is unlikely to be replicated in even our children's lifetimes.

@peakpants lots of people who work here are also adopted but obviously not currently having serious problems, and I do (through my research) have contact with those who aren't seeking help, but I do get your point that I have a biased perspective.
I also know a lot of adoptees socially, and it being a negative experience is certainly unanimous.

Most have researched history themselves, an amazing quantity don't want to offend their adoptive parents by openly looking and asking questions, which is very sad.
But also something that needs to be considered when conducting studies - adoptees are very people pleasing and can be more prone to give the answer they think people want to hear than the average person. Possibly stemming from trying to fit into an unfamiliar home environment.
A lot of them were given sanitised versions of the truth, yes. Most have had at least some degree of honesty.

I was close friends with someone who wasn't told at all until he came home drunk one night as a teenager and it came out in anger - I can't imagine how that would feel.

Anyway, my husband has just presented me with my neglected roast, cooked to perfection, and has put on mean girls to try and pry me away from mumsnet so off I must go!

lifeisabeach

Yes, sadly i think you are probably right

"Honestly, having read these posts as a gay dad to two children born through surrogacy, all I can think is Thank Fucking God that my two sons will never be burdened by having an emotionally-abusive, self-pitying, self-centred, uninformed, unintelligent, moralising "mother" who thinks she has every right to ruin their lives just because she has a uterus."

Crikey, that has to be one of the most openly and blatantly misogynistic posts I have ever seen on MN.

Some men really, really, really hate women, and don't even try to cover it up.

FWIW, I too am against commercial surrogacy - whether the prospective adoptive parents renting a woman's womb are a straight couple or a gay couple. Either way it is wrong to treat women's bodies as commodities to be bought. And wrong not to even acknowledge the woman who carried the child.

As various posters said upthread, how hard would it be to say "we'd like to thank the wonderful woman who carried and birthed our child for us"? It's the way the announcements have made her utterly invisible, as one PP put it, as though the stork brought the child.

Gariguette Thank you for your honesty. Lets try to be balanced, yes those things sound not great, but surely you have been screwed over to the same degree by men too?

I can think of many men and women that have hurt me, that is a reflection of them as people not as a gender.

You can not hate half the population because a few woman have behaved badly (and probably equally the same amount of men but for some reason you are not counting them?)

My ex dp nearly killed me, as in I probably should not be here kind of injuries, I certainly don't hate all men quite the reverse. If I can recover from my injuries and understand that this was exceptional why can't you?

You do understand how much you stand to lose feeling the way you do? It is not healthy or normal.

I think every child deserves a mother. I think homosexual couples can make great parents

The process of mothering is essentially nurture though. Every child deserves to be loved and nurtured and supported. Yes, same sex couples can make great parents and of course they can provide a loving environment which is nurturing and supportive. We wouldn't dare imply that a widowed dad wouldn't be able to raise his kids, would we?

I dunno, I just think that throughout history we have been told that women are natural nurturers, only women can truly care, only a mother's love is sufficient for a child. Over time, this rhetoric hasn't been great for women as it has confined us to the home and the private sphere, it has made men shirk their caring responsibilities, and it has led to oppression in the workplace and lower wages for women. I am also deeply conscious of the way that the heterosexual family has been socially constructed to keep women oppressed and to give men power. That's why I get a little antsy when I see things that sound like biological essentialism.

People can choose what to do with their bodies. If they want to use them for surrogacy that’s up to them.

As various posters said upthread, how hard would it be to say "we'd like to thank the wonderful woman who carried and birthed our child for us"

A bit confused as to why people seem to think a public show of gratitude makes a difference. Surely you are against surrogacy even if they publicly thanked her?

These articles are not about surrogacy, but about forced adoptions (and not in the UK, but we are airstrip one now anyway) Some are making a lot of money out of our wombs.

Those migrant children in the US being 'handled' by anti choice charities.
They have some very senior republican politicians involved.

Media outlets have largely overlooked the troubling record of Bethany, a well-connected powerhouse of the anti-choice movement, even as reporters have interviewed the agency’s leaders on the plight of migrant kids

Bethany Christian Services Is Fostering Migrant Kids. It Also Has a History of Coercive Adoptions.

Bethany has a massive reach, with an annual revenue of more than $98 million, millions of which comes from government-funded programs, tax filings show

Among the lawmakers who have directed public funding to Bethany is Vice President Mike Pence. As governor of Indiana, Pence shifted funds intended for low-income families in the state to a crisis pregnancy center umbrella organization, Real Alternatives, that subcontracted with Bethany Christian Services, Rewire.News reporter Jenn Stanley reported

The agency has also benefited from the family of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. The Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation donated $25,000 to Bethany in 2015 and 2016, while the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation outlined $2.5 million in planned and executed donations to Bethany in its 2016 filing alone

rewire.news/article/2018/06/27/christian-group-fostering-migrant-kids-history-coercive-adoptions/

Thanks for the thread OP. I agree surrogacy is selling babies. It demotes women and mothers to 'vessels' as that pence person has chosen to refer to us 52%.

Western sperm counts have dropped by 50% in last 40 years may be the reason for their frantic attempts to control our fertility.
www.scientificamerican.com/article/sperm-count-dropping-in-western-world/

Zsa
So buying babies is ok then?
You have no issues with why a woman would rent out her body and sell her newborn baby?

Garriguette can’t have been ‘raped by a woman’ because in English law rape involved penetration by a penis.

@gariguette

I’m very sorry you suffered harassment, and for the other experiences you mention. Could I though ask the relevance of your harasser being 20 stone?

Peak, I'm personally very much against surrogacy and nothing would make it right in my eyes. But I'm surprised that even posters who think it's okay don't think there's something odd about not even acknowledging the role the surrogate played - as if they're quite happy to believe the PR fairytale that the baby dropped out of the clouds from the stork's beak.

People can choose what to do with their bodies. If they want to use them for surrogacy that’s up to them.

Yes they do. But throw in a hundred thousand dollars and they might make a different decision.

The money can't be ignored in the decision making process.

It affects how free and fair that choice is.

This is very triggering for me "Gariguette* as I have actually been raped, by a man.

Fermats I guess they did say they thanked everyone who made it possible, which would include the surrogate. I don't think they have spoken at length about it. It may be that they are bound by a confidentiality agreement- I mean, I doubt the surrogate would want to be hunted down and I believe for instance that for a period of time, Kim Kardashian's surrogate had her face blurred by the media when she was photographed.

Maybe they didn't word it well enough, but that doesn't necessarily make them bad people. The surrogate for instance is unlikely to want them to refer to her as the child's mother etc. Most surrogates in high profile cases have done it before, often a number of times, and do not view the babies as their own children.