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

Excellent post on last page, RedToothBrush.

Years ago you could tip up at an orphanage, look at what was available, and choose a child or not depending on whether you saw anything you liked. A neighbour of dm in the 1950s used to report back to dm every week on whether the sort of baby they wanted had "come in yet" at an orphanage - this was in UK.

Every country in the world has moved on from this (even China) yet I don't think it's a million miles away from deciding to have a child and selecting an egg and womb according to your preferences.

Great post Red

I find the use of both partners sperm quite disturbing. Like it's some sort of game, whose swimmer will get the gold. No care for the fact the child needs to know it biological parent. It also reminds me of how cats reproduce.

I always find the idea of using both partners’ sperm abhorrent. The whole thing - the complete commoditisation of human reproduction - is abhorrent.

Their child will be told "it doesn't matter" who is their biological father and it won't, until it does. Are they then planning to find out or cut their child out of their life?

Interestingly for those who say that as adopted individuals or those estranged from their biological fathers, mother matters most. I'm sure biological mother matters HUGELY to all children and you only really find that out if the relationship breaks down or the children are separated from the mother. However, my two children are adopted and we have a lot of information about the maternal side for both up to the point of communicating with members of the maternal side.

My DS is 6 and really wants to know about his "other daddy". For him it may be a same-sex parent thing, but maybe not, maybe just because he knows quite a bit already about birth mum.

My DD is 4 and her ethnicity reflects her birth father and is unusual for the UK. While she hasn't asked as many questions yet, I can see that also being something she feels the need to know about in the future.

Sadly in both cases though birth mum has asked for further communication, birth dad showed no interest, one the SWs lost contact with and had no further way to locate, and one they have contact details for but he does not respond.

So there's us desperately wishing we could find some way for our DCs to have contact with birth parents and then other "non-traditional" parents wanting their children "all to themselves" and wanting to conceal their children's biological origins. Which never, ever ends well. As many late discovery adoptees and children of donor gametes have shown.

It will probably become apparent which of the two sperm providers is the parent. Children do tend to look a bit like their parents.

You sound like a great parent drspouse. I wish things had been more openly spoke about when I was a child.

I don't want to give too many details, but my grandad was sold as a child in an adoption. He wasn't told the truth until he was 35, by which time his birth mother had died and he had no way of finding out who his birth dad was.
After years of feeling that he didn't belong, he found out why, yet was unable to get to any truth around that.
The impact this has had on his life is impossible to understate. He is incredibly damaged by the idea he was bought by a poor woman so desperate she had no choice, and has suffered with mental health issues for all his life.
I know it's not exactly the same as the situation being talked about, but a bought child is still just that, however it happened.

I always find the idea of using both partners’ sperm abhorrent. The whole thing - the complete commoditisation of human reproduction - is abhorrent

Agreed. It’s disgusting. It also shows how stupid these two are, because anyone who has actually had a baby knows you can see the resemblance to the father almost immediately. All my children closely resembled their father at birth, then gradually changed to look more of a mixture of us. It’s an evolutionary thing, babies look like their fathers so that the father accepts them as his own.

Pretty sure Tom and Lance’s families will know immediately who’s the daddy.

I feel sorry for the grandparents, having to play along with it all. My parents and inlaws talked endlessly about who each baby looked like in the family, it was the first topic of conversation when they came to visit. What will visitors to his baby be allowed to say? Can’t say he looks like his mother because of course he doesn’t have one, was brought in by unicorns direct from the lab. Can’t say he looks like his father because we’re all pretending we don’t know who his father is. Can’t ask about the birth because we have to pretend the baby hasn’t just been removed from its mother and sole source of food, comfort and, dare I say, life?

I have seen on other threads that people think the comments on this one are homophobic. I’d like to state that I feel it is wrong no matter your sex, sexuality or marital status. And if that means you don’t get to have children, so be it.

redtoothbrush excellent post, thank you for laying it all out so clearly. You’re spot on.

I always find the idea of using both partners’ sperm abhorrent.

I'm not sure I'd use the work abhorrent tbh.

I'm more inclined simply to ask why they feel the need to do this as not making the decision yourself and 'leaving it to nature' opens up some pretty big unresolved issues in its own right.

Is the one who is not the father is less legitimate somehow?
Is the biological father is somehow more important?
Is there some deep seated insecurity in there?
Is it because they will feel it will lead to jealously in the relationship or lack of closeness with their child if they know?

All issues you should really resolve BEFORE having a baby and it becoming bloody obvious who the father is and perhaps leading to a crushing sense of 'I wish it were different' (potentionally from both parents, I might add).

It reveals more than you think about the state of their relationship and how they value the role of biology in a family structure.

Its all part of the denail of reality and an abdication of responsibility, with the child's needs being second to their own need for affirmation as a parent.

I view it as extremely naive and immature rather than abhorent tbh.

It doesn't solve anything, for anyone. It just leaves baggage to be dealt with at some point in the future.

Becoming a parent is, biologically speaking, a by-product of sex (and hopefully passion and love). The whole business of planned parenthood, with medical assistance with timing/quantity, is most unnatural.

FWIW I think the human race needs to seriously reappraise its relationship with biology.

Agreed. I can't see the point of it as of course it is apparent who the father is later on. Why not just take it in turns?!

Mind you, never mind Tom Daley, I find the rent-a-womb thing... not quite right. There was that weird business with Caprice (model) who had one surrogate going at the same time as she herself was expecting, so in effect had twins. And then there are the celebrities who pretend that they are pregnant or suddenly produce a baby that is of course all their own (Nicole Kidman).

I know it's not fashionable to say that children are not a "right", but they aren't. It may be that unsuitable parents can pop them out like peas, whereas some lovely people (eg same-sex couples) are denied a family. But it still doesn't make mix and match baby making ethical. Oh, sorry, ethical is soooo last year according to a previous poster.

Caprice also told the children they literally were twins and shared a birthday, iirc. WTAF.

Suspect a lot of the people thinking this thread is homophobic are entirely unaware of any feminist debates around surrogacy, so this is the first they’re hearing of it. Many also seem unaware that commercial surrogacy even exists.

And you can bet your life they will both spend day and night silently wondering which of them is the father, until it becomes so obvious they’ll have to voice it to each other.

So silly.

I'm a birth mother and an adoptive mother. I would give anything for our adopted child to have been able to grow up with her birth parents, particularly her birth mother - I'm in doubt that this would have been the best thing for her, as it is for all children.

Adoption exists because we, as a society, recognises that in extreme circumstances the lesser of two evils is for a child to be brought up by people who are not the biological parents. Every child is entitled to the best possible childhood

Surrogacy exists because people have decided that they should be entitled to become parents

I'm in no doubt, that should be....

(When can we get an edit function??)

I don’t know if I can articulate this properly but I find the “two sperm/do not know who the daddy is” delusion is born of an insecure relationship and a deep mistrust that each other as partners, could not love a child that was not biological theirs. Which in other words is to state that you know your parents love to be deeply conditional.

Many, many people love children who are not biologically theirs, no less fiercely than if they were. The only reason to avoid biological reality (which will assert itself despite waving your hands around and declaring “nothing to see here”) is if you think your partner needs that hook in order for them to emotionally invest in that relationship.

Long before men could do this, gay couples did have babies with lesbians. And some gay couples fostered kids. There are other ways of bringing up children without exploiting women and ignoring the needs of kids.

Adoption of a child who would otherwise not have a family is an entirely different proposition to surrogacy.

I don't see the issue. From what I gathered, she was very close to them throughout the pregnancy but didn't want her name in the press.

We don't know who she was; if she was rich, poor, a friend, a relative... personally I think it's wonderful that they have been able to have a baby, and wonderful that she's been able to give them that.

I think we are in danger of becoming a society where you have a 'right' to a child - if you can afford one. If you can't afford one, then its just hard luck or you don't deserve one. The undeserving poor who don't have the same rights. The double standard being simply cognitive dissonance.

By the same token, some of the political ideology of today leans towards reintroducing forced sterlisation of those deemed 'unsuitable' - 'unsuitable' being a term that is open to political interpretation of the day.

The two are not unconnected concepts.

It does not sit at all well with the liberal declaration:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

I very much agree that comparisons between adoptions and surrogacy are deliberately inaccurate conflation, in order to win hearts and minds over the ethics of commerical surrogacy.

One is about centring the needs of the child and the other centres the desires and entitlement of the consumer.

"It reveals more than you think about the state of their relationship and how they value the role of biology in a family structure."

Although seemingly a fairly simple decision for a gay male couple to make (BTW, I know of some lesbian mums who have used mixed sperm from donors), I think it could be viewed as another attempt to hide actual biology (i.e. the 'surrogate' who is actually 'just' the mother in the old-fashioned biological sense), and also 'pretend' that they are biologically both parents (until it becomes obvious which is and which isn't). The fact of the matter, is that one will be and one won't be. They can't both be, and if they can't deal with that (and the unspoken actual mother who as well as genetics did all the hard work of actually bearing and birthing), then a coupe should not be having kids. Lesbian couple don't have this issue, although lesbian couple I have known have had to deal with things like what do you do if one who is trying to conceive finds they can't, and their partner decides that although they want to be a parent, they are not so sure about the bearing and birthing bit.

If you view children as commodities, then yes you will think if you can afford it you have a right to have a child.