Gay men and surrogacy - the new “be kind”?

[Tootingbec]

Just seen a LinkedIn post from a gay man who is writing a book about the surrogacy “journey” he and his husband went through. Cue gushing comments about how amazing this is…..

It has really upset me. The sheer fucking privilege of gay men to buy babies and then be lauded and praised for it like they were super heroes. And untouchable to criticism due to blinkered “be kind” beliefs about the poor gay men who just want a family like heterosexual men.

Where do people think these babies come from? Do you think people delude themselves that all these gay men just have kind, altruistic female friends who happily have a baby for them? As opposed to exploiting vulnerable and desperate women in India, Mexico and the like.

I feel so angry - women are just fucked over and abused time and time again by men and it is all dressed up as progressive when it is the exact opposite.

When I was a younger women I loved having gay men in my social circle. They seemed like “nicer” more lovely men than most straight men. Now I realise that underneath it all they just the same sexist, privileged tossers as many straight men are. They want a baby? No problem - buy one! They want to invade women’s spaces? No problem - just reinvent yourself as “the most vulnerable in society”!

It’s like the scales have fallen from my eyes.

Adoption and surrogacy are clearly different in that adopted children were given up by their birth parents because they weren't wanted or removed because their parents could not care for them adequately and both of these things don't happen right at birth most of the time. Children born from surrogacy are not desperately wanted and go to their lifelong parents at birth.

We can all find heartbreaking anecdotes for all types of families and social situations, they have no place in an evidence based debate. It is obviously sad that this little girl feels this way, but that doesn't mean that all surrogate children are screwed up. And yes, you still need evidence to claim this is an absolute truth, an anecdote will not suffice.

Commercial surrogacy as an “industry” is relatively young, and is growing rapidly. The resulting children will therefore be young, few of them adults yet, and possibly less likely to acknowledge the absence of a relationship with their biological mothers (genetic and gestational).

Friends of mine, who were adopted (from unmarried mothers) in the early 1970s, tended to seek out their biological family as they themselves had children, in their 30s and 40s. In which case, data on the anticipated trauma of the children of surrogates will not be available for another 10-20 years. The surrogacy agencies will not be actively researching it as the results are likely to compromise their business model.

I conceived our son through IVF and fleetingly considered surrogacy because of multiple miscarriages. Knowing what I now know, I wouldn’t consider surrogacy. Two friends have used donor eggs and have been, with their children, to donor conception network meet ups. They are completely open with them about this.

The 'standing and importance' of specific mothers isn't really some universal thing. It will largely depend on how the child views it as they grow up.

You think the birth mother to be the baby’s mother. Or one of them. You acknowledge that the baby is removed from its mother. So I’d like to understand a bit more.

What do you mean by the importance of “specific mothers” isn’t really a universal thing?

The only thing I can infer from that is you think the birth mother is of lesser importance in a surrogacy arrangement. Is this correct?

And if it’s not correct, and you think the birth mother is of equal importance, why is it ok to remove a baby from its important mother in surrogacy but not ok in non-surrogacy situations?

You’re asking questions that are inherently subjective. When you talk about a birth mother’s importance, ‘standing’ I don’t know what you mean. Are you talking about legal rights? Are you talking about importance to the child and their identity? If the latter that’s highly subjective and really individual to each child.

When you talk about ‘lesser importance’, lesser than who?

But on your last point - we never compel mothers to take parental responsibility if they do not wish to. That is the case in surrogacy, and it’s the case in any other situation where a mother wants to place a baby for adoption or to be raised by the father or someone else.

So your claim that we ‘remove’ a baby from its mother in surrogacy cases when we wouldn’t in any other case is wrong - in any scenario where a mother does not want to exercise parental responsibility, the child will be removed and placed with someone who can exercise parental responsibility.

I am asking YOU to clarify those things. Where do you view the importance of the birth mother? You acknowledge she’s the mother, acknowledge the baby is removed from its mother, but then you said:

The 'standing and importance' of specific mothers isn't really some universal thing. It will largely depend on how the child views it as they grow up.

I want to know if you value the importance of the mother, to gauge how you can therefore justify the separation of the baby from her.

Adoption and surrogacy are clearly different in that adopted children were given up by their birth parents because they weren't wanted or removed because their parents could not care for them adequately and both of these things don't happen right at birth most of the time

That may be the case now, but it hasn't always been like that. In the quite recent past, babies were routinely removed from their mothers for no better reason than that the mother wasn't married. So there's actually quite a lot of evidence about the effect on both mother and baby of removing a child from its mother shortly after birth.

Here, for example.

The Violation of Family Life: Adoption of Children of Unmarried Women 1949–1976

How can I clarify if you keep refusing to say what you mean by importance?

Do you mean for legal purposes? Social purposes? Identity purposes?

Your question on importance needs to be more specific.

But your last question on how we can justify removing a baby from its birth mother is simple - whenever a mother wants to relinquish her parental rights and responsibilities we respect that decision and we don’t compel her to parent a child she does not want to.

I'm still waiting for the research that proves these children are emotionally damaged by surrogacy and show separation trauma and attachment trauma for the rest of their lives.

I'm still waiting for the research that proves that drunk drivers cause a car accident every time they drink and drive. Oh that research doesn't exist? Well then let's just allow drink driving.

What happens if the mother changes her mind after giving birth and decides she wants to keep the baby? Is she still compelled to give the baby to the purchasers?

Old style adoption and surrogacy aren't different, as I said up thread. Those children were "desperately wanted and go to their lifelong parents at birth". And look at their stories, thousands of them.

No one said it's an "absolute truth " that "all surrogate children are screwed up", that's a straw man. But there's plenty of evidence from children who were removed from their birth mothers and given to people who desperately wanted them, in old style adoption, that those children struggled with attachment and identity. That's why we don't do it like that anymore. But what is acknowledged as bad practice in adoption is apparently fine in surrogacy.

Legally it depends on the jurisdiction. But my view is that parental rights should only be capable of being ceded after birth. If the birth mother changes her mind then my preference would be that she can do that and the situation should be treated the same as any other custody dispute between parents.

In an ideal world we would have proper international legal regulation around surrogacy so that there is a common framework for countries to operate under which these issues could be treated in a consistent manner way. The unrealistic ‘ban it’ crowd would never accept proper regulation these days.

What a weird take. There is of course reams of evidence of the impact of alcohol on driving safety. If that evidence didn’t exist and there was no indication that driving after drinking was no more dangerous than driving after, say, coffee then of course we should not criminalise drunk driving.

But that evidence does exist, so…

Here's the evidence of one woman who was taken from her mother shortly after birth. I'm sure there's a lot more out there, since it was quite a common practice in the middle of the 20th century.

https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/9955/html/

Why create children with the intent to inflict trauma on them shortly after birth, which may last their entire lives?

There are some clear differences though - most specifically the child will have a genetic connection to one of their parents. The sense of not knowing where someone comes from is lessened if someone does have a parent they are biologically related to one of their parents.

But in general I agree that children should know about and learn about their background and parentage. I actually disagree about the depictions of gay couples here - in my experience they are far more likely to and comfortable with discussing their child’s mother precisely because the pretence of the child being the biological child of them both does not exist and does not need to be upheld. Straight couples often have a desire to present the appearance of being a ‘normal’ family. Gay parents don’t have that option so it is baked in that part of parenting as a gay parent is that you need to engage with your child about how you came to be their parent. It’s not really optional.

@TheodoreisntBeth i think about that analogy a lot.

Ok, important for the welfare of the baby. You say the person who gives birth to the baby is its mother. You acknowledge that the baby is removed from its mother. Where do you place that woman in terms of importance, in relation to the other people you call the baby’s mother, for the welfare of the baby?

The current consultation wants to make it that the mother has no PR from the birth and if she changes her mind she has go to court and apply for a parental order within 6 weeks. You can give your opinions here:

https://surrogacyconcern.uk/take-action-email-the-parliamentary-office-for-science-and-technology-post-and-contribute-to-their-consultation-on-surrogacy-reform-by-5th-october-2025/

Edited to add the law commission guidance which includes this recommendation: "We recommend reform to parental orders, include allowing the court to make a parental order where the surrogate does not consent"

https://lawcom.gov.uk/project/surrogacy/

And yet the twenty year long research on donor conceived and surrogacy born children I linked up thread, which is not an imagined comparison between surrogacy and adoption, it is an actual study performed on actual surrogate children did not find this to be the case. Their psychological wellbeing was not differentiable from naturally conceived/traditionally born people.

The sample size was 22 surrogate families. That's not far off what you were blithely dismissing as anecdote up thread.

There are several decades worth of research on thousands of children removed from their birth mothers and placed with a loving family at or soon after birth, in old style adoption, and the effect that had on those children.

That barely happens though, at least not in the UK. Where women have the resources to parent and there is no stigma to being a single parent, they keep their babies - the number of children voluntarily relinquished here is tiny and usually from women from cultures where it is not acceptable to have a child outside marriage.

So surrogacy is different. And it is partly the lack of newborn babies to adopt here that drives people to use surrogacy.

This is promoted as the only long term study into the well being of surrogate children but it has a tiny sample sizes and focuses on how the children get on with the parents, not on how they are doing emotionally. It also hasn't reached adulthood yet. It is hardly convincing. And this is the best they have?!!

these things don't happen right at birth most of the time

This research says that being adopted at birth doesn’t mean better outcomes for the kids.

The emotional state of the parent is not necessarily relevant to the child’s feeling of rejection or separation. There is no substantial difference between surrogacy and adoption from the view of the child.

From the study below:
Researchers reported that adopted individuals are overrepresented in mental health settings and manifest higher levels of adjustment problems compared to their non-adopted peers (Askeland, et al., 2017; Holmgren, et al., 2020; Juffer & van IJzendoorn, 2005). In the past, most researchers attributed greater developmental and mental health risks for adopted individuals primarily to the vulnerabilities and adversities they experienced prior to adoption (e.g., genetics, prenatal complications, neglect, abuse, multiple foster care placements, orphanage life). More recently, the role of post-adoption family-based experiences and other contextual factors, as well as reports on the lived experiences of being adopted by adolescents and adults, have added to our understanding of the connection between adoption and psychological adjustment, including, for some, the experience of adoption as an emotional trauma.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8926933/

A quick look at that shows a number of differences.

The woman giving evidence talks a lot about lack of genetic connection to her parents - not looking, acting etc like her family. But of course that genetic link does exist in cases of surrogacy.

Second, the woman's experience was brought about by forced adoption. Heinous in its own right, but also likely to have meant both a traumatic and stressful pregnancy, and a traumatic separation at birth. Both of which will have interfered with the woman's development in utero and immediately after birth.

Third, as a newborn the woman obviously did not experience immediate warm caregiving from a permanent caregiver. She spent ten days with her birth mother who knew she would be given up, was placed on the opposite side of the room etc. Surrogacy does not entail depriving a child of bonding moments in the minutes and hours and days after birth.

There are just so many differences here.

But yes, there are some issues that are still relevant. The approach to life story work, openness about adoption and circumstances etc has changed completely. I agree that children conceived through surrogacy should also have a supportive environment to explore their origins, their background and their identity.

But it is quite a leap to go from that position to thinking surrogacy should be banned because of its impact on the welfare of children.

What element of their welfare? Their physical safety? Their health? Emotional wellbeing? Progress into emotionally stable adulthood?

In short, I think the parents who matter most to any child will first and foremost be the parents who are raising them day in, day out. They are the ones who build a sense of self-esteem, of identity, of independence as a child grows. They are the ones who shape values. They are the ones a child looks to to know they are secure and can therefore explore the world.

Biological parents - including a gestational mother, but also an egg donor - are also of course important to a child's story and therefore their welfare. Openness about their story, they origin and their identity is pretty important as part of that.

There are some things that a biological mother can do that are beneficial for a baby's health, like early breastfeeding. But that is obviously not a compulsory part of motherhood and lack of that early breastfeeding is not some safeguarding fail.