The Times article on surrogacy and concerns about single fathers

[Sixorhalfdozen]

Hi all, I haven’t seen a post yet about the article in today’s Times on surrogacy with the title, ‘What it is like to be a single dad (with a child via surrogacy)’. It is an entirely uncritical puff piece on single men who purchase babies and there is no attempt in the article to highlight the risks and harms caused by this barbaric practice. I have written to complain and encourage others to do the same.

This line in the article was particularly disturbing, ‘To avoid the risk of bonding between surrogate and baby, Simon followed the agency’s advice to select a separate egg donor…’. There is something clearly wrong where the possibility of a mother and baby bonding is described as a risk.

I read it and was horrified. It doesn't cover key issues around what these men have personally done or the wider implications of the surrogacy industry. I am a Times subscriber and wanted to comment online but they had turned off comments - i wonder why!!

170 single men have applied for surrogacy parental orders since 2019. That fact concerns me as it shows a growing use and acceptance of surrogacy in law for cases outside the more typically promoted altruistic form:

https://x.com/SurrogConcern/status/2046873880627658988?s=20

For those without TwiX accounts:
https://nitter.net/SurrogConcern/status/2046873880627658988?s=20

My complaint included the following points:

’I would like to know if the article is the product of lobbying behind the scenes by surrogacy interest groups, given its bias and the lack of scrutiny. If it is the product of lobbying or a PR initiative, this information should be disclosed.

I would also expect The Times now to publish an article which reflects on the scientific evidence regarding the potential harm caused by surrogacy, an analysis of the evidence regarding why it is not in a newborn baby’s best interests to be removed from its mother, and the ethical reasons why surrogacy is problematic. I will look forward to reading this article which, I hope, will help to bring some balance.’

Doesn’t a donor egg also make the pregnancy higher risk for the birth mother?

@JellySaurus I don’t know, but if that’s true then it is another important point not addressed in the article in any way.

I found it a very uncritical article and wasn't altogether surprised that the comments were turned off. The Times have form for switching off the comments where the issue is controversial.

I was struck by the fact that the single gay dad seemed very clinical in the way he described the process. It really emphasised to me that, however you frame it, he was buying a baby and seemed to regard the egg donor and surrogate in a very detached way. They were simply enablers in his quest for a baby.

It was a very uncomfortable read.

Single men buying babies, i wonder how many are buying them for nefarious reasons?
I hate that i am so cynical.

I thought exactly the same. I’ve noticed that the Times has been quietly promoting surrogacy for a long time now - there have been several similar articles. (I would never give them my money - I access it through work). I will also contact them about it.

Sad, worrying what has become of us. Babies should not be given to single men and even arguably two men. Sorry but babies should be with mothers or at least women. How on earth have we got here.

I'm not sure I agree with this (though obviously I respect your right to hold a different view to me!).

I don't have a problem with babies being adopted by single men, or couples of gay men, and don't think that looking after babies is solely women's work.

However, I have a major problem with a baby being removed from the only parent it has ever known without there being a good reason (e.g. the child's safety) and the lack of consideration for the impact on the baby in these stories is barbaric. And, related to this, I have a problem with babies being created with the deliberate intent that they should be removed from their birth mother.

Surrogacy was originally seen as an act of sisterhood, of one woman helping another. It was never envisaged that single men would be buying babies abroad, using third party eggs.

I think that gay adoption made it more acceptable for men to be the sole parents.

It is a massive social experiment. Never before has any culture in the world left child rearing to its men and there are reasons for that.

I’ve just read the article in the paper and that sentence stood out to me as particularly vile.

I spotted that too. Chilling comment. Utterly chilling.
the article made me so cross. A dad with a new baby age 50 is just not ideal at all. So darned selfish of him. Quite a few comments along the lines of ‘I wanted to so I did’. Just unbelievable.

There’s not loads of evidence but what there is shows a higher risk of pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, and preterm birth with donor eggs compared to women who have IVF with their own eggs.

I read in shock too.

Think the first guy was 60 and single, who will the poor kid have around growing up? Just so selfish.

Another article with a more sceptical perspective.

https://spectator.com/article/single-men-shouldnt-be-able-to-have-a-surrogate-baby/

Share link to the story.
www.thetimes.com/article/53c6ae54-bac7-4a42-aeec-c1e6a7867523?shareToken=16e38836ddd85741e2040266d6b2adec

1. The UK needs to have an upper age limit in law for surrogacy if we are going to continue to allow buying babies.
2. There needs to be a registration system for prospective parents who want to register a surrogate baby bought here or abroad to actually monitor who is purchasing these children (and to keep an eye on safeguarding)
3. If you want to live in the UK with a baby you have bought, it needs to be made crystal clear it's a bought baby to the authorities. No more mucking about with birth certificates.
4. On that note, birth certificates should reflect biological parents. They are not ownership certificates. We should have separate legal parental certificates linked to birth certificates. None of this nonsense that it discriminates against gay people. It does not. Biology does this without prejudice. As time goes on this is more and more relevant because of DNA testing revealing the truth. We know that there is a psychological element to wanting to know and understand your origins from adoptions already that has a massive impact on identity.
5. Where an egg and a surrogate are different this should be reflected on a birth certificate. There should be flexibility on birth certificates at this point to reflect how science has moved on. This should be done for surrogates. A third person certificate should be introduced as compulsory where it is done to help regulate surrogacy - including it being mandatory information for overseas born babies whose prospective parents want to live in the UK and register them - the name of the clinic must also be included. This would offer protections for the child and mothers.

The reason none of this is happening is similar to the vegan cat syndrome of invested individuals who are in positions of power. It is expensive to buy a baby. This means all parents who buy babies are in positions of power. They are rich and successful and influential. They don't want to be subjected to safeguarding and scrutiny because that's for poor people and social services don't deal with rich upper middle classes.

The Times 100% has a number of staff who have bought babies. They are also extremely likely to be male. The article is a rich mans article.

Poor women and vulnerable babies don't have voices. They are invisible.

A Womens rights group in Australia recently presented to a NSW parliament committee as they are trying to bundle surrogacy up with assisted fertility laws. I recommend reading thier summary of the meeting, it's a good angle for opposition: womensadvocacy.net/2026/04/24/lived-experience-is-not-enough-when-fertility-support-becomes-a-market-in-women-and-children/

Surrogacy and prostitution both depend on an assumption that using human bodies for commercial reasons is fine:
Using the same assumption, why not herd humans of all ages into intensive farms, to harvest human organs and blood, on demand, to the highest bidders?

Apparently to some extent this is already practiced, with living donors being imported, or rich recipients flying to obtain the purchased body parts.

The planet is overwhelmed with multiple billions too many humans, the majority of whom can make no contribution, just be life-long parasites, now that A.I. is increasingly able to our-perform humans. What is plentiful is cheap. A century of mass population explosion has made human lives cheap.

It would have been better to have had an international one-or-no child policy for a century. It rescued the population of China, and rescued the Chinese economy. It probably would have been an international policy, if women had been in positions of power and policy making, internationally:

Melinda Gates said that rich and poor, all over the world, what women want, above all, is control of fertility.

(Bill however, openly boasts that uncountable millions, or billions, of extra people are now alive on the overcrowded, poisoned, biodiversity-stripped, once perfect but now dying-by-humans planet, all "thanks" to him. Yet another example of how males, and male-run organisations, find it impossible to regard females as equal human beings, not merely as reproductive systems to be used.)

A former (50 something, gay, single) colleague of mine has just had a child by surrogate in the States (with a separate egg donor for precisely the reason stated in the article) and brought back here at 6 weeks. I asked him if he would stay in touch with the mother and he physically recoiled. He said "we" dont use that word, that's not what she is.
His child has a father, an egg donor and a gestational surrogate, apparently.

@AlexandraLeaving your comment is distasteful. Bearing children and raising them has never been “women’s work”. It’s motherhood.

“Women’s work” is a term that encompasses the drudgery and the chores that are required in a household. Raising the next generation of children is not drudgery.

All children deserve and need a mother. For exactly the same reason that men can’t just “decide” they are women, men can’t just “decide” they can be mothers. Being a mother is fundamentally different in character than being a father, because men and women are fundamentally different.

We pity children who lose their mothers for good reason. Women who lose their babies experience a more intense, soul-rending pain and grief than fathers. Mothers bond with babies. There’s a biological reason for this and we cannot simply opt out of the biological truths before us because it is socially convenient.

To clarify: I would rather a child had two good adoptive fathers than no father or mother at all. But that is simply because society is dysfunctional. If I could choose to place a child with two good adoptive parents where one was a woman, the other a man, I would always choose that over two men. Because children do best with a loving mother and a loving father. Il is unpopular to say , but the rise of broken homes and women opting to be single parents is so tragic. It’s society failing to function.

Placemarking to read the linked articles later.

Well put. I wish i could express clearly and have concrete evidence why I believe wholeheartedly that women almost always make better carers than men and are what children need and desire. Similarly that the childs biological mother will also almost always give a child the best upbringing and optimum life. It’s coded into our biology to nurture and protect. This does not diminish a fathers role but acknowledges that they bring different and essential qualities and attributes.