Procreative nscns a global market: gay men's paths to surrogacy the USA - PMC

Contents:

• SURROGACY FOR GAY PARENTS, COUNTRY BY COUNTRY
• GAY MEN AND SURROGACY
• PROCREATIVE NSCNS A GLOBAL MARKET: GAY MEN'S PATHS TO SURROGACY THE USA

SURROGACY FOR GAY PARENTS, COUNTRY BY COUNTRY

Alongsi their creasg visibily is a burgeong body of rearch on gay fathers, specifilly on the hort of gay men who beme parents after g out rather than the ntext of a prev heterosexual relatnship (see Berkowz & Marsigl, 2007; Carone, Bac, & Lgiardi, 2017; Goldberg, 2010a; Greenfeld & Seli, 2011; Lew, 2009; Petersen, 2018; Stacey, 2006).

However, scholars are jt begng to unrstand the diversy of stctur, arrangements, and practic wh gay father-head fay nstellatns, as there are several paths to parenthood for this emergg hort—cludg domtic and ternatnal adoptn, fosterg, surrogacy arrangements, and creative kship ti that often entail sharg parentg wh a LGBQ woman or women. Th, viewg gay fathers’ volvement wh their children through the lens illumat the fluidy of fay, genr, and of the work on sexual mory parentg has been spearhead by femist scholars who have long challenged “the iology of the monolhic fay and the notn that any one fay arrangement is natural, blogil, or functnal a timels way” (Goldberg & Allen, 2007, p. Takg serly the terlockg systems of privilege and opprsn the lived experienc of gay fathers who e surrogacy illumat how the men’s class, race, and Wtern privilege allows them to buy their way out of discrimatory adoptive polici and stake out a 9-month lease on a surrogate mother’s womb orr to nstct a geilly related, and sometim a geilly engeered, child (Dillaway, 2008) newer terdisciplary rearch has ground analys munitn, fay strs, and child velopment theori to nceptualize how gay men make cisns about surrogacy and to better unrstand the experience of surrogate fai for gay fathers and their children.

GAY MEN AND SURROGACY

For example, one study ed uncertaty rctn theory (URT), a amework that theoriz how munitn patterns among partners n be ed to rce uncertaty as they form imprsns wh one another and to explore how gay-tend fathers munited wh potential surrogate mothers and egg donors on an onle fom (May & Tenzek, 2016) of this new lerature has even moved beyond theorizg the surrogacy procs to clu thoughtful analys about the experienc of raisg children gay surrogate fai.

Another study that explored the adjtment of children born to gay fathers through surrogacy ground their rearch a velopmental ntextual systems approach (Overton, 2015), whereby they examed children’s velopment terms of the bidirectnal relatns between the children, the fay, and the wir social world (Golombok et al., 2018) Fathers Usg SurrogacySurrogacy is an assisted reproductive technology (ART) which the prospective parent(s) fe a ntract wh a woman to rry their child (Bergman, Rub, Green, & Padron, 2010). In a study of terviews wh gay fathers about their motivatns to pursue surrogacy, the overwhelmg majory (36 out of 40) opted for a gtatnal over geic surrogacy arrangement, and half of the men chose to do so bee they felt that there was a greater risk that the arrangement would fail if the surrogate had a geic lk to the baby (Blake et al., 2017). The other most popular reason gay men mentned for this choice was that gtatnal surrogacy was remend to them by their agency, a fdg that expos how the stutnalized attus of agenci n profoundly fluence gay men’s dividual cisn-makg around surrogacy (Blake et al., 2017) men’s experience wh the surrogacy procs is mediated by other stutns as well.

Nohels, the body of rearch on gay fathers and surrogacy has documented a wi range of dimensns, cludg gay men’s motivatns for havg a child through surrogacy (Blake et al., 2017), the cisn-makg procs volved their path to parenthood (Blake et al., 2017), the transn to parenthood (Bergman et al., 2010; Greenfeld & Seli, 2011), relatnships wh potential and actual surrogat and egg donors (Carone et al., 2018; Greenfeld & Seli, 2011; May & Tenzek, 2016), cisns about disclosg rmatn about surrogat and donors to their children (Carone et al., 2018), the divisn of hoehold labor among bgeic and non-bgeic fathers (Tornello et al., 2015), parental adjtment (Van Rijn-van Gelren et al., 2018), children’s psychologil adjtment (Bac et al., 2015; Golombok et al., 2018; Green et al., 2015), sgle gay men and surrogacy (Carone et al., 2017), and gay men’s experienc wh transnatnal mercial surrogacy (Petersen, 2018). It is worth notg that a signifint strength of this rearch is that is beg produced by a diverse group of ternatnal scholars, cludg but not limed to the USA, the UK, the Netherlands, Spa, and addn to the studi is a handful of empiril qualative studi on gay fathers that have clud men who beme fathers through surrogacy their sampl (Berkowz, 2007; Berkowz & Marsigl, 2007; Mchell & Green, 2007; Ryan & Berkowz, 2009; Stacey, 2006). This requir fancg the participatn of the egg donor, the servic of both an egg donor agency and a surrogate agency, IVF physician servic, and health surance to ver all high sts of surrogacy mean that is only an optn for a small number of relatively affluent gay men, a fact that is illtrated by the mographic posn of the participants any of the empiril studi that clud rmatn about e.

PROCREATIVE NSCNS A GLOBAL MARKET: GAY MEN'S PATHS TO SURROGACY THE USA

In Petersen’s (2018) study of gay men Denmark who had ed transnatnal surrogacy, all were Whe, and a multatnal study nducted the UK, Denmark, and France, 96% of the Brish and Dutch parents were Whe (no race rmatn was llected on French parents) (Van Rijn-van Gelren et al., 2018) gay fathers the sampl are also different om gay men who bee parents through adoptn terms of their racial and ethnic diversy.