"I feel they go into a situation knowing they are being paid to carry
someone else's child & no one really forces them to do this!! I
understand they carry & bond with the child but it is just beyond me
why they would go into an agreement like this then decide to keep a
child that is not biologically theirs!!"
Some people would say that mothers who surrender children to adoption are in the exact same position, i.e. why would they decide to keep a child that they promised to someone else?
Having had conversations with ex-"surrogates" who were devastated from the loss of the babies they carried, they were never warned about the strength of the mother-child bond, of what they would feel for the child they carried. No-one stressed to them how deeply they would fall in love with these children, or how much the loss would destroy their lives. It is like what adoption agencies and adoption lawyers tell expectant and new mothers -- that the grief is "mild," "temporary," or other such empty promises. They're told to think of themselves as just being a physical vessel for the baby (isn't this what the the term "birthmother" means?)... and then the reality hits them upon childbirth.
Some surrogates start off with amazingly low self-esteem, so the praise, gratitude, etc. that is heaped upon them during and afterwards is intoxicating, even addictive. Some of them live for this praise. Then, when it stops, they seek the next "hit" to keep them going. Not unilke the praise that adoption agencies heap on "birthmothers" and their "support groups" that are nothing but praising the mothers for giving up their children, ("Think of the joy you brought to the adoptive parents! Focus on that!").
Surrogate mothers and mothers who have lost children to adoption ... I think there is more in common than maybe we realize, esp. when the end result is the loss of a child so that others, strangers, can raise that child.
Here is what one child of a surrogate mother writes:
http://sonofasurrogate.tripod.com/
Or this blog here: http://sonofasurrogate.tripod.com/blog/ where he writes:
"If my mother was killed in a horrible accident on her way home from the hospital or if she perished in childbirth, I would get all permission to grieve I needed. When I expressed my rage against the forces or thing that killed my mother, you would all give me all the sympathy in the world. I would be allowed for me to grieve, be angry, to rage. Well my mother died as my mother when the forces that be took me away from her. However I am not allowed to grieve because that force was called surrogacy and those people who took me away were called Intended Parents. It's becoming like a sacred cow. Poor poor infertile couples. Ungrateful adoptees. Acquiring that chikd by any means available is far more important to what is actually DOES to the child.
It's bullshit. Pure garbage. Its disenfranchized grief and it is self-perpetuating. No wonder I just don't "get over it'."
So, is there a difference in what it does to a child? I don't know. Brian has met his natural mother, a "traditional surrogate," and he is very unhappy with the "answers" that everyone involved in this contract have given him. I do not know yet of a child born of "gestational surrogacy" who has spoken up yet about their own experience, so I wonder if shared genetics with the adoptive parents (or with anonymous strangers they will never meet, egg and sperm donors) have an effect. But "donor kids" are speaking up about their experiences are some are NOT happy (e.g. http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2010/06/the_spermdonor_kids_are_not_really_all_right.html and http://childofastranger.blogspot.ca , etc.)
Quoting Cedartrees4:"I feel they go into a situation knowing they are being paid to carry someone else's child & no one really forces them to do this!! I understand they carry & bond with the child but it is just beyond me why they would go into an agreement like this then decide to keep a child that is not biologically theirs!!"
Some people would say that mothers who surrender children to adoption are in the exact same position, i.e. why would they decide to keep a child that they promised to someone else?Having had conversations with ex-"surrogates" who were devastated from the loss of the babies they carried, they were never warned about the strength of the mother-child bond, of what they would feel for the child they carried. No-one stressed to them how deeply they would fall in love with these children, or how much the loss would destroy their lives. It is like what adoption agencies and adoption lawyers tell expectant and new mothers -- that the grief is "mild," "temporary," or other such empty promises. They're told to think of themselves as just being a physical vessel for the baby (isn't this what the the term "birthmother" means?)... and then the reality hits them upon childbirth.
Some surrogates start off with amazingly low self-esteem, so the praise, gratitude, etc. that is heaped upon them during and afterwards is intoxicating, even addictive. Some of them live for this praise. Then, when it stops, they seek the next "hit" to keep them going. Not unilke the praise that adoption agencies heap on "birthmothers" and their "support groups" that are nothing but praising the mothers for giving up their children, ("Think of the joy you brought to the adoptive parents! Focus on that!").
Surrogate mothers and mothers who have lost children to adoption ... I think there is more in common than maybe we realize, esp. when the end result is the loss of a child so that others, strangers, can raise that child.
I completely agree with this. It's the winning child support that really surprises me.
Quoting MissingChloe03:
.... I just feel for people who can not have children & want a child so desperately it's like they really have no choices & I don't feel anyone should be denied the beauty of being parents just because they can not have their own!! It's like what do they do you know??
the whole discussion of whether we should feel sorry for people who are infertile and believe they deserve to be parent no matter what the cost (including the cost to others such as ourselves) opens a whole other can of worms... and can be a very sensitive subject. Did the people who adopted my son deserve him more than I did, because they were supposedly infertile? That's what my father told me, not to be "selfish" because they couldn't have a child of their own (it ended up that they had TWO children of their own after adopting, so as far as I am concerned, they adopted under false pretenses and my son was NOT required as a "cure" for their infertility, hence there was NO reason for the adoption). But this raises other questions: Do people who have preventable (e.g. age-related, STD-related, etc.) infertility deserve our children more than we do? Do they deserve to be parents no matter what? What about if they had tried to conceive while they were still young and fertile? What were their personal reasons for postponing conception? As Brian says, the infertility industry (and infertility itself) has become a sacred cow. Too many worms in this can, and I have been blasted before by people who are infertile for even raising this subject. I'm not going to feel sorry for them unless I know the circumstances in their particular situation.
Before my husband and I adopted we looked into this option. It was just too much for me to handle and crazy expensive. I don't agree with a surogate being able to keep the child unless she has used her own egg and in my county that is illegal. It is also legally binding here that they can not keep the child. I am glad women who choose this option are protected here.
Quoting Cedartrees4:
Quoting MissingChloe03:
.... I just feel for people who can not have children & want a child so desperately it's like they really have no choices & I don't feel anyone should be denied the beauty of being parents just because they can not have their own!! It's like what do they do you know??the whole discussion of whether we should feel sorry for people who are infertile and believe they deserve to be parent no matter what the cost (including the cost to others such as ourselves) opens a whole other can of worms... and can be a very sensitive subject. Did the people who adopted my son deserve him more than I did, because they were supposedly infertile? That's what my father told me, not to be "selfish" because they couldn't have a child of their own (it ended up that they had TWO children of their own after adopting, so as far as I am concerned, they adopted under false pretenses and my son was NOT required as a "cure" for their infertility, hence there was NO reason for the adoption). But this raises other questions: Do people who have preventable (e.g. age-related, STD-related, etc.) infertility deserve our children more than we do? Do they deserve to be parents no matter what? What about if they had tried to conceive while they were still young and fertile? What were their personal reasons for postponing conception? As Brian says, the infertility industry (and infertility itself) has become a sacred cow. Too many worms in this can, and I have been blasted before by people who are infertile for even raising this subject. I'm not going to feel sorry for them unless I know the circumstances in their particular situation.
A blog I'm reading
- MissingChloe03
on May. 21, 2012 at 2:20 PM