Abstract
Surrogacy is a family building option for people unable to conceive or carry a pregnancy. In heterosexual couples seeking surrogacy, a woman who is not the intended father’s partner, facilitates this pregnancy. Whilst normative discourses reinforced by contemporary healthcare policies highlight the importance of involving fathers throughout pregnancy, little is known about heterosexually partnered men’s experiences of surrogacy. This qualitative study explores how surrogacy shapes men’s construction of their father identity and parenting expectations. Drawing on interviews with ten men (nine self-identifying as white and one as white-Asian; all employed in professional occupations) during or after their surrogacy arrangement, we explore their transition to fatherhood, interactions in the pregnancy, and relationship with the surrogate and their intimate partner. This is the first study explicitly focusing on heterosexually-partnered men’s experiences of surrogacy. The findings provide new insights into this unique form of family building, expanding understanding of men’s role preference and level of involvement in a triad surrogacy relationship.
Highlights
Desire and motivation to parent has often been conceptualised as a woman’s reproductive concern, whilst relatively little is known about men’s reproductive desires, reproductive decision making and reproductive experiences (Norton, 2018)
This study explores how men who are in heterosexual relationships and have become fathers, or are becoming fathers through surrogacy arrangements, experience(d) the pregnancy and their transition to fatherhood
This study is the first to explore how men who are in heterosexual relationships and are fathers, or are becoming fathers through surrogacy, experience the pregnancy and their transition to fatherhood
Summary
Desire and motivation to parent has often been conceptualised as a woman’s reproductive concern, whilst relatively little is known about men’s reproductive desires, reproductive decision making and reproductive experiences (Norton, 2018). Searching for their role within the arrangement: supporters and facilitators Heterosexually-partnered men becoming dads through surrogacy found themselves cast into several roles, which they sometimes found conflicting, and challenging in combining such responsibilities: as expectant fathers, partners to infertile women, and helping to nurture a relationship with the surrogate gestating a child for them as a couple.
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