Abstract
(1) Background: Gestational surrogacy is the most common type of surrogacy today. Although technologically well-developed and legal in many countries, it challenges and even contradicts the basic traditional concepts of family, motherhood, and gender roles. In the present study, we examined the types of stigma coping strategies surrogate mothers discussed in an online support group in post-Soviet Russia. (2) Method: We conducted a qualitative thematic analysis of 15,602 posts on a Russian-language online support group for surrogate mothers. (3) Findings: group members discussed four types of coping strategies: stigma internalization, stigma avoidance, group identification, and stigma challenging. Nevertheless, these strategies varied across the surrogate motherhood stages. Group members advised each other on specific strategies to use to cope with the state of discreditable (invisible) stigma (i.e., during the first few months of their pregnancies), with different strategies for when the pregnancies became visible and they risked becoming discredited people. Furthermore, group members disclosed that they used these strategies even when they returned to their previous family and work routines. Theoretically, our findings challenge Goffman’s classic theoretical dichotomy and coping research concerning discreditable (invisible) and discredited (visible) stigma. (4) Conclusion: Our findings indicate that surrogate mothers anticipate experiencing stigma and therefore plan for it by discussing potential coping strategies in the online group. Moreover, any intervention designed to cater to the needs of surrogate mothers must, therefore, take into consideration the social needs of their entire family.
Highlights
The current information age offers various online channels for obtaining social support to individuals who are coping with stigma
In this study we addressed the role of computer-mediated communication in coping with the stigma of surrogacy in Russia, thereby contributing to the study of stigma by applying extant offline stigma coping strategies to the online realm and by documenting the way SMs embrace or resist stigma through online communication
As in many other cases of stigmatized individuals [8,10,21,22,24,59], these dimensions include: (1) the passive form of stigma internalization; (2) the active strategies of stigma avoidance—keeping their attribute secret, avoiding social interaction, “passing,” and “covering”; (3) group identification; and (4) stigma challenging in the form of education and confrontation
Summary
The current information age offers various online channels for obtaining social support to individuals who are coping with stigma. Recent research points at different ways in which stigmatized individuals use digital platforms to actively cope with social stigma [2,3,4,5,6,7]. Drawing on stigma [8,9,10,11,12] and stigma online support group literature [1,7], in this study we investigated how surrogate mothers manage stigma in a Russian-language online support group for surrogacy. Commercial surrogacy—an arrangement supported by a legal agreement, whereby a woman (the surrogate mother) agrees to bear a child for another person or persons, who will become the child’s parent(s) after birth—is a legal arrangement in some U.S states and in other countries including India, Russia, and Ukraine [13]. The increasing burden of infertility and the rising adoption of various surrogacy techniques are the factors driving this commercial market growth, which is expected to surpass
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