In this book, the author Anindhita Majumdar provides an insightful view of transnational commercial gestational surrogacy (TCGS) as a new form of kinship project. She shows how commercial surrogacy disrupts the taken-for-granted nature of our relationships and changes our ideas of being and belonging – particularly within the Indian context. Although the impact of assisted reproductive technology (ART) on kinships has been discussed within the Euro-American context, the same has not been done within the Indian context, despite the presence of a rich body of literature on commercial surrogacy from this region. This book contextualises the process of the formation of relationships and kinships and shows how ART, clinics, people and relationships formed during TCGS are examples of the local confronting the global. By using kinship as a tool of analysis, the author maps the process of transnational surrogacy in broad stages – of the choice of the arrangement, pregnancy and childbirth – and shows how the emergence of certain ideas of kin and kinship question the taken-for-granted nature of intimate relationships. The book's most significant contribution lies in its engagement with kinship cultures and technology and in identifying the peculiarities and contradictions of relationships, referred to as the ‘conflicted nature of kinships’. What sets this book apart is its careful accounting of the narratives of various categories of actors involved in TCGS – surrogates, surrogates' husbands, heterosexual intended parents, homosexual intended parents, mother-in-laws of intended parents, doctors, agents, etc. to elucidate the various relationships at play that are sometimes very specific to the Indian context. The ethnographic accounts of gay parents, surrogates' husbands or mothers-in-law brings out the diverse forms of parenthood and kinship formations at work. By doing so, the book reflects how an arrangement involving people from different countries, borders, bodies, genes and technologies bring forth kinship dilemmas for mothers, fathers, doctors and agents. Hence it provides an overarching view of how race, class, culture and governance have led to unique negotiations of family and kinship. Unlike most other ethnographies on surrogacy in India, this book scrutinises the role of the father. It discusses how gay couples negotiate their position within the arrangement vis-à-vis the surrogate mother by reinventing the heterosexual kinship paradigm and not necessarily just fitting into it, which makes family a more dynamic area of analysis. Based on ethnographic research in Delhi and intermittent research in Jaipur between 2010 and 2012, the book examines how relationships play out between actors in the spaces of the IVF clinics that are driven by a market logic. Due to limited access, Mujumdar presents a processual view of kinship by identifying a new set of key players at each stage of surrogacy. In terms of the layout of the book, it is divided into six chapters, each exploring themes such as intentions and parentage, kinship information, disembodied relationships and alien pregnancies and citizenship. The introductory chapter offers an overview on TCGS and presents the various forms of relationships and parentage that emerge at the intersection of technology and cultural diversities. This chapter also enables readers to understand the organisational structure of the arrangement and the processes at play in the making and unmaking of kin. The second chapter brings forward the notion of ‘intentionality’ that often plays an important role within the surrogacy discourse. It maps the ‘intentions’ of a wide range of actors – heterosexual couples, homosexual couples, single men and surrogate mothers – to trace how the identity and rights of each get constructed during the arrangement. The author argues that intention during surrogacy signifies each actor's motivations to enter into the arrangements, his or her choice, desire and agency. She concludes that when biology gets complicated, commissioning couples or singles tend to identify with and establish their right over the child through their ‘intent to parent’ as opposed to the ‘intent to relinquish’ of the surrogate. Majumdar draws our attention to the arguments made by legal scholars who often interpret the desire to parent as the intention to enter the surrogacy contract. Hence, the choice of a surrogate to enter into a contract to relinquish the child is often used to solidify the parenthood status of the couple or unpartnered individual, whose right over the child cannot be challenged even if there is a change of heart on the part of the surrogate mother. Yet the narratives of the surrogates presented in the book clearly reflect that such intentions or choices made by them are rather ‘choiceless choices’ (p. 48). However, the nomenclature of ‘intended parents’ does not feature in any policy documents in India. The terminology is used by the doctors and agents simply to address clients appropriately, or for drawing up the surrogacy contract, which has legal status. In doing so, Majumdar says that the surrogacy industry constructs, establishes and secures the interests of the commissioning couples as ‘owners with entitlements’ (p.41). The third chapter explores the notion of ‘kinship information’. It explains how IVF specialists use folk genetics to establish the place of the surrogates and the egg donors within the kinship realm. Since ART pregnancies involve the use of various forms of genetic material of actors from all over the world, it gives rise to a cross-cultural conversation of genes, new forms of pregnancies and family structure. Yet the guarded nature of kinship information, which arises out of the strict clauses of donor anonymity and limited interaction between the intended parents and the surrogates, is what sets these arrangements apart. Majumdar argues that although the notion of information is at the core of biological kinship, the guidelines for strict anonymity arise from the South Asian understanding of kinship that does not separate nurturance from biology. Thus, to selectively privilege nurturance (i.e. the stakes of the intended parents over the child), the Indian surrogacy arrangements attempt to render invisible all biological or gestational relationships. However, what is most crucial to note about this provision of anonymity is its potential to negotiate class and racial identity, thereby keeping the identity of the surrogates and gamete donors both ‘visible and yet anonymous’ (p. 84). For instance, the anonymity of the egg donors gives them the form of ‘objects that are dissipated with no history beyond that mentioned in their log books’ (p. 100). As matchmakers of genes, the doctors and agents therefore create ‘a fiction of resemblance’ by holding a certain piece of information back. Thus the doctors instead ‘dress up’ (p. 95) the available resources that they have on offer to make the bodies of the Indian surrogates desirable while at the same time not pose any threat to hegemonic ideas of kinship and relatedness. Chapter four discusses the alien-ness of surrogate pregnancies for both the surrogates and the intended parents. It maps the disembodied relationships that result from these pregnancies and explores the narratives of the significant ‘other’ – agents, mother-in-law, adoptive mother and the surrogate's husband – in making meaning of what Majumdar describes as ‘alien pregnancies’ (p. 31). The vignettes presented demonstrate the relationships of these mothers and the intended parents with the pregnancies while ‘waiting with the womb’ (p. 107). The chapter also identifies other actors as the caretakers of the pregnancies – the agents, surrogates' husbands, friends, relatives of the intended parents, etc. – who also ‘wait with the womb’ without having any embodied experience of it. Surrogate pregnancies are culturally and physically displaced and disembodied since relationships during pregnancies are formed based on shared body and blood. However, Majumdar shows how the distance between the intended parents and the surrogate acts as reminder of the disembodied kinship of the latter. The agents also contribute to the alien-ness of the pregnancy by de-biologising the foetus. This chapter thus deconstructs how the role of the agents and the doctors becomes crucial in socialising the surrogate to not get attached to the pregnancy. However, such strict distinctions and the alien-ness of these pregnancies become tough to maintain and the ethnographic narratives reveal how at times the caretakers of these pregnancies, such as a mother-in-law of the intended parents or the surrogate's husband, develop an emotional bond with the surrogate. While some of these concerns of distancing and surveillance have already been dealt with in other similar ethnographies, the perspective of the ‘other’ (i.e. the caretakers) of the pregnancies makes an important contribution. Chapter five discusses the bureaucratic process of gaining citizenship after the birth of the child and the state's intervention towards carving out kinship trajectories. By explaining the different laws and testimonies of the actors involved in the processes of gaining legal status for the child, this chapter presents how the state and the society come to understand and acknowledge such kin and kinship identities through a contested terrain of negotiation between laws and boundaries. Majumdar discusses the steps of issuing the birth certificate, DNA tests, issuing of the passport and granting of an exit visa to explain how the state as an identity-giver struggles to reconcile with the various notions of kinship, cultures and conflicting laws of other countries. She coherently explains the way in which the process of removing the name of the surrogate from the birth certificate and the DNA testing establishes the notions of legitimacy and illegitimacy, and determines the position of the surrogate mother as a non-claimant. This chapter thus brings out how the strict scrutiny of the state and conflicting laws, along with the anxieties of intended parents, goes towards establishing parenthood and the identity of the child. The concluding chapter stresses the significance of studying kinship through a processual lens. According to Majumdar, this would enable one to engage with the idea of the formation of relatedness over time, and capture the emergence of new ideas of kin and kinship. Transnational Commercial Surrogacy and the (Un)Making Of Kin in India takes us on a journey of such processual forging of kinships and relatedness. It maps the idea of biology in its most conflicted forms arising out of the negotiations towards recognising certain intimate relationships as kinship. Majumdar ends her book by stating that the process of identity formation during commercial surrogacy in India hinges on notions of anonymity and secrecy by privileging the ties of nurturance because such a notion of family and kinship fits more closely with South Asian forms of relatedness. The South Asian notion of kinship information privileges notions of personhood and kinship as opposed to the Euro-American notion of kinships that stresses the roots of the person. Therefore, by stressing on the importance of growth and fulfilment of relationships over time, the practice of TCGS propagates a certain kind of kinship information. Majumdar rightly points out that such a notion of kinship information involving children raised in other parts of the world makes us wonder whether the circumstance of their birth will ever be disclosed to them or what happens when those children come looking for their surrogate mothers and egg donors. Overall, this book effectively captures the nuances and complexities of kinship relationships that emerge out of an inter-country commercial surrogacy arrangement. At present, the Indian government is contemplating a total ban on commercial surrogacy as they find it a threat to the Indian family system and has already banned foreigners from hiring surrogates in India. They propose to introduce altruistic surrogacy, entrusting family members as surrogates to tackle the question of infertility within one's own family. This book can thus shed light upon those relationships and kin networks that have been banned from coming into existence. Majumdar does not advocate a ban or legalisation but rather ethnographically unravels the unscrutinised relationships and bonds that often create legal and social conflicts across countries and highlights the queering potential of kinship. Though the book does not completely succeed in presenting a queer kinship narrative from the perspective of the gay fathers, as it had partly set out to do, it offers a fine balance of the views of same-sex and opposite-sex surrogacy arrangements. I would strongly recommend it to any scholars, students or prospective parents interested in the topic of commercial surrogacy, kinship studies, ART or cross-border reproductive travel.
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Dec 15, 2023
Qian Chen + 5
Open Access