Surrogacy
I think most people on this site believe a child needs a mother and a father. I also believe this to be true.
These days it is possible for a single man to have a child by surrogacy. That is his sperm, a donor egg from woman 1, a surrogate woman to give birth. The child is his biological child and if he does his research neither of the surrogate women involved have any claim on the child. For example the egg donor may be from Ukraine and the birth surrogate in India. The both get paid for their services, they are happy and go on their merry way.
What this means is that the father has the child knowing that it will not have a mother unless some woman comes along and takes this role. Rather like a mother dying in child birth (only with surrogacy you know this will happen before conception).
Now this child is being brought into the world with one parent by choice. Is this wrong?
Keep in mind that any child has at least a 50% chance of being reduced to one parent by choice any way. The mothers choice. These children have loved a father and had that taken from them = suffering.
What is possible is not always likely.
Given that the best for a child is to have both a mother and a father that love and care for it, it is desirable to have both, and the deliberate restriction to just one parent by choice beforehand has a strong element of self-centredness about it, but not ‘wrong’ per se.
Nature often deprives a child of a parent. One or the other may die early. Parents often make choices that limit their ability to care for the child – some choices being ‘Sophie-like’. A father going off to war, for example. These are ‘undesireable’ too, but not essentially ‘wrong’.
Such ethical issues are complex.
Comment by amfortas — Tue 27th April 2010 @ 7:21 pm
armfortas,
You say something I agree with as a general principle –
Given that the best for a child is to have both a mother and a father that love and care for it, it is desirable to have both, and the deliberate restriction to just one parent by choice beforehand has a strong element of self-centredness about it, but not ‘wrong’ per se.
Yet I must also factor in that countless many western children already get ONLY INPUT FROM ADULT FEMALE kindergarten, primary and middle school teachers during thier early and middle childhood.
Hence I can easily envisage a solo dad in western nations feeling with more than a little justification that his kid/s weren’t missing out on getting LOADS of adult female energy devoted to thier upbringing.
Indeed it’s not uncommon to hear of such kids who due to the prevailing lace curtain anti-father feminist culture haven’t had any significant male in thier lives until they reach high school! Oh my God!
Then naturally these poor deprived innocents would be shocked at being with a male teacher – like all of a sudden being confronted with the presence of an alien!
Comment by Skeptik — Tue 27th April 2010 @ 11:56 pm
Skeptik, thank you for that support and yes the later exposure is very important too. I hazard though that such almost ‘total immersion’ in the female mileux in the school years is different not just in degree but in kind too.
There are quite distinct phases in the growth of a child. In the very early years there is a total dependancy, and in terms of natural development BOTH a mother and a father are essential. A child ‘absorbs’ the msculine and feminine from its parents almost by osmosis. Certainly ‘thinking’ or contemplating ‘gender’ as such has little to do with it. A child ‘becomes’ through others rather than drives itself.
At the next stage, from say four to fourteen, the child can think, can contemplate – although only sporadically. It can ‘determine’, compare, contrast to some extent. What you refer to is that. Other people outside family and schholyard/classroom have a great influence too. Television and film too. The ‘experience’ we develop as we grow becomes far more vicarious than the ‘direct’ of a baby.
The scene is set very early on. That is why I put so much emphasis on two-gender family, and especially in very early childhood.
Comment by amfortas — Wed 28th April 2010 @ 1:10 am
armfortas,
again I agree with the general thrust of your views.
Where I worry allot is where children go through the 7 to 11 shift whereby they go from thinking in a concrete way to being conceptual thinkers. In today’s oftentimes overtly and covertly misandric western mileau many a child is therefore prey to soaking up concepts only feminists (vast majority of western women) give to them because men have been driven out of thier lives (females by fair means or foul hogging childcare roles and the phenomenon’s almost total invisibility due to the feminist lace curtain). I’ve seen this over and over working as a school teacher.
An example amongst many i could recite to illustrate the point. I’m sure you can add your own examples too.
I don’t mean to preach to the choir, I simply explain this for readers new to the issue.
Not very long ago a female teacher in the NZ school I was working in was running around telling everyone that it was international women’s labor day.
Now aside from the fact that such politicizing kids is a big ethical no-no, the head mistress was conveniently overlooking such and in fact colluding literally by supplying scones and cake for all the female staff to celebrate this ‘auspicious’ day. Let’s then get to the impact on kids themselves. Bear in mind the school had a staff of 25 teachers and I was the only male teacher. Naturally several children got curious and asked her why she was running around trying to get people to buy a ribbon and make a donation. that was her cue. She rattled off mindboggling misandry about how men had kept women out of paid work, but nowadays women were free etc etc. Off the kids ran with their newly implanted propaganda newly infected with the feminist ‘men bad – women good’ meme.
When I politely and discretely told her I disagreed with her inculcating kids who were too young to know differently she took advantage of our solitude and bluntly told me to ***k off and mind my own business! I left her fearing a false accusation of sexual harrassment, some form of abuse (fill in your own blanks).
‘Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man – St Francis Xavier’.
It’s powerful and chilling stuff as this link will graphically show.
Comment by Skeptik — Wed 28th April 2010 @ 1:51 am
Preach to the choir for rehersal and practice and take the message to the world, good fellow.
Comment by amfortas — Wed 28th April 2010 @ 3:03 am
Guys this is all very insightful. I hadn’t actually thought about the over whelming female influences a child is immersed in these days. I agree those first years are crucial but then even in those first years children often spend a huge amount of female caring time in day care etc.
The “strong self centredness” argument doesn’t stack up to me. 50% of children are denied one parent by choice. This is at least as self centred as surrogacy – arguably more so. I think this argument comes from peoples’ prejudices because these kinds of choices were not available before.
“What is possible is not always likely.”
Having a child by surrogacy can cost around $40,000. This is about the same as the average wedding. When you consider the massive costs of divorce and child tax then it is a very attractive proposition from a purely financial view point.
Commercial surrogacy is perfectly legal in India, Ukraine, USA and other countries. The costs in the USA are about twice as much as elsewhere so that country is probably unlikely. Other countries have a legal frame work that make commercial surrogacy for a single man rather simple and secure.
Solo parenting in hard work but then not so much different to being a single father any way. When you consider all the work in fighting the system to stay a single father against the wishes of the mother then it is less stressful and arguably less work.
So when you suggest it is unlikely – that this only due to a lack of awareness of all the options and consequences among us males. Us foolish males tend to naively wing it with an optimistic outlook rather than taking a considered approach to the realities of modern day fatherhood.
Comment by Dave — Wed 28th April 2010 @ 12:05 pm
reply to Dave
Hmm. I fear that is dangerous ground though I hear where you are coming from
Comment by Jessie — Wed 28th April 2010 @ 7:15 pm
Jessie,
dangerous for who – you? women who are currently overpriveleged at the expense of man having lawful equal rights in the areas of reproduction and relationships with women? dangerous to those who suck of the domestic violence titty, the femily caught jooodges and their lackey minions who screw men over for a living? dangerous to the lace curtain feminist media folks who looks the other way whilst men are routinely slighted and their kids bastardised under feminist jurisprudence?
I can’t see any danger for men who choose the lawful path of surrogacy rather than put their head on the chopping block of marriage and having children in misandric western nations?
So I think you have some explaining to do, otherwise nobody will know what you’re on about.
Please enlighten us.
Comment by Skeptik — Wed 28th April 2010 @ 8:59 pm
Whoops –
I should have said : at the expense of men NOT having lawful equal rights n the areas of reproduction and relationships with women?
Sorry about that.
Comment by Skeptik — Wed 28th April 2010 @ 9:00 pm
@ Jessie, I wouldn’t have expressed it quite as Skeptik has but I am also wondering what you mean. When I first looked at the idea I thought it might be fraught with perils. As I have researched it I realised that it is a much safer path for the father.
What still bugs me is the consequences for the child. Obviously it is not ideal to have a single parent only. I guess we want what is best for our children. It is not easy to decide to raise a child that you know will be at a disadvantage due to your own decision.
The reality is that technology allows us to make these decisions now. The laws compel fathers to consider solo parenting by choice.
For example another decision being placed in front of parents more and more is the knowledge that they could terminate a foetus that would otherwise be a viable birth. For example, a foetus is deformed but still viable. This child will have special needs and the parents may feel they can’t cope with that. Or that there are octets and that would be overwhelming – do they reduce it so there are only twins? These decisions have been put to mothers in recent years. With surrogacy these decisions now begin to be placed in front of fathers. More on that later.
My point is that these are difficult decisions but the laws and feminism compels prospective fathers to consider them carefully.
If you feel this is dangerous ground then please do expand on what you mean. Commercial surrogacy is perfectly legal in several countries and the child will be a NZ citizen by decent. DNA tests are taken to prove decent so there is no question on that score. It is perfectly legal to then bring the new born into New Zealand as your child. As a New Zealand citizen the new born can not be denied the right of entry.
Comment by Dave — Thu 29th April 2010 @ 11:33 am
Every good father knows that a child needs both mother and father.I wouldn’t say thats rocket science. To go out of ones way to bypass the maternal parent just to have child seems to me a bit selfish. There is ample evidence around to show that for a child to develop successfully it needs both parents. True there are unforseen circumstances beyond the control of both parties that leads to single parent families, but to go out of ones way to exclude a maternal parent from a child’s life for convenience seems at the very least self centered.Ask yourself why and who benefits. I would suggest that the answer to both of those questions might well be ‘You’.
Comment by Jessie — Thu 29th April 2010 @ 3:21 pm
To Dave.
Please see my reply. what I would like to add is that what is legal is not always what is right.
Comment by Jessie — Thu 29th April 2010 @ 3:26 pm
There. Fixed it for you to bring it into alignment with the most frequent manifestation.
Comment by gwallan — Thu 29th April 2010 @ 8:54 pm
Jessie says –
….and I couldn’t agree more.
The sad fact of the matter is however that from conception through to birth through to childcare at every step along the path of development from fetus to teenage child WOMEN have unilateral power over children and through children over men in NZ.
Let me break this down for the uninitiated.
Let’s say I get together with a woman in NZ and decide to produce a child with her.
I impregnate here and look forward to the birth, yet for the flimsiest of reasons (which boil down to her lifestyle choice) she terminates the pregnancy or if your more strident in your view kills the unborn child. That’s her decision made UNILATERALLY. Under law because I’m a mere man I have no reproductive rights whatsoever. Of course femi9nists will say it’s her body so it’s her choice. They conveniently overlook the point though that it’s part of my male body that’s in hers.
So anyway the first hurdle of the woman’s privelege is overcome and she actually births our child.
But wait a minute!!! How do I actually know it’s my child and that I haven’t been cuckolded? Easy right? Just get a DNA paternity test and bingo paternity confirmed or not yes? Well, yes in theory. But under current NZ law a DNA paternity test isn’t admissible in court. God knows why that’s the case, but you can check it out for yourself. So the woman has the right to know who the father is, but the father isn’t UNDER LAW. Bear in mind some research recently got carried out in UK which found roughly 20 – 25% of fathers weren’t actually the fathers. Get my drift?
But anyway we’ll continue and assume she hasn’t cuckolded the man and he’s actually a real father.
He wants equal parenting time, not to be the ditant father figure his own dad was to him and tries to insist upon this, but and here’s the rub, she denies him this knowing full well (as he does too) that under current chivalric/feminist jurisprudence he better not push the issue or she’ll initiate divorce/seperation AND FORCE HIM to be the distant alienated father in any case with the full force of the nation state behind her. He’ll be emotionally crushed, probably lose his home, child/ren and a godawful slice of his future income for up to 19 years. In brief she’ll be a benefit queen and he her alienated wageslave. He’ll also be cuckolded here too in a sense as she’ll have married the state as a defacto husband instead of him.
Is this getting grisly enough for you fans of the horror genre yet?
But wait there’s more (and surprise, surprise even worse to come for him) all legally sanctioned under NZs cozy matriarchal law system. He’ll get off in even worse shape still (and possibly suicide too) if she decides to get really nasty about things. He’ll also be the victim of a false accusation of sexaul abuse, domestic violence, infidelity, being emotionally unavailable (like he’s be safe to express his real emotions to a gargantuan with the state behind her right?) and so there’s a good chance he’ll end up an even more depressed sadsack with his bum perched on a seat at anger management for 20 weeks despite the fact he’s actually a good bloke who wouldn’t harm a fly.
But we’ll assume again that he gets ‘let off the hook’ and she doesn’t go that route, he’s still a l o n g way from being an equal parent…….and she still has more state sanctioned cards to play. She simply ups sticks and moves to another part of the country rendering him unable to get to his children becasue he can’t afford to, or can’t get enough time off work because he’s working so hard to pay all that child support.
Now Jessie, here’s the point I really want to make.
I’ve lost count of the number of men in NZ who’ve been shafted in all these ways and more by women in NZ.
So don’t you see it strikes me as kind of ridiculous to get uppity and moral about men being self centred because they want a safe passage as fathers.
Sorry, but under present circumstances with the women of NZ knowingly using the system I wouldn’t blame any man there for taking control of matters by getting a surrogate. Yes it’s a very self centred thing to do.
But surely you realize NZ women have NO loyalty to men these days as they’ve abrogated all male responsibility to the state?
So to answer your loaded question about who benefits when men take control of fathering instead of being controlled by women I say – the children benefit. They AT LEAST get one solid, responsible parent who isn’t tempted nor facilitated by legions of feminist moneygrubbers to smash the other parent to pieces under the iron heel of their matriarchy.
Comment by Skeptik — Thu 29th April 2010 @ 9:14 pm
Beautifully put gwallan,
you’ve managed to distil my message from several hundred words to a few sentences. Cudos to you.
Comment by Skeptik — Thu 29th April 2010 @ 9:17 pm
That just about sums it up, Skeptik. Now we need one of those flow / decision charts that programmers make. Lots of arrows going down to the ‘You Lose’ box at the bottom and just one to the ‘Happy Ever After working like a dog to support your adoring family’ box on the right.
Just don’t add a ‘Gratitude, yes/no’ diamond after it.
Comment by amfortas — Thu 29th April 2010 @ 10:47 pm
Skeptic that is pure gold! I think plenty of people will be looking for the print button!
Comment by Dave — Fri 30th April 2010 @ 12:00 pm
Jessie is making the point that I think many people would make. Thanks for raising it Jessie. I guess I am not entirely convinced that it is selfish. However you are right to explore it.
In about 50% of cases a mother completely shatters and enslaves a father. In addition the mother shatters the child’s bond with their father for the most trivial of reasons. That is by any definition – selfish.
If I get a surrogate I am not shattering anyone else. I am not destroying a child’s bond with a parent. I am not even ruling out the possibility that the child may have a step-mother in the future.
Still let’s also not kid ourselves that probably the major reason for doing this as a single heterosexual male is explicitly to avoid being excluded from your own child’s life. The man is creating a situation for the child where the powers that be have no option to remove the father. That situation is no mother. Is that selfish?
Is it merely making the most of the reality of modern life in order to ensure the child has one good loving parent? A situation where the child and the father can have confidence that they will always have a stable relationship.
Is saying I will bring a child into this life but I am going to do it under conditions where I can be confident I will remain the child’s parent selfish? Isn’t this just making a very strong commitment to the child rather than ‘winging it’?
Perhaps some one can tell me how no-fault divorce and forcing fathers to be visitors is less selfish than single father by surrogacy. Personally I don’t buy it.
As I understand it the argument is that surrogacy would deny the child the opportunity to have a biological mother in their lives. Hence it is selfish.
This overlooks the costs and risks to the child of that opportunity.
Would you enter in to battle knowing there would be a 50% causality rate? Of course not. Why is this acceptable for a child’s up bringing?
My argument is that the costs and risks for the child have become so high that single father by choice is a perfectly reasonable option.
Comment by Dave — Fri 30th April 2010 @ 12:44 pm
To Dave
I believe a 50% success rate is better than a 100% failure rate. If you asked a child to choose I would think they would take the 50% chance of having both parents as opposed to 100% of only having one. Most of the comments I have read to the above article ( excluding your reply)don’t specifically address the needs of the child, in fact theres hardly any mention of it.
Comment by Jessie — Sat 1st May 2010 @ 2:32 pm
To Skeptic
And what would your answer to your child be when they ask why they haven’t got a mother? What view are they going to have about women? How is that going to affect them? I suggest it will have disturbing ramifications in their lives.
Comment by Jessie — Sat 1st May 2010 @ 2:44 pm
Hi Jessie,
I would say thats a pretty myopic question. You seem to presume that a single man will always be single and any child thus motherless. Do you feel the same way when the genders are reversed?
what would your answer to your child be when they ask why they haven’t got a father?
Comment by mits — Sat 1st May 2010 @ 3:44 pm
Jessie,
My reply to the child would be that they do have a mother. I’d add that when I believe they are old enough to understand I will be happy to explain to them why she isn’t there with them.
Yes, it’s going to affect them for sure not having a mother around, but like I said and you overlooked NZ is deeply matriarchal when it comes to institutionalized childcare – the vast majority of kindie and school teachers up to age 13 are women. Forgot that didn’t you!
So would it affect them as much as it affects the 400,000 defathered children in NZ?
That depends on how much I could insulate them from NZ’s widespread and deeply denied misandry – hence the 400,000!
You forget to ask about the sex of the child.
But in any case were it a boy or girl I would extricate him/her from the feminist anti-male shithole NZ has become to a much safer male friendly culture ASAP. I’ve travelled to many different countries and can tell you from experience such places do exist – although that may be difficult for you to understand given you identify as a feminist.
Comment by Skeptik — Sat 1st May 2010 @ 4:36 pm
To Skeptic
Thats why assumptions cannot be trusted. I am a third year LLB student, male with two cool daughters aged 12 and 17. Unfortunately both were subjected to the ‘Parental Alienation’ process.
Comment by Jessie — Sun 2nd May 2010 @ 7:00 pm
To Jessie,
I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Something to do with assumptions law school, daughters and PAS. I think you need to be clearer.
Comment by Skeptik — Sun 2nd May 2010 @ 9:51 pm
Jessie,
I’ve thought about your post to me a bit more and here’s my reponse.
The nature of the myopic question you asked (which mits pulled you up on) appears so feminist to me that I conclude that despite whatever you may call yourself you are indeed a feminist. That’s what I meant by you identifying as feminist, not by calling yourself such, but by your actions.
That’s because you jumped straight into defending women and children with scant regard for fathers.
In answer to one of your earlier questions as to how children from a surrogate mother would be affected (What view are they going to have about women?) I say this.
NZ I such an incredibly misanric culture right now that I think children’s views about women are shaped along feminist lines. That means I would expect them to be inculcated into the feminist female supremacist view that women were the better, more intelligent, fairer, more spiritual, more sensitive, more caring, more (add your own superlatives and comparative adjectives here) sex. And that men were comparatively less evolved, more violent, more unstable, defective, smelly, dirty, anti-social, (add your own insulting adjectives here) sex.
I would have to work very hard to insulate them from such bileous bigotry, hence like I said previously I’d look to relocate them ASAP to a much more humane society where feminism hadn’t taken hold and men were still valued as humans and not expendable modern day niggers.
Comment by Skeptik — Sun 2nd May 2010 @ 10:29 pm