Lecture on Surrogacy

My good friend and doula, Mitsy, just happens to be teaching a course this summer on the Sociology of Human Reproduction at the university where she and I are grad students. She invited me to come talk about surrogacy (because how convenient - I happen to be a surrogate!!). She was just asking me talk a little about my personal experience, but the academic in me took over and I delved into the topic in a little more detail than... uh... she was expecting (I TALKED FOR 2 HOURS!!!).

It was a fantastic experience. I love the perspective I get from reading surrogacy blogs, but there's a part of me that yearns for large scale surveys and the numbers they produce. It turns out, these are out there. I strongly encourage anyone interested to check out the papers I list on my last slide (or contact me if you have trouble finding them).

Also, the response from the students was great. Mitsy had clearly nurtured a great academic environment, because the students were engaged, well-informed, interested and never hesitant to ask (even quite personal!) questions or express their opinions.

I'm indebted to several bloggers who let me use materials from their blogs:

Jeni, at Love Makes A Family
Michelle, at My Belly, Their Baby
Tiffany and Natalie at A Belly For Me, A Baby For You

Shit people say when I tell them I'm a surrogate

The title of this post, borrowed from the popular internet meme, is misleading. The shit people say when I tell them I'm a surrogate isn't interesting - it's almost always something like, "What a wonderful thing you're doing!" "Wow! That's really amazing!" or "I can't even imagine! You're so impressive!"

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE being showered in praise. I've had some seriously superlative sentiments expressed to me: that I'm the nicest person the speaker knows, that I have fulfilled my good-deed quota for life, and once even that I could now commit murder and still be a morally superior person. And to this I say, "Thank you. Indeed, I am awesome."

But this is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the friend or acquaintance who hears what I'm doing, looks at me and says, "Wow that's so great!" while their eyes tell a completely different story.

And what do I expect them to do?? Nothing else. For many of them it's the first time they've had any encounter with surrogacy, and there's simply no way for them to process their thoughts fast enough to give me an honest reaction.