The Online World of Surrogacy

by Zsuzsa Berend
The Online World of Surrogacy
Author: Zsuzsa Berend
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2016-09-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1785332759
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Zsuzsa Berend presents a methodologically innovative ethnography of SurroMomsOnline.com, the largest surrogacy support website in the United States. Surrogates’ views emerge from the stories, debates, and discussions that unfold online. The Online World of Surrogacy documents these collective meaning-making practices and explores their practical, emotional, and moral implications. In doing so, the book works through themes of interest across the social sciences, including definitions of parenthood, the symbolic role of money, reproductive loss, altruism, and the moral valuation of relationships.

Wombs in Labor

by Amrita Pande
Wombs in Labor
Author: Amrita Pande
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2014-09-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0231538189
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Surrogacy is India's new form of outsourcing, as couples from all over the world hire Indian women to bear their children for a fraction of the cost of surrogacy elsewhere with little to no government oversight or regulation. In the first detailed ethnography of India's surrogacy industry, Amrita Pande visits clinics and hostels and speaks with surrogates and their families, clients, doctors, brokers, and hostel matrons in order to shed light on this burgeoning business and the experiences of the laborers within it. From recruitment to training to delivery, Pande's research focuses on how reproduction meets production in surrogacy and how this reflects characteristics of India's larger labor system. Pande's interviews prove surrogates are more than victims of disciplinary power, and she examines the strategies they deploy to retain control over their bodies and reproductive futures. While some women are coerced into the business by their families, others negotiate with clients and their clinics to gain access to technologies and networks otherwise closed to them. As surrogates, the women Pande meets get to know and make the most of advanced medical discoveries. They traverse borders and straddle relationships that test the boundaries of race, class, religion, and nationality. Those who focus on the inherent inequalities of India's surrogacy industry believe the practice should be either banned or strictly regulated. Pande instead advocates for a better understanding of this complex labor market, envisioning an international model of fair-trade surrogacy founded on openness and transparency in all business, medical, and emotional exchanges.

Full Surrogacy Now

by Sophie Lewis
Full Surrogacy Now
Author: Sophie Lewis
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2021-08-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1786637308
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Where pregnancy is concerned, let every pregnancy be for everyone. Let us overthrow, in short, the “family” The surrogacy industry is estimated to be worth over $1 billion a year, and many of its surrogates around the world work in terrible conditions—deception, wage-stealing and money skimming are rife; adequate medical care is horrifyingly absent; and informed consent is depressingly rare. In Full Surrogacy Now, Sophie Lewis brings a fresh and unique perspective to the topic. Often, we think of surrogacy as the problem, but, Full Surrogacy Now argues, we need more surrogacy, not less! Rather than looking at surrogacy through a legal lens, Lewis argues that the needs and protection of surrogates should be put front and center. Their relationship to the babies they gestate must be rethought, as part of a move to recognize that reproduction is productive work. Only then can we begin to break down our assumptions that children “belong” to those whose genetics they share. Taking collective responsibility for children would radically transform our notions of kinship, helping us to see that it always takes a village to make a baby.

Birthing a Mother

by Elly Teman
Birthing a Mother
Author: Elly Teman
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2010-03-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520945859
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Birthing a Mother is the first ethnography to probe the intimate experience of gestational surrogate motherhood. In this beautifully written and insightful book, Elly Teman shows how surrogates and intended mothers carefully negotiate their cooperative endeavor. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork among Jewish Israeli women, interspersed with cross-cultural perspectives of surrogacy in the global context, Teman traces the processes by which surrogates relinquish any maternal claim to the baby even as intended mothers accomplish a complicated transition to motherhood. Teman’s groundbreaking analysis reveals that as surrogates psychologically and emotionally disengage from the fetus they carry, they develop a profound and lasting bond with the intended mother.

Surrogacy Was the Way

by Zara Griswold
Surrogacy Was the Way
Author: Zara Griswold
Publisher: Nightengale Press
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2006
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1933449187
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Surrogacy Was the Way: Twenty Intended Mothers Tell Their Stories documents the true stories of twenty women who had children via surrogacy. Surrogacy is a complete possibility in today's day and age, but anyone considering this route to parenthood should know the pros and cons. The women featured go to surrogacy for a variety of reasons, ranging from Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser syndrome (MRKH) to cancer to unexplained infertility and everything in between. Some of the journeys go rather smoothly-while others are filled with one obstacle after another. Some of the women have children already and want to add to their family, while most are attempting to become moms for the first time. What they all have in common, however, is that every woman whose story is told knows what it's like to be an intended mother-the term for the "mother to be" if and when a baby is born. And all of the women ultimately end up having a child (or more) through surrogacy. When I first started researching surrogacy, I was fortunate to find several Online support groups. As I gave and received support to so many other women I became fascinated with the extent to which people would go to simply have a baby. I realized that their stories-our stories-needed to be heard; thus, the idea for this book was born. For the millions of women who have been touched by infertility in some way, or know someone who has, Surrogacy Was the Way will open their eyes to amazing possibilities. It will show them that they do have options, and with persistence and faith, they can achieve their dreams of motherhood after all.

Discounted Life

by Sharmila Rudrappa
Discounted Life
Author: Sharmila Rudrappa
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2015-12-04
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1479825328
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Sharmila Rudrappa interrogates the creation and maintenance of reproductive labor markets, the function of agencies and surrogacy brokers, and how women become surrogate mothers. Is surrogacy solely a labor contract for which the surrogate mother receives wages, or do its meanings and import exceed the confines of the market? Rudrappa argues that this reproductive industry is organized to control and disempower women workers and yet her interviews reveal that, by and large, the surrogate mothers in Bangalore found the experience life affirming. Rudrappa explores this tension, and the lived realities of many surrogate mothers whose deepening bodily commodification is paradoxically experienced as a revitalizing life development.

Broken Bonds

by Jennifer Lahl
Broken Bonds
Author: Jennifer Lahl
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9781925581553
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Around the world thousands of couples and singles procure babies through surrogacy arrangements. Many people see surrogacy as driven by compassion for those who desire a baby. But where is the compassion for the 'surrogate' mothers and their babies? Who are the faceless, nameless women who grow the babies in their bodies and give birth to them? Women who are left with empty arms and leaking breasts after delivery? The surrogacy industry calls them special angels who make miracles possible, giving an extraordinary gift. IVF clinics call them gestational surrogates. The intended parents have promised healthcare, full reimbursement of costs, extra income and ongoing contact with the baby. What could possibly go wrong? Everything. Because surrogacy violates the human rights of the women whose bodies are used, and the rights of children who are traded as commodities. Because it is a fundamentally flawed and misogynist concept to imagine that women are interchangeable. And it is wishful thinking that regulation can fix this. All surrogacy needs to be stopped. In this book, strong and courageous women from the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, India, Romania, Hungary, Georgia and Russia share their stories of becoming 'surrogate' mothers and egg 'donors'. Their accounts are tragic, shocking, and reveal a profit-driven industry that preys on desperation and womens kindness.

Engineering Design via Surrogate Modelling

by Alexander Forrester
Engineering Design via Surrogate Modelling
Author: Alexander Forrester
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2008-09-15
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0470770791
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Surrogate models expedite the search for promising designs by standing in for expensive design evaluations or simulations. They provide a global model of some metric of a design (such as weight, aerodynamic drag, cost, etc.), which can then be optimized efficiently. Engineering Design via Surrogate Modelling is a self-contained guide to surrogate models and their use in engineering design. The fundamentals of building, selecting, validating, searching and refining a surrogate are presented in a manner accessible to novices in the field. Figures are used liberally to explain the key concepts and clearly show the differences between the various techniques, as well as to emphasize the intuitive nature of the conceptual and mathematical reasoning behind them. More advanced and recent concepts are each presented in stand-alone chapters, allowing the reader to concentrate on material pertinent to their current design problem, and concepts are clearly demonstrated using simple design problems. This collection of advanced concepts (visualization, constraint handling, coping with noisy data, gradient-enhanced modelling, multi-fidelity analysis and multiple objectives) represents an invaluable reference manual for engineers and researchers active in the area. Engineering Design via Surrogate Modelling is complemented by a suite of Matlab codes, allowing the reader to apply all the techniques presented to their own design problems. By applying statistical modelling to engineering design, this book bridges the wide gap between the engineering and statistics communities. It will appeal to postgraduates and researchers across the academic engineering design community as well as practising design engineers. Provides an inclusive and practical guide to using surrogates in engineering design. Presents the fundamentals of building, selecting, validating, searching and refining a surrogate model. Guides the reader through the practical implementation of a surrogate-based design process using a set of case studies from real engineering design challenges. Accompanied by a companion website featuring Matlab software at http://www.wiley.com/go/forrester

Modern Families

by Susan Golombok
Modern Families
Author: Susan Golombok
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2015-03-12
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 110705558X
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This book provides an expert view of research on parenting and child development in new family forms.