Surrogacy – need or trend?

Surrogacy, without a question is the latest celebrity lifestyle fad! With the raft of celebrities browsing for “gestational carrier”, surrogacy can be termed as latest synonym for modern-day wet nursing. Although, the idea of surrogacy has boded well with mighty celebrities, but the notion still remains a taboo for many. However, no one would disagree with the fact that the celebrities have pushed the envelope on an alien idea like surrogacy.

Child carriers were need before the fertile women started finding it equally legitimate to let another woman harbor their child. With this, surrogate parenthood imbued an all-new dimension to the concept of non-traditional motherhood. While hundreds of people still absorb the gravity of the idea, thousands more opt for surrogacy every day. As a result, surrogacy has become dinner table discussion in every household. Few hold strong opinion about item, while few lace surrogacy with ethnic limitations.

Trend

Celebrities like Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao are among many who have diluted the conservative belief behind the process. It is not that these celebrities avoided tasting the fruit of traditional parenthood; it was that they accepted surrogacy reasonable for their career-oriented lives. Expanding families or career has lately become a contentious question for career-oriented women. Women, who are workaholic, or ageing, or have just started with their career, tend to take route for non-conventional motherhood, i.e., surrogacy.

With age, the chances of complications during pregnancy multiply and so many people welcomed the idea of surrogacy as it is safer and involves fewer complications. Surrogacy is sometimes referred to an unconventional route to pregnancy, and many times the idea is debased as “customer service”, for infertile customers shopping for surrogates. But in India, where commercial surrogacy is legal, it is a win-win situation for both the parents and carriers, who are most of the times poor and require financial assistance. It gives sustenance of parenthood to one and livelihood to another. 

Need

Women having hormonal problems, like failure to produce mature eggs, malfunction of the hypothalamus, malfunction of the pituitary gland, or scarred ovaries, premature, menopause, or follicle problems are remained with no option than to go for surrogacy. Sometimes behavioral factors like smoking, alcohol and drugs might be a resistance into the idea of getting pregnant. Apart from female biological reasons, there might be some other reasons that sum up to infertility. So, surrogacy can be viewed as both an option a trend, in both ways the parental need of couples is satisfied. Surrogacy is something of a paradox, a boon, widely voted for, child producing paradox – omnipresent yet scarce.   

Dr Neeraj Pahlajani