What percentgae of intended parents are gay
Despite the couple challenging the dominant mother-centric discourse in surrogacy, it appears that the gendered parenthood discourse that links successful impregnation with masculine pride persists in their parental experience. Daughters of lesbian mothers were most likely (33% to 57%; odds ratios from to ) to report non-heterosexual identities.
We first consider how gay couples who utilise surrogacy negotiate the issue of legitimising themselves as societally acceptable parents, before then exploring the place of masculinity in the gendered experience of these same-sex partners. Moreover, another important component of the discourse of gay male parenting is the place of masculinity within surrogacy, and how this process differs from traditionally gendered parental experiences.
We apply these discourses to the provocative context of surrogacy, exploring how they impact public opinion on surrogate mothers and of the gay couples who must legitimise themselves as parents in the eyes of a heteronormative society. The surrogate is characterised as an instrument, a tool used by the couple to carry out a pregnancy without any agency or power in the process.
We focused on analysing the representation of the social actors involved in surrogacy, through word choice, in the form of collective language, determiners, lexicon and metaphors, along with semantic role allocation that might foreground or background the agency of an actor, or obfuscate certain actors involved in the process of surrogacy.
We started the project assuming that, since a big part of surrogacy involves the surrogate mothers themselves, more agency would be accorded to the surrogate mothers. Through this lens, we consider how the queer-oriented, neoliberal discourses of gender and parenthood are nonetheless shaped by deeply embedded, traditional societal norms.
However, we found that the agency and voice of surrogate mothers were continually obfuscated in order for other parties involved in discussions of surrogacy to achieve their personal discursive goals, especially in their efforts to perform or promote a certain form of gendered parenthood.
This stark contrast between discourses of the natural world and the artificiality of the economy illustrates a seemingly gross, inappropriate intrusion of the market into the spheres of the traditionally natural and human. The cumulative results of our analyses were then considered through the theoretical framework mentioned above, and subsequently, we derived insights about parenthood, sexuality and gender.
These linguistic choices highlight the importance placed on having a direct connection to pregnancy in order to be recognised as a parent—despite having a genetic connection to embryo, the couple nonetheless feel that they must present themselves as a part of the process of pregnancy as well to be considered real parents over the surrogate mother.
In the article, Bruce and Bill anonymised are observed to continually attempt to include themselves in the process of pregnancy, or in this case miscarriage, by using collective language. The dominant discourse surrounding gay surrogate parenthood is one of seeking social recognition or affirmation, with this being achieved or resisted primarily via the different discursive techniques of anti-surrogate contributors and the gay parents themselves.
Percentages of children of gay and lesbian parents who adopted non-heterosexual identities ranged between 16% and 57%, with odds ratios of to , depending on the mix of child and parent genders. This idea is reinforced through the semantic roles that the couple choose to select for themselves and the surrogate in the article, and it is here that the discourse of gay parenthood starts conflicting with the dominant heteronormative, gendered discourse.
The original poster invited Mumsnet members to share their opinions, who, from our analysis, and, as put forth by Mackenzie , seem to be female, heterosexual and largely conservative. In relation to surrogacy, we analyse how these discourses work to police and regulate reproductive practices, in this case the autonomy of the bodies of mothers and the importance of biogenetic connection in legitimising who can be considered a parent.
Its structure as a forum was also of great importance to us, as it allows for townhall-like discussions in which users have the freedom to express their own views and opinions, which we believe is key in analysing the discourse surrounding controversial topics like surrogacy. In order to ethically execute our research, we have anonymised the names of all interlocutors in our data.
The most prominent narrative surrounding surrogate mothers in the forum post paints them as objectified and commodified beings being exploited by the rich. 10% of cisgender bisexual/queer parents. Moreover, the couple reinforce their foregrounding in the process of gestation by utilising objectifying linguistic techniques that background the involvement of the surrogate.
We felt that the sympathetic article and the anti-surrogacy comments on the forum were a good reflection of sharply contrasting ideologies about surrogacy, and hence could provide valuable insight into how sexuality and sexual practice are policed in everyday practice by dominant discourses.
In this article we investigate the criticism of surrogate mothers and their intended same-sex parents through a critical discourse analysis of discussions of gender and parenthood. Mumsnet was chosen as the data source, as it is a very large corpus of data surrounding online discourses on parenting and motherhood, with thousands of posts added to the Talk forum daily Pedersen in Mackenzie, , which makes for a very comprehensive proxy for dominant parenting and motherhood discourses especially in the United Kingdom.
Many of these children are being raised by a single LGBTQ parent or by a different-sex couple where one parent is bisexual. Following this, we consider the policing of the bodies of women in surrogacy, and finally the notion of commodifying motherhood. Overall, 47% of partnered LGBTQ parents are in a same-gender or transgender-inclusive partnership; however, the majority of cisgender lesbian/gay parents are vs.
They are not interested in a full, human picture of pregnancy and childbirth. However, it is at this point that the conflict between discourses of parenthood begins to be observed. Between 2 million and million children under age 18 have an LGBTQ parent, and approximately , of them are being raised by a same-sex couple.
Based on the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), it is estimated that there are , same-sex couples living in the U.S., and that 19% of such couples and lesbian/gay/bisexual individuals are raising children under the age of 1 As the number of children growing up in same-sex parent households increases, there remains ongoing.
Many forum responses critique discourses present in the article for constructing women merely as a means of production in the creation of a life in the form of a baby. In our analysis of the thread and the article, we applied key concepts of Critical Discourse Analysis, to uncover the ways power structures involving parenthood, gender, and sexuality are sustained and reproduced in daily language use.
Our analysis seeks to answer the question of how dominant, gendered discourses of parenthood affect public opinion on surrogate mothers and the gay couples that employ them, a topic that is increasingly relevant in the context of feminist movements that promote bodily autonomy and the popular debate of what makes a legitimate parent.
They use labels and more significantly, employ many instances of metaphors:. This foregrounding of his father as the arbiter of virility and masculinity continues to demonstrate that gay men pursuing parenthood via surrogacy are still policed by some parts of the gender-based parenthood discourse, in this case the stereotypical conceptualisation of fatherhood as intrinsically connected to sexual potency.
No one should be buying babies post 20, CrowdForest.