Relatedness across overseas borders: Conceiving transnational surrogacy in gay father families

Over the last decade, an increasing number of Italian gay men wishing to become parents have been forced by law to pursue surrogacy abroad. As a consequence, they experienced physical distance from the surrogate mother and their developing child for the entire pregnancy. To date, surrogacy in gay father families has mainly been studied in relation to changes associated with the transition to parenthood (Bergman et al., 2010), motivations for seeking extraterritorial surrogacy (Norton et al., 2013), kinship, gender and economic implications (Murphy, 2015; Riggs, Due, 2014). The present study aims to fill this gap in the literature by exploring how Italian gay couples deal with their transnational surrogacy process. Participants were recruited through snowball sampling within Rainbow Families. Couple and individual interviews were carried out with thirty Italian gay partnered fathers who conceived their children through transnational surrogacy in America or in Canada. Fathers (Mage = 44.75; SDage = 5.79) were well-educated professionals, with middle to high socioeconomic status. Children were aged between two and six years (Mage = 3.56; SDage = 1.15). An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith et al., 2009) was performed in order to identify the emergent themes in the narratives. Findings indicated that three inter-related themes may be helpful to understand the meaning-making of the surrogacy process through time: 1) the loss of the sense of control over the pregnancy; 2) the role played by the surrogate mother in facilitating fathers to feel connected with their developing child and in building their family; 3) the close relationship with the surrogate mother during the pregnancy and after the child’s birth. The present study sheds light on the impact of restrictive legislation on daily family experiences and allows both clinic staff and mental health professionals to support more adequately prospective gay men who seek parenthood via transnational surrogacy.