Comparative Co-Authored Surrogacy Research by Teman and Berend
Teman, Elly, & Berend, Zsuzsa. 2022. Individual responsibility or trust in the state: A comparison of surrogates' legal consciousness. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 63(5-6), 265-284.
Drawing on ethnographic research in the United States and Israel, two countries that have long-term experience with surrogacy, we compare surrogates' understanding of, approaches to, and expectations about regulation. Women who become surrogates in these two countries hold opposite views about regulation. US surrogates formulate their rejection of standardized regulation—including standardized screening and contracts—by emphasizing their own responsibility for the legal, relational, and medical aspects of surrogate pregnancy. They want more oversight of fertility clinics and surrogacy agencies but ultimately argue for individual accountability. Israeli surrogates, conversely, support centralized government regulation of the practice and even defend Israel's centralized regulation of surrogacy; many advocate for the extension of the law and the state to assume more responsibility for these arrangements. We discuss these differing formations of legal consciousness in terms of Engel's conceptualization of "individualism emphasizing personal responsibility" versus "rights-oriented individualism."
Link to full text of our comparative article of surrogates' legal consciousness
Teman, Elly, and Zsuzsa Berend. 2021. "Surrogacy as a family project: How surrogates articulate familial identity and belonging." Journal of Family Issues 42 (6): 1143-1165.
This paper explores how surrogates negotiate the meaning of familial belonging and family identity when they discuss surrogacy with their husband, children, and other relatives. We suggest that surrogacy necessitates reflexive explication of what a family is and how this family is implicated in surrogacy. Our comparative study analyzes ethnographic data on Israeli and US surrogates to illuminate key similarities in surrogates' strategies vis-a-vis their husband and children, pointing to the importance of daily family practices in how people understand family belonging. First, we map out the ways surrogates engage their husbands in order to gain their support and protect their nuclear family unit before entering the process. Next, we look at how surrogates explain surrogacy to their children in efforts to clarify siblingship and the boundaries between the two families, and to make surrogacy into an educational family project. We analyze the metaphors and rituals in surrogates' family-bounding practices.
Link to full text of Surrogacy as a family project
Teman, Elly and Zsuzsa Berend, 2020. Surrogate Non-Motherhood: Israeli and US surrogates speak about kinship and parenthood, in: Zeynep B. Gürtin, Charlotte Faircloth (eds.), Conceiving Contemporary Parenthood:Imagining, Achieving and Accounting for Parenthood in New Family Forms, London: Routledge.
Also printed in: Anthropology & Medicine, 25(3), 296-310.
Drawing on a comparison of two ethnographic research projects on surrogacy in the United States and Israel, this paper explores surrogates' views about motherhood and parenthood, relationships and relatedness. The paper challenges three myths of surrogacy: that surrogates bond with the babies they carry for intended parents, that it is immoral not to acknowledge the surrogates' maternity, and that surrogacy upsets the moral order of society by dehumanizing and commodifying reproduction. Contrasting the similarities and differences in the voices of surrogates from these studies, the authors argue that surrogates draw on ideas about technology, genetics and intent in order to explain that they do not bond with the child because they are not its mother. This is followed by an exploration of surrogates' definitions of what constitutes parenthood, suggesting that in both contexts, surrogates draw clear boundaries between their own family and that of the intended parents. Finally, it is suggested that surrogates expect a relationship, or a bond, to develop with the intended parents and view their contribution as exceptional moral work which involves nurturing, caring, friendship and solidarity. The paper concludes that for surrogates in the USA and in Israel, maternity, bonding and kin-ties are not automatic outcomes of pregnancy, but a choice. Surrogates in both contexts hold that bonding with other people's children as if they were one's own is wrong while bonding with their couple and creating 'fictive kin' ties with them is the logical outcome of the intense and intimate process of collaborative baby-making.
Link to full text of our comparative article on surrogate non-motherhood
Teman, Elly, and Zsuzsa Berend. 2021. "Unsustainable Surrogacy Practices: What We Can Learn from a Comparative Assessment." Sustainable Birth in Disruptive Times, pages 115-127.
What are best practices in surrogacy and what are unsustainable ones? Comparing our long-term ethnographic studies of gestational surrogacy in Israel and in the United States, we analytically explore practices and outcomes we have found to be unsustainable in surrogacy agreements. We then outline three key finding that explain better outcomes for babies and surrogates: regulated contracts, standardized screening of all participants, and supportive relationships between participants. By shedding comparative light on practices emergent from the "field," whether sustainable or not, we can better identify the central regulatory mechanisms that may shield surrogacy participants from harm.
Link to full text of our comparative article on Unsustainable Surrogacy Practices