‘A Nine-Month Head-Start’: The Maternal Bond and Surrogacy
Accepted version
Peer-reviewed
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Repository DOI
Change log
Authors
Dow, Katharine https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9412-3316
Abstract
This article analyses how interviewees drew on the ‘natural’ concept of the maternal bond to make nuanced and contingent claims about motherhood and the ethics of surrogacy. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Scotland with people who do not have personal experience of surrogacy, it describes how they used this ‘natural’ concept to make claims about the ethics of surrogacy and compares these claims with their personal experiences of maternal bonding. Interviewees expected that because of the experience of pregnancy, mothers have a ‘nine-month head-start’ in bonding with their children. While this valorises it, it also reproduces normative expectations about the nature and ethic of motherhood.
Description
Keywords
Maternal bonding, surrogacy, nature, ethics, motherhood
Journal Title
Ethnos
Conference Name
Journal ISSN
0014-1844
1469-588X
1469-588X
Volume Title
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Publisher DOI
Sponsorship
ESRC