Surrogate Motherhood
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Recent increases in the popularity of surrogate motherhood as a solution to the desire for a family in infertile couples has also led to considerations of what constitutes a family and what the important parts of the kinship system are seen to be within American society. Helena Ragone speaks of "the importance of the blood tie as articulated in Euro-American kinship ideology" (112), and biogenetic relatedness is usually considered an important element in the establishment of the family. Even with the prevalence of adoption and the increasing acceptance of adoptive families as "real" kinship systems, adopted children as also increasingly encouraged to seek out their biological parents, if only to learn the nature of potential genetic health problems. Blood ties remain important in kinship structures, as they, unlike marriages or other social relationships, can never be severed; biological kin remain biologically related even if they never have any contact again. Children complete the traditional picture of the family, expressing as they do "the symbolic unity of the couple" (Ragone 110), and childless couples are not always viewed as a real family unit because they do not include any means of perpetuating the relationship. A husband and wife may support and love each other unequivocally, but, if they do not have a child to symbolize that lasting commitment, they are often seen as less than permanently devoted. The actual child stands as a tangible representation of "th
. . .
Economics allows the middle and upper classes to buy the kinds of family support that the lower classes have found other ways of providing.
Many different models of "family" exist to provide assistance and support and to raise children. Economic forces simply change the kinds of solutions families can choose to accomplish the same basic goals.
Works Cited
Del Castillo, Richard Griswold. La Familia: Chicano Families in the Urban Southwest, 1848 to the Present. Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame P, 1984.
Horowitz, June Andrews. "A Conceptualization of Parenting: Examining the Single Parent Family." Marriage and Family Review, 20 (1/2), (1995): 43-70.
Hunter, Andrea G. "Making a Way: Strategies of Southern African-American Families, 1900 and 1936." Journal of American Families, 18 (3), (1993): 231-248.
Luker, Kristin. Dubious Connections: The Politics of Teenage Pregnancy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard U P, 1996.
Ragone, Helena. Surrogate Motherhood: Conception in the Heart. Boulder, CO: Westview P, 1994.
Stack, Carol B. All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community. New York: Harper & Row, 1974.
Talbot, Margaret. "Dial-A-Wife." New Yorker. (20 & 27 Oct. 1997): 197-208.
---. "The Egg Women." The Ne
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Margaret Talbot, Traditionalists Marriage, Roderick Phillips, Helena Ragone, Kristin Luker, Andrea Hunter, Del Castillo, Talbot Egg, Andrews Horowitz, Carol Stack, kinship system, hebrew society, kinship systems, family unit, biogenetic relatedness, black families, rising divorce, husband wife, kinship structures, divorce rate, black families instance, strategies survival black, survival black community, carol kin strategies, rising divorce rate,
Approximate Word count = 2435
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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