chasing the blood tie: surrogate mothers, adoptive mothers and fathers

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Abstract
This article examines the ways in which surrogates, fathers, and adoptive mothers negotiate the novel terrain that came into existence with the advent of surrogate motherhood. It is suggested that women who choose to become surrogate mothers do so as a means of transcending the limitations of their roles as wives, mothers, and homemakers while concomitantly attesting to the importance of those roles and to the sense of satisfaction they derive from them. Like surrogates, commissioning couples who enter into a surrogate arrangement focus less on the aspects of surrogacy that depart from tradition than they do on those that are consistent with American kinship ideology, most notably in their emphasis on the importance of family and nurturance. [reproduction, parenthood, family, kinship, nurturance]