Single dad and surrogate mother: a growing combination in US

Michael Cook
August 31, 2013
Reproduced with Permission
BioEdge

With legal surrogate mothers in short supply, gay and single men in the US are paying as much as US$175,000 for the privilege of raising their own child. "We tell people to budget $125,000 to $150,000 for a single baby, and $150,000 to $175,000 for twins," said Stuart Bell, of Growing Generations, a leading commercial surrogacy agency in Los Angeles. This includes $8,000 to $10,000 for the egg donor and at least $25,000 for the surrogate mother.

Adoption is another option, of course, but often the process is long and difficult. "I was in an adoption pool for a year and half, didn't get any calls and got bummed about the whole experience," Trey Powell, a gay father from Seattle told Associated Press. "I just wanted to be a dad. Now he has twin daughters, born six months ago with the help of a surrogate mother.

Psychologists told AP that men have their own "biological clock" for fatherhood. "They say they've always wanted to be a dad, they haven't found a partner that they want to start a family with, they're getting older and just don't want to wait - the same things single women say," says Madeline Feingold, an Oakland psychologist who works with clients going through surrogacy.

The phenomenon is not common, but there seems to be a rising trend. Growing Generations says that it helped 25 single men to become fathers through surrogacy last year. Commercial surrogacy is banned in many countries, giving US agencies a head start. India and the Ukraine allow it, but not for gay men.

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