Becoming Gay Fathers through Transnational Commercial Surrogacy

Based on eight interviews with Danish gay male couples and one gayman, who had or were planning to become fathers through transnationalcommercial surrogacy, I examine the ways the men form familysubjectivities between traditional kinship patterns and fundamentally newforms of kinship and family. Arguing that class, mobility, and privilegeshould also be understood as relational and negotiated positions, I showthat gay men engaged in surrogacy must be understood as more flexibleand differentiated. Second, I show how kinship as synonymous withbiogenetic relatedness is supplemented by notions of kinship as devotion,individual will and determination, and reproductive desire in order tostrengthen the men’s affinity to their children. Last, I examine how themen negotiate and work within the given structures of heteronormativityand Whiteness and rework notions of parenthood while at the sametime reaffirming old hierarchizations of racialized and sexualized forms ofprocreation and families.