The Secret Life of Surrogate Moms

Attentive parenting new form of oppression, says feminist Badinter

(NEWSER) - What with all the breastfeeding, diaper washing, and not smoking while pregnant, mothers have become enslaved to their “tyrant” babies. That’s the opinion of French feminist philosopher Elisabeth Badinter, who sees women giving up their lives in the service of their young ones—and risking women's liberation by becoming oppressed by their own children. “We live 80 or 85 years,” she tells the Times , “and children take up 20 to 25 years of that. Staking your whole life on 20 years is a bad bet.” More»

Retro preference for sons is alive and well

(NEWSER) - Aaron Traister is thrilled to have a daughter—“I was just as excited about my daughter as I was about my son,” he writes. “And she's even better out of the belly.” But the nagging preference for male children in our society has him doubting his own emotions. “If she had come first,” he frets, “would I have been as excited about her arrival? Would I love her just as much?” More»

Thanks to military insurance, surrogacy is big boost

(NEWSER) - One San Diego woman exemplifies what some see as a growing trend among California military wives, the Los Angeles Times reports: surrogate pregnancies, made possible by generous insurance and amenable state laws, and motivated in part by upward of $20,000 in extra income for delivering a healthy child. “Military wives, they don’t cry, they don’t complain at the drop of a hat,” says one surrogacy agent. More»

(NEWSER) - It's too late for the decision to limit the size of her family, but the octuplets mom has sworn off sex for 18 years, she tells the Sun. "I cannot maintain a social life and be a mother," said single mom Nadya Suleman, 33. "To even take one percent of every night and devote it to someone else would be wrong. I have to wait for that until my youngest has left school." The once-married mom says she hasn't had sex for eight years. More»

'I like to snuggle,' says Arkansas woman

(NEWSER) - And you thought Angelina Jolie had a lot of kids. An Arkansas mom has just given birth to her 18th. The baby, Jordyn-Grace Makiya, joins a crowd of sibs with names that start with the letter J and star in the TLC series 17 Kids & Counting. The spree began when the Baptist couple, married as teens, ditched their birth control pills. "What really works for me is swaddling a baby and snuggling up," the mom told People. "This time goes by so quickly." More»