Reshaping Relatedness? The case of US Surrogacy

Abstract

This article compares three different research projects on US surrogacy, covering a period of about fifteen years. We will reconsider processes scholars call kinning (Howell 2006) and de-kinning (Fonseca 2011) as we aim to capture notions about relationships outside of binaries and standard kinship categories. We set out to answer the following question: how and for what purposes do surrogates evoke kinship categories when they do, and what does it mean when they do not? Our findings show that surrogates do not imply that there is actual kinship created through surrogacy, nor do they imply that pregnancy and birth create kinship. On the contrary, they reaffirm the boundaries of the two nuclear families, theirs and the intended parents (IPs).