Births as a Value in the Internet Discourse of Subfertile Women Discussing Egg Donation and Surrogate Motherhood

Abstract

Childbirth, when seen as a component of the process whereby a child is acquired and one becomes a parent, is now, to a large extent, an issue of conscious choice and decision, rather than a spontaneous “natural event”. This concerns both reproductively healthy women and the subfertile. Studying female discursive strategies in internet forums can provide evidence for such an idea. Discourses around subfertile women in their own Internet communities demonstrate this process's characteristics most explicitly, since they have to adapt to their health conditions and to form socially acceptable explanations for each particular specific case and means of acquiring a child. 

The analysis of the comments of infertile women on forum discussions has allowed us to distinguish the following discursive strategies presupposing voluntary or involuntary fragmentation of motherhood as kinship. The first point is resolving the problem of childlessness through child adoption, which brings a new separation and distinction between biological and social motherhood. On the level of discourse this separation is, in many cases, suppressed and reconstructed into a new unity of social and biological.

The second, more frequent way of resolving the issue of infertility is to see it as an illness. This often strengthens the fragmentation of motherhood. In different cases, genetic or gestational parts of biology become more or less personally important. This depends both on the woman’s personality and her personal experience, as well as her diagnosis and what view she holds as to what normative motherhood actually is. There is an element of choice and there is a compulsory part. 

The more widely spread version of this strategy consists in declaring a preference for pregnancy and birth as an essential and inalienable part of motherhood, with donor cells being preferred to gestational surrogacy. The other option, usually associated with more empowered women, is to declare a preference for a genetic link with the child. In this case, surrogacy is the preferred option rather than the use of genetic donors. 
The third option stresses adaptive patterns and emphasizes that the actual discursive strategy is formed most of all due to limitations caused by a particular diagnosis or health condition. Later, after childbirth, however, the situation becomes reconsidered and reconstructed as if there was a free choice, even though limitations are still accepted.