That Times Magazine article about surrogacy ...

So yes, I did read Alex Kuczynski's article on surrogacy and her reasons for pursuing it—she'd tried in-vitro numerous times but failed—and I was a) moved, and, b) horrified. Moved because she wrote fairly eloquently about her struggles with infertility and the hopelessness:

I became ensnared in the terrible, wishful math of infertility. It went like this: I am 36 years and 2 months old. If I get pregnant today, I will have my baby while I am still 36. I am 37 1/2 years old. If I become pregnant today — this very day — I will have my baby when I am 38 years old. I am 38 years and 1 month old. If I become pregnant today — this very day, this very second — and manage to hold on to the baby, I will have my baby when I am 38 years old... Every I.V.F. cycle or brief blip of pregnancy offered the hope that I might soon be a mother, might seal the bonds of my marriage with a child, might soon be able to stopper the abyss of grief that threatened to suck me under every day. Every day, I rehearsed the self-enforced posture of cheer. If you saw me during this time, I looked really, really cheerful: my face was a rictus of optimism.

And horrified because of the pictures accompanying the article, like this one:

(Photo from New York Times.)

Tell me this: Why oh why must she have her baby's nurse standing at attention? As if she's ready to "serve." I suppose the framing was the photographer's, in which case I ask again, why oh why? Don't they realize it seems like slamming the writer? The writer they commissioned to pen an essay that only barely touches on the implication of servitude inherent in surrogate relationships? (Actually, an honest and thorough examination of this dynamic would've made the piece an even more substantial read.) Besides, that's the baby nurse, who's not even mentioned in the piece. But enough about the photo ... 

Alex K. didn't endear herself with some of her admissions, though. On finding her surrogate:

Her computer-generated essay indicated, among other things, a certain level of competence. This gleaned morsel of information made me glad: she must live in a house with a computer and know how to use it.

Hmm. Hadn't realized the qualifications of a surrogate read like this: Healthy body, check. Healthy mind, check. Not driven simply/primarily by money, check. Has a stable relationship, check. Has a MacBook and can Photoshop, check. 

But hey, what do I know? Your take?

—CityMom

Comments

[Leah]

I'm sorry -- I find just about everything in the New York Times (including many of the writers who pen its big features and almost all of the people covered in those features) to be completely, sickeningly elitist.

Like the folks in this recent article (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/garden/30sound.html?_r=1) who hire pricey DJs to put together hours of mix CDS or program their iPods to "match their home decor." Seriously, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. Who ARE these people?

It's like the Times is going out of its way to find the most unlikable, least relatable people in the entire tri-state area, and then presenting them as the norm. I know New York well enough to know that while it has more than its share of obnoxious rich people, not every SINGLE person on the island of Manhattan is a complete asshole. But if you read only the NYT, you might well believe they were.

[JerseyGirl]

What I thought hit home was a comment someone posted on the Times Web site about this piece: She goes to all that trouble to have a kid, only to hand it over to a baby nurse? (That term alone suggests live-in help to me.) As if...oooh, slap me down for this...writing about the experience is more important than living it.