Two Men and a Surrogate: A Qualitative Study of Surrogacy Relationships in Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective To retrospectively explore how gay fathers and gestational surrogates in Canada perceived their relationship at three distinct time points: prepregnancy, during pregnancy, and postbirth. Background Canada has witnessed an increased number of gay men seeking fatherhood through surrogacy. However, there is limited empirical research on the experiences and perspectives of surrogacy for gay men, both in Canada and worldwide. Method Qualitative in‐depth interviews (∼60–120 minutes) were conducted with (a) gestational surrogates implanted with one or more embryos from a donated egg and gay fathers' sperm, (b) gay men who pursued gestational surrogacy to have a biological child, and (c) single or partnered gay men and their paired surrogate. Participants who agreed to participate, who were willing to contact their third party, and whose matched party agreed resulted in a surrogate triad in which the intended parents and surrogate all participated. Interviews ( n = 21) were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using interpretive phenomenological analysis. Results Findings from the present study draw attention to the intricacies of surrogacy relationships and demonstrate the variability of how gay men and surrogates identify and address their procreative roles and responsibilities through pregnancy and postbirth. Conclusion Participant narratives challenge heteronormative experiences of pregnancy and childbirth, extending the two‐parent family paradigm to include families of choice and a close network of individuals and communities. Implications Allied health professionals ought to provide competent, inclusive care that actively confronts a priori biases and assumptions regarding same‐sex parent families and surrogacy.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.013 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.043 | 0.018 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".