Surrogate motherhood: attachment, attitudes and social support.

In recent years, there has been a revival of interest in the procedure of using a surrogate mother to help infertile couples have a child. One of the issues brought into public awareness by the Baby M case, where the surrogate mother refused to give up the baby to the biological father, has been the nature of the attachment of the surrogate mother to the fetus. Thus far, research has not addressed this issue of attachment as well as it has considered other variables involved in the process of surrogacy. The current exploratory study focuses on differences between two groups of pregnant women - surrogate mothers and nonsurrogate mothers - in the degree and quality of attachment, attitudes toward pregnancy, and social support. An understanding of what pregnancy signifies for surrogate mothers is developed, based on objective measures and informal interviews with surrogate and nonsurrogate mothers. The implications of the various phenomena associated with surrogate motherhood are also considered.