The triumph of surrogacy

Competing social scripts and the rise of family-normativity in the male-gay community in Israel

Datos Bibliográficos

ID5718667
AutoresEfrat Knoll (0000-0002-7942-1283, Bar-Ilan University, autor de correspondencia), Adi Moreno (0000-0001-7542-0083, University of Haifa)
Año2020
Volumen15
Número3-4
Páginas283-298
Fecha de publicación2020-11-17
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaNORMA (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1890-2138 • E-ISSN: 1890-2146
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/18902138.2020.1807155
OpenAlexW3081280954
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas7
Referencias citadas22

This paper examines the development of social scripts and their acceptance as a norm using the case of fatherhood through surrogacy in the gay community in Israel. Gay fatherhood became normalized in Israel since the mid-1990s, and surrogacy has become the homonormative fatherhood choice during the last decade. The paper is based on two qualitative studies involving 60 in-depth interviews with Israeli gay men who chose to become fathers (by means of adoption, surrogacy or co-parenting, as singles, couples or multi-parent families). Their narratives give both a temporal account, of how the gay community in Israel used to perceive child-bearing practices in the past, as well as an overview of the practices and social norms that are manifested in the community today. We show that initially, during the 1970s and 1980s, counter-hegemonic scripts evolved, rejecting the heteronormative ideal of natality. Later on, during the 1990s a second script involved separating parenthood from couple-based relationships and developing separate co-parenthood relationships. Since 2005, with the appearance of surrogacy as a medical, social and legal option, these previous discourses subsided and were replaced by the new couple-based fatherhood script. In a society that embraces child-bearing and medically assisted reproduction, surrogacy offered gay men the possibility of becoming a family ‘like any other’

Hegemony · Narrative · Political science · Scripting language · Sociology · Family Dynamics and Relationships · Gender Studies · Law · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Psychology · Reproductive Health and Technologies · Social Psychology