Gestational surrogacy: Nature and culture in kinship

Anthropological writing about the new reproductive technologies has focused on how they undermine presumed links between nature and culture in kinship. Surrogate motherhood in particular is said to show that "natural facts" serve as symbolic resources to facilitate choice, a key value of Western culture. This work has generated important insights into contemporary discourse about the social and cultural implications of reproductive technology. However, treating nature as a cultural domain exacerbates the tendency to divorce kinship from biology. An analysis of the stated motives of women who become gestational surrogates is presented here to support an argument that a focus on emotion, and its manipulation, can help anthropologists to better integrate human nature and culture in the study of kinship.