The Nation

Lots of “Baby Mamas”

Written by Cherise Ryan
May 10, 2008

10 Comments

New film Baby Mama, released the end of April, tells the story of a successful, single businesswoman who decides, at 37, to have a child. Unable to get pregnant herself, she allows a South Philly working girl to become her surrogate.

The film has already pulled in over $32 million at the Box Office, perhaps because it reflects the trend – seen everywhere from Hollywood to Newsweek – that motherhood is hip.

It seems that every other Hollywood star, from Nicole Kidman to Jessica Alba to Baby Mama’s Amy Poehler herself, is sporting a Versace-draped baby bump. Other women who put off having children to establish a career are suddenly realizing there is something missing and are trying to rectify it. Newsweek ‘s April 7^th cover story looks at couples who turn to surrogate mothers to bear their biological children, and “gestational carrier” mothers who use surrogacy to supplement family incomes.

Technology makes these late pregnancies easier: Millions of children have been born using in vitro fertilization, and more women in their 30s, 40s, and even 50s are getting pregnant using donor eggs from younger women.

All of this allows women to have children on demand, when and how they want them. Is this a renewed realization of “pro-life” vibes in our society, or simply another way of being “pro-choice”: Women can have children if it is what they want, when they want them?

While Hollywood is producing films like Baby Mama and last December’s drama Juno, the L.A. Times and other newspapers are reporting stories like these:

California’s ‘safe surrender’ program, allowing parents to leave unwanted newborns at fire stations and hospitals without penalty, has become an orphan, with little money and no state agency responsible for publicizing or overseeing it.

Homeless man finds newborn girl in trash bin, alive.

A 37-year-old taxi driver in Maryland was charged earlier this month with murdering a newborn. Days before, she’d been rushed to a hospital, bleeding — and denied being pregnant even though doctors found a placenta in her womb.

So, with motherhood becoming hip while stories of infanticide pop up in the papers, what should an onlooker think? Are more people seeing the value of new life? Or is it just about convenient motherhood?

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10 Comments to “Lots of “Baby Mamas””

1. by Megan 05.10.08 at 2:58 pm

I guess I’d be curious to know how many of these “hip” mamas really parent. It’s easy for them to be stylishly pregnant, have their photos taken with their beautiful babies and plastered on every magazine around and suddenly become the ideal image of motherhood.

But, as of course I’m sure you understand, motherhood is way much more than carrying a baby to term and giving birth. I wonder how many of these kids will grow up with fonder memories of their nannies than their own moms.

Maybe I’m just disgruntled because I want my own personal housekeeper too. *grin*
2. by Pauline 05.10.08 at 4:04 pm

I question whether the stories mentioned indicate any kind of change from the past, or simply are evidence of more information about more people being available to us than ever before.

Whether motherhood is “hip” or not among the rich and famous, it has always been very popular for most people I’ve known. And there have always been newborn children abandoned by parents who for whatever reason did not want them.
3. by Terry Pearson 05.10.08 at 4:10 pm

I think that a pro-life position is becoming more accepted by the main stream media.

Having a baby used to be shunned in Hollywood. In fact it was shunned across much of the liberal left.

In an awesome turn of events, babies are once again looked at as special in movies. I agree that we have to be careful with how our children are raised, but we also have to appreciate that Hollywood has begun to show child birth as an accepted and normal process.
4. by Cheryl D. 05.10.08 at 11:47 pm

Is having babies cool, or having a family? My sister has a neighbor who’s older and pregnant for the first, and according to another neighbor, the woman had said if she didn’t get pregnant this time, she was going to “quit trying.” (Oh, did I mention the woman is single, has no plans to marry the father, and doesn’t even live with him?)

My sister also pointed out that since her own newborn is now past six weeks, it’s standard now that he’d be in day care by now. Chilling! She even found an ad of a day-care provider that takes babies as young as two weeks!! These women aren’t “starting a family”; they’re merely “having a baby.” When a young infant gets the rags of his mother’s attention, one doesn’t have a family, but merely a baby one keeps at night.

I don’t mean to sound judgmental; I know some women end up widowed or abandoned by their husbands, and must do what they can to survive. Occasionally a married woman has to do so. But I find it sad when a woman would do this stuff volunrarily, especially with no father in the picture at all.
5. by Sawgunner 05.11.08 at 5:06 pm

Ours is a generation seeking “spirituality” while purposefully evading mention of Jesus’ exclusivity claims and rejecting altogether conventional church affiliation/attendance.

Now we see a segment in the spotlight which is enthralled with parenthood, yet unwilling to submit to the normal things which ordinarily lead to parenthood (or at least its possibility): abstinent platonic dating, covenantal lifelong marriage celebrated and upheld by the church as a Divinely created mechanism for nurturing children.
To quote Rev Wright, the chickens are coming home to roost??

As for surrogacy, I’ve been told that in India many dirt poor gals see surrogacy as a great way to bring income and escape the endemic third world povery.
6. by JohnV 05.12.08 at 12:38 am

Men are expendable; it’s been that way for some time now.
7. by Sawgunner 05.12.08 at 7:17 am

I’d be curious to get the view on all of this by author George Gilder. He wrote a book in the late seventies which surely needs an update: Sexual Suicide.
8. by llama 05.12.08 at 10:35 am

I’m wondering what if any of these children were tested and found less than perfect, say having Downs syndrome, that it would be just as easy and ‘hip’ to have them aborted.
9. by danwanli 05.12.08 at 10:17 pm

Perhaps if I could ask God about one possible mishap in the creation of Eve… Shouldnt there have been some sort of authorization system installed in the procreation sub-system? There are far too many children the result of horn-dogs scratching the itch instead of the result of a man and a woman choosing to engage thier soul, mind, and body for the next 18 years to the development of another human. Instead of healthy, responsible youths we get fat little porker girls that think its appropriate to wear skin tight pants and shirts that lets thier fat-roll hang out.
10. by Karen O 05.13.08 at 5:44 pm

Several months ago, Time had an article about “wet nurses”. The article said that there are women who want the benefits of breastfeeding for their babies, but don’t want to do it themselves because of their careers - no time for it.