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MEDIA REVIEWS
Birthing a Mother: The Surrogate Body
and the Pregnant Self
Elly Teman. University of California Press, 2010
384 pp, $21.95, pb
This outstanding book, Birthing a Mother: The Surro-
gate Body and the Pregnant Self, winner of the 2010
Eileen Basker Prize, the most esteemed in medical
anthropology, addresses the experiences of surrogate
mothers and intended parents involved in gestational
surrogacy agreements. It is based on ethnographic
research in Israel, but the excellent and highly revealing
cross-cultural comparisons woven throughout the book
highlight both the cultural particularities and the com-
monalities of the human experience of surrogacy wher-
ever the participants may live. The writing is absolutely
wonderful—the book flows almost like a novel and is
engaging from start to finish.
The book is divided into four parts. The first part
focuses on the surrogates and the way they think about
their body and the baby. Teman deals deftly and skill-
fully with the feminist critiques of surrogacy as the patri-
archal colonization and mechanization of women’s
bodies, using the surrogates’ own words and metaphors
to describe how they themselves reject these critiques
and find empowerment in the surrogacy experience, in
‘‘birthing a mother’’ and a family through their contribu-
tion of a child. The surrogates create a ‘‘body-map’’ to
distinguish what is theirs in their body and what is the
purview of the intended family. They use this mapping
to manage their psychological and emotional disengage-
ment from the baby and their equal and intense engage-
ment with the intended mother, whom they seem to
incorporate as literally part of their bodies right up until
the moment of birth.
The ability Teman’s surrogate interviewees demon-
strate to avoid bonding with the babies they carry is
astonishing. Teman shows how the need for emotional
closeness is transferred to the intended mother, with
whom surrogates develop intense bonds and are willing
to share intimate aspects of their pregnancies and their
lives. She describes the ‘‘red line’’ the surrogates draw
on their bodies—on one side of the line is that part of
their bodies that belongs uniquely to them, on the
other is the gestational side, to which the intended
parents, according to the surrogates’ beliefs, ‘‘have
rights’’—including the right to make them undergo
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prenatal tests and to prevent them from taking risks (like
riding a motorcycle). On the other side of the red line,
which each surrogate draws individually into her body-
map, the surrogate may refuse to stop having sex with
her partner during the pregnancy or to give up favorite
comfort foods like cola, even though they may not be
best for the baby. Teman shows how those surrogates
who do not draw and honor this red line may suffer from
‘‘over-control’’ by their intended couple and may be
emotionally scarred from the experience, whereas those
who do draw and adhere to that red line remain emotion-
ally healthy and proud of their ‘‘gift of life.’’
Parts 2 and 3 focus on the intended mother and on the
surrogate-intended mother relationship. Teman does an
excellent job of describing the ‘‘pregnancy experiences’’
of the intended mother and all the ways in which the sur-
rogate and intended mother jointly produce a ‘‘shifting
body’’ that moves in their minds as their surrogacy pro-
ceeds. Relationships between intended mother, father,
and surrogate are thoroughly explored—the ones that
work (in terms of leaving both groups happy) and the
ones that don’t, and what makes the difference. She
shows clearly how surrogates overcome even the finan-
cial aspect of ‘‘selling a child’’ by insisting and experi-
encing that they are giving the intended parents a ‘‘gift
that is beyond price.’’ If the intended parents do not rec-
ognize the value of this gift and express that recognition
to the surrogate, she is left with trauma. When they do
acknowledge her efforts, she is left empowered, a hero-
ine, in her own eyes and those of her family.
Especially interesting is Teman’s discussion of the
role of hospital policies and the medical system’s
response to the question of anomalous maternity that
surrogacy produces. The Israeli hospitals routinely
crown the intended mother as ‘‘the mom,’’ even hospi-
talizing her in the maternity ward with her baby while
the surrogate recovers from delivery in the gynecology
ward! Also fascinating are the differences between the
national policies in the United States, the United King-
dom, and Israel toward surrogacy—in the United States,
women can choose whomever they like to be their surro-
gates, including relatives; in Israel, the state prohibits
women from choosing relatives as surrogates. In the
United Kingdom, surrogacy cannot become a profit-
making industry, as it is in the United States. In Israel,
the state pays for all of the medical expenses and over-
sees screening of all participants. Teman clearly shows
why these extreme policy differences exist, explaining
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them in terms of the culture and value system of each
country and how these differences affect technology
use.
Part 4 of the book, about the surrogate’s quest and
‘‘hero’s journey,’’ is especially exciting, dramatic, and
informative. Although surrogates elsewhere also pro-
duce heroic narratives, the Israeli surrogates’ stories
reveal their commitment to nation-building and their
experiences of soldiering and war as inextricably linked
to their surrogacy experience, which is heavily fraught
with danger, difficulties to overcome, agency to demon-
strate, and real heroism in the face of many obstacles.
The ‘‘hero’s journey’’ emerges as an apt metaphor for
the very real battles the surrogates face and the obstacles
they overcome through their own personal commitment
and determination, as does their feeling that they are
‘‘angels.’’
Teman’s book meets the highest standards of scholar-
ship and clear, engaging writing, and presents the
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subject in a narrative form that keeps the reader excited
to be turning the pages. This is long-term fieldwork at its
best. The book also has the practical, applied, public,
and very useful ability to serve as a kind of ‘‘how to’’
guide for potential surrogates, intended parents, and the
health workers who care for them. One can easily learn
from it what works and what does not in the surrogate-
baby-intended parent relationship, and how to maximize
and make healthful, and not damaging, the experience
for all parties.
Robbie Davis-Floyd, PhD
Senior Research Fellow, Dept. of Anthropology,
University of Texas Austin, 8526 Adirondack Trail,
Austin, Texas, 78759, USA