Brian Dowling and Arthur Gourounlian expecting first baby.

🤣

You're asking the wrong poster

It’s not just attention seeking celebrities who use their children for publicity and attention .

Whole world wants to be approved and liked now. It’s rampant everywhere. Very little today is sacred, sentimental, private and dignified.

The baby is only a few days old. Maybe Brian and partner won’t be having this child as part of their celebrity lifestyle. Time will tell.

Not to mention the baby, who is programmed to want her mother, to bond and nurse etc. Being separated from all she's ever known at birth is traumatic, and could very well lead to some detrimental effects when it comes to attachment

God, I remember the baby blues. The name really doesn't do it justice tbh, it sounds like a minor thing but it really isn't. I couldn't stop crying and thinking I was just awful at everything! I can't imagine the feelings that would come up for a surrogate 😔

Our politicians like to make out that we are lagging behind the rest of the EU in not legislating for surrogacy, but there are only 5/6 countries in the EU that have done so. Of those, Greece is the only one that allows surrogacy and has stringent requirements (the court has to be satisfied that the commissioning mother is unable to carry a child for medical reasons and that the surrogate mother is medically and psychologically fit to carry the child and give it up).

Commercial surrogacy is banned in all of the EU (under article 3 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU), yet our politicians don't seem to want to acknowledge this, and have no problems with women outside the EU having fewer rights than women inside the EU and seem willing to ignore the potential for abuse in international surrogacy and the lack of any ability to ensure that whatever local protections are in place for surrogate mothers are actually being followed.

EU countries that have legislated for international surrogacy have banned it. French citizens who contract an international surrogate will never be recognised as the parents of the child (meaning the child cannot be granted French citizenship), are barred from adopting the child and can end up in prison for it.

I can understand the logic behind allowing altruistic surrogacy, that someone can help family/friends out, but I can also see that it could lead to a confusing situation for the child, and potential ill-will between the surrogate and the child's parents, especially if there is a discrepancy between how the surrogate mother would raise the child and how the parents are raising the child.

The argument that loving parent(s) who don't include the gestational carrier (or mother as we would generally refer to her) are better than no parents or abusive parents is definitely appropriate for adoption, but it is less meaningful when talking about a child that is purposely born into that situation. In any debate on surrogacy (and on adoption) the overriding factor should be what is in the best interest of any potential child. The current situation is that it could be decided that parents are not suitable candidates to adopt, but if they have enough money they can have a child created and brought back to the country to be theirs.

Thanks for the warning.

The sister clearly has very little to be doing with her time or is desperate for money.

Me for the pub again.

"Trailblazing"? Surrogacy is not new - it's happened before - many, many times before... .

For the people worried about "clicks": do you feel that way about every so-called celebrity baby, or just these ones?

That's a lovely name to saddle her with...

Babies. Every animal species that every existed could have them. What exactly is the news story here ? Oh they are selling the baby on social media to earn some kind of fame and money off that. How nice.

Strong statements but mostly guff really. Thankfully given the number of studies on gay parents which show children doing as well as - and in some few studies even better than more traditional counterparts - there is little to no reason to think anything you said above is true and/or relevant and/or important.

Over the years especially around the gay marriage referendum I heard people declare statements like yours over and over but never with any supporting evidence. Nothing has changed it seems.

I am yet however to find any actual example of types of "care" that one person can provide the other magically can not. Emotional. Physical. Or anything else. Nor have I seen anyone get into specifics of "bonds" and describe the differences which are somehow precluded.

In fact simple reliance on the word "different" is the hope that that word will carry the weight of the claim. But simply being "different" (even if we accept it is) does not mean "better" or "worse" or "ideal" or "less ideal" or anything else. Different is just that. Different. No more. No less. Biological connection to your two original parents in no way guarantees care or bond or anything else in fact.

Finally the word "need" is a strong one. Yet despite being the strongest of the claims it is the one with the least evidence. There is a world full of children grown up with single parents - step parents - gay parents - no parents - more than two parents - and many appear to be absolutely fine. Or at least as fine as their traditional counterparts. So clearly there is no "need" there.

Probably the only thing we can say given all the evidence is that the parented children who struggle most are children of single parents. Which given the stresses of modern life makes a lot of sense. They do not "need" a second parent but it certainly is a more significant struggle to have only one and more ideal to have two. Or any gender.

Much respect to those single parents who make it work! My children live with three parents (each their own two and one more) and even we struggle at times. I can barely imagine doing it on my own!

Of course the studies showing this are often misused by people as evidence that a father or mother specifically is required. Which is not at all what those data/studies say. Evidence related to an entirely missing parent is not evidence related to a specifically missing gender of parent. And those people should not pretend that something was studied when in fact something entirely different was studied.