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This book examines the ways in which Westerners create families through private, market processes. Michele Bratcher Goodwin and a group of contributing experts explore how financial interests, aesthetic preferences, pop culture, children's needs, race, c
Cambridge University Press
April 2010
On Sale: March 31, 2010
337 pages ISBN: 0521735106 EAN: 9780521735100 Paperback
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Non-Fiction
From Michael Jackson and Madonna to Nadya Suleman and Jon
and Kate Gosselin, creating families can no longer be
described by heterosexual reproduction in the intimacy of a
couple's home and the privacy of their bedroom. On the
contrary, babies can be brought into families through
complex matrixes involving lawyers, coordinators,
surrogates, "brokers," donors, sellers, and
endocrinologists, and without any traditional forms of
intimacy. Mostly, these baby acquisitions are legal, but in
some cases black markets are involved. In direct response to the need and desire to parent, men,
women, and couples - gay and straight - have turned to
viable, alternative means: baby markets. The marketplace for
creating families spans transnational borders and
encompasses international adoptions with exorbitant fees
attached to the purchasing of ova and sperm and the leasing
of wombs. For as much as these processes are in public view,
rarely do we consider them for what they are: baby markets.
This book examines the ways in which Westerners create
families through private, market processes. From homosexual
couples skirting Mother Nature by going to the assisted
reproductive realm and buying the sperm or ova that will
complete the reproductive process, to Americans traveling
abroad to acquire children in China, Korea, or Ethiopia,
market dynamics influence how babies and toddlers come into
Western families. Equally, some contributors push back at
the notion that markets appropriately describe contemporary
adoptions and assisted reproduction. Michele Bratcher
Goodwin and a group of contributing experts explore how
financial interests, aesthetic preferences, pop culture,
children's needs, race, class, sex, religion, and social
customs influence who benefits from and who is hurt by the
law and economics of baby markets.
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