Who carries the baby? How lesbian couples in the Netherlands choose birth motherhood

• Published date: 01 February 2023
• Author: Allison Geerts,Marie Evertsson
• Date: 01 February 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12726

RESEARCH

Who carries the baby? How lesbian couples in the

Netherlands choose birth motherhood

Allison Geerts|Marie Evertsson

Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

Correspondence

Allison Geerts, Swedish Institute for Social

Research, Stockholm University,

Universitetsvägen 10F, 106 91 Stockholm,

Sweden.

Email: allison.geerts@sofi.su.se

Funding information

H2020 European Research Council, Grant/

Award Number: COG_2017-771770;

European Union; Swedish Research Council

for Health, Working Life and Welfare, Grant/

Award Number: 2014-2347; Stockholm

University

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of the study is to contribute to an

understanding of the cultural and normative meaning of

birth motherhood and how lesbian couples decide who

carries the child.

Background: The decision of who carries the child is cen-

tral in lesbian family-making, carrying consequences for

life after birth. Even so, it has been relatively overlooked

in research. Drawing from the sociology of personal life

and Park’s (2013) conceptualization of monomaternalism,

we study how informants consider and decide birth

motherhood.

Method: Semistructured interviews with both partners in

21 pregnant lesbian couples in the Netherlands were the-

matically analyzed.

Results: The meaning of birth motherhood was ambiva-

lent, linked to femininity, socially recognized motherhood,

and biogenetic imaginaries. In couples where both wanted

to carry, age, which carried different symbolic meanings,

was a powerful tiebreaker.

Conclusion: Our study shows how the monomaternalist

norm shapes conceptualizations of birth motherhood.

Desires to experience pregnancy are strong for many.

Referring to age can be a way for couples to defuse ten-

sion, but it can also be a resource drawn upon to close fur-

ther negotiations.

Author note: We thank our colleagues at the Swedish Institute for Social Research for feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Specifically, we extend our gratitude to Madeleine Eriksson, Ylva Moberg, and Maaike van der Vleuten, as well as Eva Jaspers (Utrecht

University) and Anna Lund (Stockholm University). The manuscript also benefitted from feedback received during an oral presentation

at the European Sociological Association (ESA) meeting in September 2021. This project has received funding from the European

Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, awarded to Marie Evertsson(Grant

agreement NO 771770).

Received: 31 March 2021Revised: 13 October 2021Accepted: 15 February 2022

DOI: 10.1111/fare.12726

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits

use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or

adaptations are made.

© 2022 The Authors. Family Relations published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of National Council on Family Relations.

176 Family Relations. 2023;72:176–194.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fare

Implications: Our study carries implications for policy

makers, health care workers, and mothers-to-be. Schol-

arly, it illuminates the ways in which motherhood, in its

various forms, is perceived and recognized.

KEYWORDS

decision-making, fertility, gender, LGBTQ, motherhood, pregnancy

So yeah …we talked about it a lot and did not talk about it a lot as well, because

emotions ran too high, because you could not talk about it anymore, because both

of us wanted it so much (…) You cannot keep having that conversation, but in the

end, you have to make a choice, because you want to start a family. In our relation-

ship, this has been the hardest decision to make.(Karin, 32)

Sitting at the kitchen table in their suburban home, near one of Netherlands’biggest cities,

Karin recounted the way she and her wife struggled to make an unavoidable decision in their

journey to parenthood: Who would carry the child? Pregnancy through artificial insemination

has become an increasingly common way for lesbian couples to start a family

(e.g., Dunne, 2000). If both have the ability to carry children, prospective mothers are faced

with the unique choice of who will carry and give birth to the child; a choice that raises ques-

tions on the role of genetics for constructing kinship, the desirability of pregnancy, and how

biological motherhood might affect their mothering and motherhood experience later on.

As indicated above, birth mother choice can be characterized by high emotional stakes in

lesbian couples and a possible source for distress and strain in the relationship (Chabot &

Ames, 2004; Goldberg, 2006). The choice is also consequential for different aspects of family

life later on. The division of household labor has been shown to shift after birth, oftendis-

advantaging the birth mother (Bos & Gartrell, 2020), potentially contributing to employment

and income differences within couples. On the other hand, non-birth mothers have been shown

to struggle with the lack of recognition received for their motherhood from outsiders

(Pelka, 2009) and birth motherhood can function as a power resource within the relationship

(Moore, 2008).

Currently, relatively little is known about how lesbian couples choose who carries the child

and what we know is largely gleaned from retrospective qualitative studies on the path to preg-

nancy as a whole (e.g., Chabot & Ames, 2004). Few have focused exclusively on birth mother

choice (Boye & Evertsson 2021; Malmquist & Nieminen, 2021). Drawing on the sociology of

personal life (Smart, 2007) and the perspective of queering motherhood (Park, 2013), we, first,

explore the meanings lesbian and queer women attach to birth motherhood and how they are

shaped by existing narratives on motherhood and femininity. We use the terms birth mother

and non-birth mother as we are interested in the physical and social implications of being preg-

nant and giving birth. Although the birth mother can have a genetic connection to the child,

this is not necessarily the case (discussed further below). Second, we investigate how lesbian

couples describe how they decided which partner would carry the child, examining the motives

couples rely on and what functions as power resources in couples’decision-making, focusing on

couples with conflicting interests (e.g., both desiring to be the birth mother or wishing to

avoid it).

We relied on qualitative, semistructured interviews with both partners of 21 lesbian couples

in the Netherlands that are expecting their first child, thus studying birth mother choice close in

time to when they made the choice and before the transition to parenthood colors their

accounts. Separate interviews were conducted to assure that equal voice is given to each partner

and each participant has the space to develop their narratives (Zarhin, 2018). It also allowed us

CHOOSING THE BIRTH MOTHER IN DUTCH LESBIAN COUPLES177