{"id":149589,"date":"2025-03-10T10:10:35","date_gmt":"2025-03-10T14:10:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/?p=149589"},"modified":"2025-03-10T10:16:11","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T14:16:11","slug":"the-instant-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/2025\/03\/the-instant-family\/","title":{"rendered":"The Instant Family"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"first\">FROM\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/2011\/01\/a-tyranny-that-smiles\/\"><strong>a 2011<\/strong> post<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p class=\"first\" style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Melanie Thernstrom, the daughter of neoconservative authors Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/01\/02\/magazine\/02babymaking-t.html?ref=magazine&amp;pagewanted=all\">has written of\u00a0her experience<\/a> hiring an\u00a0egg donor and two different\u00a0surrogates\u00a0to provide her and her husband with an instant family of two\u00a0children.\u00a0This real-life version of Margaret Atwood\u2019s reproductive dystopia in\u00a0<em>The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em>\u00a0is told with\u00a0a confusing blend of self-awareness and self-deceit. The absence of any blatant coercion in the many contractual arrangements Thernstrom and her husband, Michael Callahan, made with others, including with the woman who supplied breast milk, is chillingly representative of technocratic\u00a0liberalism.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Liberal society\u00a0blandly draws people in with a system of material rewards and the appearance of mutual necessity. Thernstrom met with the donor and surrogates in coffee shops, where they\u00a0held friendly chats and\u00a0cheerily deliberated.\u00a0Everyone had something to gain\u00a0but\u00a0all self-interest could be couched in altruistic terms. The donors\u00a0only wanted to help. They weren\u2019t looking for money. Thernstrom only wanted to do something utterly natural \u2013 have a family \u2013 and do the best for her marriage. She wasn\u2019t shopping for children in the way one might shop for a car. <!--more--><span id=\"more-18821\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Again, it appeared, because there was no coercion involved, because\u00a0all was conducted on friendly terms\u00a0and substantial sums of money were\u00a0given in exchange for biological services, that Thernstrom and her husband had not in any way mistreated the other parties. But this appearance is false. The offer of substantial money\u00a0for \u201cgestational services\u201d of any kind\u00a0<em>is<\/em>\u00a0a form of coercion. It\u2019s soft coercion, holding out temptation to the stupid, selfish and weak.<\/p>\n<p>Some interesting comments follow the post and I corrected the suggestion of &#8220;coercion.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FROM\u00a0a 2011 post: Melanie Thernstrom, the daughter of neoconservative authors Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom,\u00a0has written of\u00a0her experience hiring an\u00a0egg donor and two different\u00a0surrogates\u00a0to provide her and her husband with an instant family of two\u00a0children.\u00a0This real-life version of Margaret Atwood\u2019s reproductive dystopia in\u00a0The Handmaid\u2019s Tale\u00a0is told with\u00a0a confusing blend of self-awareness and self-deceit. The absence of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149589"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149598,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149589\/revisions\/149598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkinghousewife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}