Latest news with #parenthood
ABC News
15 hours ago
- General
- ABC News
Debate grows over Australia's surrogacy laws as couples go overseas to find a baby
For Daniel and Michael Montgomery-Morgan, becoming parents wasn't easy. It took four years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring their daughter Spencer into the world. "We really questioned whether we're meant to be parents. It's not a quick process," Daniel said. Spencer, now seven months old, was born via a surrogate in Canada. "We didn't expect it would take us four years to have Spencer in our arms. [There were] lots of different things that we needed to do to accommodate the financial aspect of it." After initially looking in Australia, the couple had to go abroad to find their surrogate. "Unfortunately, we had three failed transfers, so we had to start again after two years of trying to have a baby," Michael said. He said there were multiple times when they wished their surrogate was in Australia. "When you're going through such an emotional journey … it's human nature to want to connect," Michael said. "That was a challenge for us and that's what was missing with us not being able to do this like we wanted to in Australia." For Bendigo couple Josh Paredes and Michael Vallejos, their one-year-old surrogate baby Elijah Miguel Parades-Vallejos was a miracle. "Elijah is the love of our life. He is the blessing from above. We are very thankful," Mr Vallejos said. Some of the Filipino couple's gratitude is for close friend Helyn Joy Lagman, who offered to carry their baby after one round of IVF. "We initially thought she was joking, so we ignored it. It took her three offers, then we thought, oh, she is actually serious," Mr Vallejos said. Ms Lagman already had two children of her own and said surrogacy was something she had always wanted to do and had offered to others. "I really wanted to bring something good to the world," she said. A growing number of Australian couples are going overseas to find a surrogate. According to the Australia and New Zealand Assisted Reproduction Database, 131 surrogacy babies were born in Australia and New Zealand in 2022. People working in the sector say the number could be higher. According to the Department of Home Affairs, 361 children born through international surrogacy arrangements acquired Australian citizenship in 2023-24, up from 222 in 2021-22. In Australia, commercial surrogacy — when a surrogate is paid — is illegal. Every state and territory has different laws relating to surrogacy but they all allow altruistic surrogacy, which means the surrogate's expenses are covered but no other profit or payment is made. According to the Department of Home Affairs, the United States is the most popular country for Australian couples to source surrogates, followed by Georgia, Canada, Colombia, Ukraine and Mexico. The Australian Law Review Commission is reviewing the nation's surrogacy laws and will consider how to reduce barriers to domestic altruistic surrogacy arrangements in Australia. Surrogacy lawyer Sarah Jefford believes commercial surrogacy should be allowed in Australia. "Everyone else is paid, including the lawyers, the counsellors and the clinicians," she said. Ms Jefford, who has been a surrogate, wants Australia's "patchwork" surrogacy laws managed under federal legislation. "I think uniform laws are crucial for making it more accessible but also making sure we don't have medical tourism within our own country," she said. However, some researchers and legal groups believe commercial surrogacy is unethical. Margaret Somerville, a professor of bioethics and law at the University of Notre Dame, Sydney, has researched surrogacy for decades. She said allowing commercial surrogacy in Australia would inevitably lead to exploitation. "The women who become a surrogate, they'll do it because they need the money," she said. In 2023, at a surrogacy clinic in Greece used by Australians, police arrested senior staff on charges of human trafficking, falsifying records and mistreating hundreds of women who had agreed to act as surrogates. Ten years earlier, commercial surrogacy laws in India were reversed after the discovery of so-called baby farms where 100 women were housed together for the duration of their pregnancies. A snap ban on commercial surrogacy was announced in Cambodia in 2016, resulting in the arrest of Australian nurse Tammy Davis-Charles and two Khmer associates. Ms Somerville acknowledges growing demand for surrogates, but fears introducing commercial surrogacy to Australia would put vulnerable women and children at further risk. "It's like slavery," she said. The Australian Law Reform Commission's (ALRC) review is considering issues like the complexity of surrogacy arrangements, inconsistencies in legislation and barriers to accessing surrogacy and gaining Australian citizenship for babies born abroad. This month, Queensland police confirmed they would not lay charges against a Brisbane couple who entered a $140,000 commercial surrogacy arrangement with an overseas company. Inquiries into the regulation and legislation of international and domestic surrogacy arrangements, including a 2016 House of Representatives standing committee, recommended commercial surrogacy remain illegal. New South Wales and South Australian reviews in 2018 also supported continued prohibition. The ALRC is taking submissions for its review of surrogacy laws until mid-July. The Montgomery-Morgans would love to see surrogacy become more accessible in Australia so more couples can become parents. "I think commercial surrogacy does have a place, with the right governance and controls," Daniel said. But they would want safeguards to prevent exploitation. "I would hate to see people exploited," he said. "There is a real risk of that."
Daily Mail
19 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS Teddy Swims welcomes his first child with girlfriend Raiche Wright as he shares adorable snaps of his newborn son
Teddy Swims has welcomed his first child with his girlfriend Raiche Wright as he shared an adorable snap of his newborn. The American singer-songwriter, 32, took to Instagram on Friday to share his happy news. '6.23.25 We love you lil man,' Teddy wrote as he shared a collection of black and white snaps of his baby boy.
Yahoo
a day ago
- General
- Yahoo
What queer parenthood taught me about grief and grace
Since I was a tiny child, I knew I wanted to be a parent. Through my days of discovering my queerness, exploring polyamory, and generally rejecting society's expectations of how relationships "should" go, the plan of becoming a parent never faded. I was initially drawn to the work of midwifery because it combined many of the things I was passionate about: humans getting in touch with our animal-ness, the power inherent in bodies assigned female at birth, and the sacred transition into parenthood. When I met someone who already had a child and was planning to have another one as a solo parent by choice, I jumped in headfirst. We fell in love and decided to do the queer family experience together. Over time, the kids she birthed became mine; some years later, I gave birth to another. We fully blended our families. Then, when our youngest child was two, we separated. I found myself floored with grief. I hadn't expected my journey in family and parenthood to be so complex and full of the unexpected. Grief manifests in various ways in queer and non-traditional family building. Many mourn that we can't procreate with the person we love and want to parent. I work with clients who find their "perfect" identified (known) donor. Then, they discover that they have poor sperm quality, meaning they need to start the donor search process from scratch. People experience fertility challenges, miscarriage, and pregnancy loss. There is also grief that the family of the non-gestational parent won't accept their child since they are not biologically related. Many of us feel grief that we cannot shield our children, or future children, from the suffering of the world. So many people, myself included, experience immense hope at the beginning of our family-building journeys. It's beautiful, hopeful, and exciting to make the choice, especially in today's political environment, as a queer person, to grow and nurture the next generation. Parenting is a revolutionary act that brings healing potential to our lives, lineages, and communities. And it's some of the most challenging work in the world, especially in a society that doesn't support parents in general, let alone parents who belong to the LGBTQ+ community. When we acknowledge that grief is often a part of this queer family-building journey, we become stronger and more resilient in handling the curveballs that this process throws our way. It also helps people normalize grief and not feel that it is some sort of personal failure if and when some aspect of growing their family becomes harder than originally anticipated. In their book Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community, Camille Barton talks about how inherent grief is to the human experience. Those of us raised in Western societies are conditioned to turn away from our grief, which is a necessary and essential part of our humanity. Turning away from grief, they explain, causes us to feel numb and disconnected from ourselves and our bodies. We need to learn to allow ourselves to grieve to feel joy, connection, and even pleasure. When I support people through the beginning of their family-building process, I encourage them to anticipate that it will likely be a challenging journey. I tell my clients: you may need to let go of many things you become attached to, even before your first attempt, again and again. This process may test you and, if applicable, your relationship, in many unexpected ways. And the more you can see these trials as part of your own maturation and skill-building journey towards parenthood, the more able you will be to meet the moment with courage and an openness to Grow. When we normalize the reality that grief is often a part of this family-building process, it helps us build resilience in ourselves, our relationships, and the broader communities that will harbor our families as they evolve and change. And what a gift this is to our future children. Marea GoodmanSand and Stone Media for Marea Goodman Voices is dedicated to featuring a wide range of inspiring personal stories and impactful opinions from the LGBTQ+ community and its allies. Visit to learn more about submission guidelines. Views expressed in Voices stories are those of the guest writers, columnists, and editors, and do not directly represent the views of The Advocate or our parent company, equalpride. This article originally appeared on Advocate: What queer parenthood taught me about grief and grace
The Guardian
a day ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Parenting is not just for pronatalists: the progressive case for raising kids
A few months ago, I was at a playground just a couple of blocks from our home in Washington DC, when a mom I barely knew turned to me mid-conversation and said: 'I think I might be the deep state.' The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. It was mid-March. Doge was tearing through the city, dismantling federal agencies at dizzying speed. Donald Trump, re-elected on a promise to 'shatter the deep state', had fired thousands of longtime civil servants in his first weeks back in office. The job cuts have been top of mind in Washington. Most of my kids' playdates these days begin with nap schedule updates and end in quiet dread. It isn't just jobs. International students are being deported. Measles outbreaks are creeping closer. The climate crisis is at our doorstep: blizzards one week, wildfires the next. Every day brings fresh threats to public safety, democracy and the planet itself. 'It makes you wonder,' she said as we pushed our daughters on the swings, 'what kind of world did we bring our kids into?' It's a question I can't stop thinking about. I've lived in and reported on parenting across five continents, and what continues to astonish me is how uniquely punishing early parenthood is in the west, especially for those most committed to building a fairer world. Progressives are rightly vocal about how hard it is to raise kids, but too often, we forget to make the case for why it's still worth it. In the face of so many overlapping crises, the decision to have children can feel reckless, or worse, like an act of denial. But parenting can also be something else entirely: a stubborn act of hope. Raising children offers a crash course in progressive values. It's a way of tying ourselves more deeply to the future, of feeling the stakes of climate change, inequality and injustice – not as distant headlines, but as urgent matters affecting someone whose lunch you just packed. By failing to make a case for children and families, the left has surrendered these issues to the pronatalist right. We've handed over the 'family values' agenda, allowing it to be defined by a rigid, exclusionary vision of parenthood. Project 2025, the policy blueprint shaping much of Trump's current agenda, pledges to 'restore' a Christian nationalist view of the family unit as 'the centerpiece of American life'. Figures such as JD Vance and Elon Musk, as well as the conservative Heritage Foundation, have declared childbearing a moral and civic duty. Some have even proposed medals and cash for mothers. At this year's March for Life, Vance called for 'more babies in the United States of America' and more 'beautiful young men and women' to raise them. When we see child rearing as a private project, we forget that many of the movements that shaped the left – civil rights, labour, climate justice – were powered by people who looked at the next generation and decided they were worth fighting for. In his most well-known speech, Martin Luther King Jr didn't just dream of a better world for himself, he dreamed that his four little children would grow up in a nation where they would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. His vision was rooted in legacy. That's what parenting does. It gives shape to our politics. It puts flesh on our ideals. It forces us to ask: what are we building and who is it for? Raising children doesn't distract from that work; it clarifies it. Of course, parenthood isn't the only path to caring about the future – but it makes it harder to look away. It compels us to feel the weight of policy decisions in our bones. It blows open our empathy and softens the edges of individualism. Suddenly, every child becomes your child. Every policy becomes personal. You start noticing the stroller-unfriendly sidewalks, the unaffordable summer camps, the lack of paid leave – not just for yourself, but for all parents. There's science behind this shift. Researchers have found that becoming a parent activates a 'parental caregiving network' in the brain, lighting up areas tied to empathy, emotional processing and social understanding. It happens in both mothers and fathers. For dads especially, the extent of this neurological change is closely tied to how much hands-on caregiving they do. In other words, caregiving rewires our brains to connect more, care more and notice the needs of others. At its best, parenting strengthens the very instincts progressives say they want to build society around. I've seen this empathy in action. Before I had kids, I was reporting on the Rio Olympics and walking the beach one night with a colleague, a mother of two, when we were approached by a group of children begging for money. I clutched my purse and walked faster. But my co-worker slowed down, took off her blazer and wrapped it around a shivering child about her son's age. 'Get home,' she said gently. 'Your mom is probably looking for you.' I could tell right away we were operating on different levels of empathy. She saw that child as an extension of her own kids. I wasn't there yet. But eventually, I got there, too. When I finally became a mother, I began to see stories I covered differently. Now, when I interview parents who've lost children to gun violence in Brazil's favelas, I understand their grief in a new way. I report with deeper urgency and deeper care, seeing myself in their shoes, and my children in theirs. This rewiring of the brain creates a political opening. It expands our sense of who counts as 'us'. It softens the boundary between self and other. In doing so, it changes how we interpret harm, not as something happening 'out there', but as something personal, urgent and unacceptable. Yet, the demands of caregiving can pull us away from political life. A 2022 UK study found that parenthood temporarily reduces political participation among mothers. The reason is obvious: we're exhausted. Calling your representatives between diaper changes feels impossible. I get it. Some days, I fantasize about deleting all my news apps, retreating into a cozy, apocalypse-adjacent bubble with my kids, and calling it a day. 'Generally, I think parents are the worst at advocating for themselves because they are just too damn tired. It's one more thing in the lives of people who already have too much expected of them,' Jennifer Glass, professor at the University of Texas's department of sociology and Population Research Center and an expert on parental happiness, told me. But parenting doesn't have to distract from political work. It can fuel it. When we do organize, our sharpened parental empathy can translate into political power. Around the world, it's progressive movements, often driven by the demands of parents, that have expanded what family support can look like. In Sweden, it was working mothers who pushed for what became the world's most generous parental leave system, eventually adding incentives for men to take their fair share. In Singapore, multigenerational bonds are built into policy: the government gives housing grants to families who live near grandparents and tax breaks to elders who help with childcare. In France, parents helped lead the 1968 protests that birthed a cooperative childcare system. But when progressives step back from family values, conservatives fill the void. This is not a uniquely American phenomenon. According to the United Nations, the share of countries with explicit pronatalist policies has nearly tripled since 1976. But these visions often center on traditional gender roles and narrow definitions of family, excluding anyone who doesn't fit the mold. We shouldn't let the only cultural narrative around parenting come from those who see it as a tool for enforcing hierarchy and control. Progressives must also fight for a say in the values shaping the next generation. A 2023 Pew survey found that 89% of teenagers raised by Democratic parents identify with or lean toward the Democratic party. For Republican parents, the number is nearly as high, at 81%. That suggests political identity is often passed down through environment and lived experience: what kids hear at the dinner table, what they see modeled at home and which communities shape their worldview. From there, each new generation brings fresh ideas about justice. Social progress doesn't only happen by changing the minds of the old; it happens through generational renewal. Throughout the country, youth raised in the shadow of mass shootings are leading the charge for gun reform. In Montana, young people took the government to court over climate change and won. In Sweden, Greta Thunberg sparked a global climate movement at 15. These movements exist because someone raised those children to believe they had not just the right, but the responsibility, to shape the world around them. But if we step back from parenting, or treat it as apolitical, we leave that space wide open. The right is more than ready to fill it. That's why they're fighting so hard to control what children are taught, which books they read, whose families are visible in their classrooms and which identities are allowed to exist. This is the moment for the left to reclaim family as a public good. Progressives shouldn't just defend the right to abortion, we must fight for people's ability to have families and raise them with dignity. That means paid leave, universal childcare, affordable healthcare and a livable planet. It also means rejecting the caricature that progressives are a party of 'childless cat ladies' while conservatives corner the market on family values. We are, and always have been, the natural home of pro-family policy. After all, children tether us to the future, but also to each other. Progressive values thrive in that space of interdependence, where no one is expected to go it alone. Caring for kids – whether as parents, educators, neighbors or policymakers – demands a communal ethic of care. I've seen this ethic in action across the world. While writing my book, Please Yell at My Kids, I spent years studying how families around the world raise children in community. In the Netherlands, children as young as eight walk themselves to school. Parents trust that if they need help, a community member will step in. In Denmark, babies nap unattended in strollers outside cafes – not because parents are careless, but because they trust the society around them. In Mozambique, where formal support systems often fail, mothers rely on each other for food, childcare and safety, transforming neighborhoods into extended families. These cultures aren't perfect, but they understand that raising a child isn't a private endeavor. It's a collective one. Some understandably hesitate to bring children into a world on fire. Others worry that parenting means stepping back from activism or ambition. But for many, becoming a parent doesn't dilute that drive; it crystallizes it. Climate change isn't just a policy failure – it's the air your child will breathe. Gun violence isn't abstract – it's a possibility you carry every time you drop them off at school. The broken systems you tolerated suddenly become intolerable when your child has to navigate them, too. This isn't about idealizing parenthood. It's about refusing to surrender this human experience to those who would use it to divide us. So yes, the world is on fire. But refusing to bring children into it won't put the flames out. What may, perhaps, is raising a generation bold enough to rebuild it. Marina Lopes is the author of Please Yell at My Kids: What Cultures Around the World Can Teach You About Parenting in Community, Raising Independent Kids, and Not Losing Your Mind, out now
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Below Deck stars Gael Cameron and Nathan Gallagher welcome first child... nine months after rekindling romance
Gael Cameron and Nathan Gallagher, who first met while working as deckhands on season nine of Below Deck Mediterranean, have welcomed their first child. On Wednesday, the couple announced the exciting news on Instagram as they shared an adorable photo of themselves curled up in a hospital bed cradling their newborn son. 'Welcome to the world my love,' Cameron captioned the sweet shot, uploaded to her Instagram Story. '3.562 kg and 52 cm' — or 7.8 lbs and 20 inches.' She continued: 'The love it took to bring you into this world. Couldn't be more perfect.' Gallagher already seemed to be settling into his new role as a dad while gushing on his own Instagram that it was 'time to soak up every minute' of his baby boy. 'Thanks to everyone who sent us a message, it's so difficult to get through them all, but we appreciate you all so much!' he gushed. 'Some fans are just the sweetest!' Cameron also took a moment after giving birth to express her gratitude for all the well wishes. 'Hey guys, I just wanted to jump on here real quick and say a massive thank you for all the beautiful words you have been sending,' she said in a video. 'It is day two of postpartum, but I think that day four of no sleep. So, I'm not 100 percent myself yet and I don't know if I'll be able to get back to everyone. But I will try.' The reality star gushed that she was 'super excited' to be coming home with their new addition. In May, Cameron told People she had a 'mix of emotions' after finding out she was pregnant. 'I was excited, a little scared, but mostly just overwhelmed with happiness,' Cameron explained. 'It felt surreal in the best way, like everything was about to change in the best way possible.' The couple first revealed they had a little one on the way in late March. A month later they shared footage from their beachside gender reveal party as they discovered they were expecting a boy. Last September, the pair revealed they reconciled after a brief split. At the time, they cited distance and time zone issues as contributing factors of their breakup as Cameron was based in Ireland and Gael was living in Australia. But on September 23, after the Below Deck Med season 9 finale aired, they shared a photo of them kissing with the caption: 'R3KINDL3D.' The pair had instant chemistry upon meeting at work, even though she had a boyfriend. After her relationship ended, midway through filming Below Deck Mediterranean, she quickly rebounded with Gallagher.
