When Facebook plays matchmaker: Interactions within an online community dedicated to surrogacy and egg donation

Abstract

Objective: This article explores the interactions and digital practices of people involved in an online community dedicated to surrogacy and egg donation in the province of Québec, Canada. Background: Sociodigital networks, with the emergence of platforms such as Facebook groups, provide a space to discuss assisted reproduction, seek advice, offer support, and connect with other Internet users to negotiate and establish a third-party reproduction agreement. Method: This study is based on a long-term ethnographic field within a Facebook group, and individual interviews conducted with 22 members of this community. The data collected were analyzed inductively according to the principles of grounded theory. Results: Three themes emerged from the online interactions and stories of the women we met. First, the publication of intended parents' testimonies is the preferred method of finding a surrogate or egg donor match and is reminiscent of the language and rituals associated with dating sites. Second, the expression of legal and financial concerns occupies a prominent place in the group discussions, given the lack of a legislative framework in this Canadian province and the variability of interpretations of the current legal framework. Third, the choice made by surrogates and donors to be involved in an online community is not random and sometimes indicates of a desire to Author note: The MATRICES study (Maternités assistées par tierces reproductrices) has benefitted from financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Réseau québécois en études féministes (RéQEF), and the Faculty of Social Sciences at Université Laval. The first wave of data collection (2016)(2017)(2018) obtained approval from the Université de Montréal Arts and Sciences Research Ethics Board, while the second wave (2021) was authorized by the Université Laval Research Ethics Board. This article is a revised and updated version of a book chapter from the edited book Perspectives internationales sur la gestation pour autrui: expériences des personnes concernées et contextes d'action published in 2018 by the Presses de l'Université du Québec.

Doing family online: (In)formal knowledge circulation, information‐seeking practices, and support communities

“…Gender, social pressure, and social control Online groups may also produce forms of social pressure and social control on their members that push them to conform to normative ideologies. As several articles in this special issue show, parenting is deeply affected by these new vectors of normative ideologies (see Lavoie & Côté, 2023;Lee, 2023;Longo, 2023;Scheibling & Milkie, 2023;Vivion & Malo, 2023). Online blogs addressed to fathers, mothers, or both parents reproduce and spread certain ideologies around "good" ways to behave as parents (Das, 2017), which are gendered and tied to "intensive mothering" (Hays, 1996).…”

“…If these online entities sometimes follow and support governmental guidelines about nutrition, sleeping patterns, and health (Vivion & Malo, 2023), social media affords their members greater control over their decisions and a space free of institutional intermediaries (nurses, social workers). In this regard, Lavoie and Côté's (2023) article shows how individuals hoping to become parents, surrogates, and egg donors in Quebec, often turn to Facebook groups to liaise and find a "match" based on trust, away from medicalized and legal contracts provided by agencies. For surrogates, being able to choose the parents for whom they will carry a child means having more control over their own bodies and the terms and conditions of the relationship, in a context of complex and inadequate parental recognition procedures.…”