Women in the developing world who are paid to bear other people's children test the emotional limits of the international service economy. In his 2007 book, Supercapitalism, Robert B. Reich argues that while industrial and clerical jobs could be outsourced to cheaper labor pools abroad, service jobs would stay in America. But Reich didn't count on First World clients flying to the global South to find low-cost retirement care or reproductive services. The Akanksha clinic is just one point on an ever-widening two-lane global highway that connects poor nations in the Southern Hemisphere to rich nations in the Northern Hemisphere, and poorer countries of Eastern Europe to richer ones in the West. A Filipina nanny heads north to care for an American child. A Sri Lankan maid cleans a house in Singapore. A Ukrainian nurse's aide carries lunch trays in a Swedish hospital. Marx's iconic male, stationary industrial worker has been replaced by a new icon: the female, mobile service worker. We have grown used to the idea of a migrant worker caring for our children and even to the idea of hopping an overseas flight for surgery. As global service work grows increasingly personal, surrogacy is the latest expression of this trend. Nowadays, a wealthy person can purchase it all -- the egg, the sperm, and time in the womb. "A childless couple gains a child. A poor woman earns money. What could be the problem?" asks Dr. Nayna Patel, Akanksha's founder and director. But despite Patel's view of commercial surrogacy as a straightforward equation, it's far more complicated for both the surrogates and the genetic parents. Like nannies or nurses, surrogates perform "emotional labor" to suppress feelings that could interfere with doing their job. Parents must decide how close they are willing (or able) to get to the woman who will give birth to their child. As science and global capitalism gallop forward, they kick up difficult questions about emotional attachment. What, if anything, is too sacred to sell?
In his 2007 book, Supercapitalism, Robert B. Reich argues that while industrial and clerical jobs could be outsourced to cheaper labor pools abroad, service jobs would stay in America. But Reich didn't count on First World clients flying to the global South to find low-cost retirement care or reproductive services. The Akanksha clinic is just one point on an ever-widening two-lane global highway that connects poor nations in the Southern Hemisphere to rich nations in the Northern Hemisphere, and poorer countries of Eastern Europe to richer ones in the West. A Filipina nanny heads north to care for an American child. A Sri Lankan maid cleans a house in Singapore. A Ukrainian nurse's aide carries lunch trays in a Swedish hospital. Marx's iconic male, stationary industrial worker has been replaced by a new icon: the female, mobile service worker.
We have grown used to the idea of a migrant worker caring for our children and even to the idea of hopping an overseas flight for surgery. As global service work grows increasingly personal, surrogacy is the latest expression of this trend. Nowadays, a wealthy person can purchase it all -- the egg, the sperm, and time in the womb. "A childless couple gains a child. A poor woman earns money. What could be the problem?" asks Dr. Nayna Patel, Akanksha's founder and director.
But despite Patel's view of commercial surrogacy as a straightforward equation, it's far more complicated for both the surrogates and the genetic parents. Like nannies or nurses, surrogates perform "emotional labor" to suppress feelings that could interfere with doing their job. Parents must decide how close they are willing (or able) to get to the woman who will give birth to their child.
As science and global capitalism gallop forward, they kick up difficult questions about emotional attachment. What, if anything, is too sacred to sell?
