We are family: Taiwanese gay fathers’ strategic normalisation decision-making in transnational reproduction

ABSTRACT

Taiwanese gay men have been seeking transnational assisted reproductive technologies and surrogacy to become fathers. Due to legal restrictions in Taiwan, overseas reproduction is the only legal way for them to have children. This study explores gay fathers’ reproductive strategies and rationales. The data came from in-depth interviews with 53 gay fathers and participant observation with an LGBTQ + family association. I analysed data thematically with the sociological approach ‘reproduction as a lens’ to elucidate how social norms influence gay men’s reproductive perceptions and practices and what social changes they brought to the understanding of family-making. The results show that gay fathers were aware of the ideal family model in heteronormative society, and they established strategies to justify their decision-making and make sense of their family-making. They shaped their gay fatherhood by affirming their decision to use third-party reproduction, deciding who would be the sperm provider, and selecting ovum donors with specific attributes. They also reconsidered the meaning of relatedness by embodying innovative ways of making kinship. This article argues that Taiwanese gay men became fathers through the dynamic processes of ‘strategic normalisation’ and ‘selective differentiation’, which secured their social acceptance and demonstrated diverse pathways of queer family-making.

KEYWORDS:

• Gay father families
• queer reproduction
• transnational surrogacy
• reproductive decision-making
• strategic normalisation
• fatherhood

Introduction

Taiwan became the first Asian country to legalise same-sex marriage in 2019. Despite the achievement of marriage equality, the reproductive rights of LGBTQ + people are still on hold. On 16 May 2023, the amendment to Article 20, Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 748, passed the third reading in the Judicial Yuan, which allows married same-sex couples to adopt children without biological relations. The gay fathers I interviewed who have either completed or embarked on their reproductive journey did not have this opportunity to achieve fatherhood. Before this legal change, joint adoption of non-biologically related children excluded same-sex couples. The only option for LGBTQ + couples to secure both parents’ parental rights is to seek assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) overseas to conceive children who are biologically related to one of the parents. Because surrogacy is illegal in Taiwan, gay men who want to become parents can only seek third-party reproduction (using donor eggs and gestational surrogacy) from outside the country.

Gay fathers were confronted with either curiosity, misunderstandings,or discriminationfrom society. They often encountered awkward moments of being questioned about their identities as gay fathers, the origin of their children, and their gay-dad families, which stood out from their heterosexual counterparts. This article explores Taiwanese gay fathers’ experiences of employing diverse strategies for justifying their reproductive trajectories and for finding their gay fatherhood a place in heteropatriarchal society.

Positioning Taiwanese gay father study in a transnational context

LGBTQ + people have been producing novel meanings of belongingness by making relatedness within and beyond traditional definitions of family boundaries (Weeks, 2007; Weeks, Donovan, & Heaphy, 2001; Weston, 1991). Previous studies on LGBTQ + families, however, were focused on the West,with the focus on lesbian mothers and gay fathers with their adopted children (Goodfellow, 2015; Lewin, 1993, 2006, 2009; Stacey, 2005, 2011). In the past two decades, the thriving application of ARTs and surrogacy services has gradually reshaped the pathways for LGBTQ + people to become parents. The increasing use of ARTs has changed people’s perceptions of kinship and relationships (Franklin, 2013; Rapp & Ginsburg, 2001; Strathern, 2005a, 2005b). Gay men started to use ARTs and surrogacy to have children that shared biogenetic connections with them (Green, Rubio, Rothblum, Bergman, & Katuzny, 2019; Smietana, 2016, 2019; Smietana, Thompson, & Twine, 2018).

Despite the rich literature on gay fatherhood, there is a lack of empirical studies on the non-Western context of gay fathers, especially in Asia, where marriage and reproductive rights are still limited. Due to the legal restrictions, Taiwanese gay fathers experienced a very different parenthood trajectory compared to their counterparts in Western countries, mostly via transnational third-party reproduction rather than non-biological adoption. This paper uses Taiwan as a case study not only to examine the strategies that gay fathers employed to justifytheir transnational reproduction and fatherhood but also to propose an analytical framework on gay fatherhood strategies for future research in other sociocultural contexts.

‘Normalising’ gay fatherhood

A bulk of scholarly literature proposes the creation of new forms of masculinity. For example, ‘emergent masculinities’ were evolved in the practices of fatherhood and throughthe application of ‘emergent technologies’, such as ARTs surrogacy (Inhorn, 2020). Marcia Inhorn (2020, p. 300) observed the ‘ongoing, relational and embodied masculine transformation’ in men seeking fertility treatments in the Middle East and argued that these new masculine practices signify the potentialities of rewriting the heterosexual-patriarchal hegemonic masculinities. Studies on Israeli gay fathers also showed that they achieved fatherhood through surrogacy and ‘created new social scripts’ of family making (Knoll & Moreno, 2020). Gay fathers have developed creative and flexible strategies to justify their reproductive decisions and their family formation. By doing so, they forged alternative paths towards fatherhood that did not seamlessly adhere to hegemonic heterosexual masculinity.

To analyse gay fathers’ strategies for using third-party reproduction to make families, I am indebted tothe literature as following. I adopted the analytical tool ‘reproduction as the lens’ (Franklin, 1997), which encouraged researchers to examine social norms and changes through studies on reproduction. I took this approach to analyse gay fathers’ reproductive decisions and strategies in the transnational context of attempting ARTs and surrogacy. Charis Thompson (2005) proposed the notion of normalisation strategies in utilising ARTs to make kin ties, in terms of how people mobilising both biological and social discourses to define kinship in the context of using donor eggs and/or surrogacy to conceive children. Building on Thompson’s work, Marcin Smietana (2016, p. 49, 58) examined ‘how far [gay fathers] draw upon normative family models during this process [of reproduction] and to what extent they transform them’ to argue that gay men employed strategies to cope with the internalised normative pressure and ‘fulfil their parenting aspirations, including gaining the privileges of social inclusion.’ Drawing on scholarly work, I develop ‘strategic normalisation’ and ‘selective differentiation’ as a set of negotiation processes to argue that gay fathers mobilised diverse strategies to make sense of their repro-journeys.

This paper explores Taiwanese gay fathers’ four reproductive decision-makings: opting for transnational surrogacy, choosing the sperm provider, selecting egg donors, and positioning the surrogate and egg donor in their gay father families. The analysis of each subtheme explained the ways in which gay men attempted to give rationales for their choices and gain recognition for their family formations. I argued that Taiwanese gay men experienced not only ‘strategic normalisation’ but also ‘selective differentiation’ processes on their pathways towards fatherhood.

Method and data

The approach adopted for this paper was qualitative sociological research by collecting first-hand data. From 2021 to 2023, Iengaged in over 40 in-person and online participant observations, including parenting workshops, reproductive seminars, and support groups, for which I worked and volunteered with a Taiwan-based LGBTQ + family association. I conducted 53 interviews with fathers (n = 22) and fathers-to-be (n = 31), who considered themselves gay men (n = 52) and bisexual in a same-sex relationship (n = 1), as well as ongoing follow-ups with a selection of key informants via emails. The participants were recruited via various strategies, including posting on online forums and my social media accounts, as well as through the association I have been working with. The relationship with my informants was based on trust within the LGBTQ + community, and I heartily appreciated their generosity to share their repro-journeys with me.

All the interviewed gay fathers received undergraduate degrees (n = 5) or advanced degrees (6 with medical training, 8 with postgraduate degrees, and 3 with PhD degrees) and considered themselves to be middle or upper-middle class regarding their income and occupations (technologies, finance, education, academia, medical industry, or physicians). Gay fathers were aged 31–35 (n = 5), 36–40 (n = 2), 41–45 (n = 9), 46–50 (n = 5), and above 50 (n = 1). Fathers-to-be were aged from the early 30s to the 50s. Among all participants, 43 of them were married or in a stable relationship, and 10 of them were single. Their reproductive destinations varied, including the US (n = 40), Thailand (n = 3), Russia (n = 1), and undecided (n = 9).

The duration of interviews ranges from 73 to 161 min, with an average of 91 min. Interview recordings were transcribed and translated following the verbatim method to capture the detailed narratives and accurately present the interlocutors’ meanings. The strategies I applied for analysing transcriptions, fieldwork notes, and research memos were initial and focused coding, followed by thematic analysis. The goal is to group similar fragments into clusters and connect each cluster to a concept related to the research question (how do gay fathers strategically normalise and differentiate their family making?) This project was approved by the ethical committee of the researcher's associated institution. To protect the participants, they were well informed that the interviews would be audio-recorded and would be quoted using pseudonyms without exposing any information that might be recognisable.

Diverse pathways towards gay fatherhood

The first cohort of Taiwanese gay men who went to the US for surrogacy was in 2013, and they passed on their experiences to the newcomers. Despite the fact that US surrogacy was an expensive option¹, the US remained the preferred reproductive destination for gay men who could afford it. Others, who had fewer economic resources, turned to Thailand and Russia.² According to their decisions about surrogacy destinations, gay fathers developed different strategies of normalisation and differentiation.

The dominant rationale for gay fathers to go to the US was driven by the moral consideration of surrogacy. They normalised this reproductive path by addressing the ethical aspects of the US surrogacy model and the legal system that gave protection to all parties involved.

The important thing is that surrogacy must be ethical. This is the core idea behind surrogacy practices in the US.

(Martin, late 40s, married, a father to a son and a daughter)

‘Ethical surrogacy’ as ‘strategic normalisation’ has become the mainstream pathway for gay men to justify theirchoice of US reproduction. The well-developed commercial surrogacy service in the US was the largest surrogacy market globally, and it represented the model of a responsible and ethical option for commissioning parents. Surrogacy in the US is a combination of both commercial partnership and friendship (Smietana, Rudrappa, & Weis, 2021). Gay fathers emphasised the commercial nature of the contract to ensure that their surrogates and themselves were legally protected under the regulation. They also emphasised mutual caring and respect with their surrogates and often kept in touch with them as family friends.

Gay men who went to Thailand and Russia selectively differentiated themselves from those who opted for the US and developed alternative discourse to normalise their choice. They pointed out the disparity of economic resources they had compared to those who went for US surrogacy and underlined thatthe ‘business mode’ in Russia is also a rational decision:

US surrogacy is too expensive. We cannot afford it. Thailand is not a bad option. To be honest, there is not enough legal protection, but they make it seem like we are doing business. We signed the contract and everything.

(Ben, late 30s, married, a father to two daughters and a son)

We prepaid the agency, and the clinic is the gatekeeper. This is good. We do not want to befriend the surrogate. Everything is well organised and crystal-clear [in Russia].

(Bibby, early 30s, married, a father to twin sons)

Russia and Thailand were more business-like and tempted to reduce interactions between each other. The various locales gay fathers chose for surrogacy led them towards diverse ways of normalising and differentiating their decisions. The US surrogacy programme allowed gay fathers to create a more intimate and family-like relationship with the surrogate, and they normalised their destination by addressing that it was the more ethical way to bind the surrogacy contract. Those gay fathers who went to Russia and Thailand, where surrogacy was highly commercialised and did not encourage communication between the surrogates and the commissioning parents, tended to address fairness in a commercial contract by saying that they did their best to protect all parties by signing contracts.

Biogenetic relatedness: making sense of father–child relationship

I was thinking about adoption. But I found out that people tended to feel negatively about adoption. I have a friend whose elder brother was adopted. He said that his brother seems to have his own path and destiny and is not that close to the family. My husband and I do not like the idea of adoption.

(Tsou-Tsou, late 30s, married, a father-to-be)

Legal restrictions were not the only reason for gay fathers to seek transnational reproduction. Most interlocutors mentioned their desires for children with biological relatives. Even though some people, including Tsou-Tsou, had been debating whether adoption could be the way to become a father, he noted that social perceptions of adopting non-biologically related children were not favourable. The lack of biological connection seemed more likely to be interpreted as the consequential explanation of a not-so-close parent–child relationship. The biogenetic tie seemed to be socially considered a more ‘natural’ way to connect parents and children. The biogenetic tie was thus employed by gay men to strategically normalise their reproduction.

It is a very nice thing to have children of our flesh and blood.

(Justin, late 30s, in a stable relationship, a father-to-be)

I thought about adopting a child, but I do not like it. When you look at my brother’s child, you can easily tell, ‘oh, this child is from our family.’ The connection is stronger.

(Denny, late 30s, in a stable relationship, a father-to-be)

Gay fathers addressed the importance of blood ties that not only connected their children to them but also the extended family. The biological relatedness is embodied through perceiving and sensing that children came from their parents’ gametes, and thus they shared the same origin of blood that circulated in the vessels within their bodies.

The perception of kinship is also incarnated in the place of vision. Some imagined that others could recognise the children who came from their families by their biological resemblance, as Denny referred to the likeness between his brother and the child. Other gay menwere also pondering this issue:

I hope I can be proud when I bring the baby out with me. I can tell others that this is my child; they might reply, ‘we can tell this is your child from the appearance.’

(Alan, early 30s, in a relationship, a father-to-be)

When it comes to imagining a family, many might instantly envision an image of a physical resemblance between the parents and their children (Jones, 2005; Nordqvist, 2010). That sort of seeing at first glance confers the veracity of kinship, which almost eliminates the need for further verbal clarifications. This was the ideal and ‘natural’ parent–child connection many gay men were hoping for.

Gay men strategically normalised their choice of transnational surrogacy by configuring their parent–child relationship within bio-genetic discourses. By emphasising the importance of biogenetic connections, gay men found an affinity between queer family-making and their heterosexual counterparts, which also enabled them to blend into society.

I can experience all the normal life stages that heterosexual people have. I think this [having a biologically related child] will fulfil my life.

(Justin, late 30s, in a stable relationship, a father-to-be)

Justin felt his life path was synchronised with heterosexuals’ when he recognised the possibility of having children with bio-genetic ties. The pattern of gay men's family formation resembled the ideal heterosexual family as we knew it, which is not surprising given that these were the only scripts available in society for reference. This can be found also in the gay fatherhood studies in Israel, in which the authors argue that surrogacy became the ‘new normality’ among the gay father community (Knoll & Moreno, 2020).

I prefer surrogacy. Not adoption. I want the blood connection. The child will be the result of our love, biologically related to us in the same way that a heterosexual couple is.

(Alec, early 30s, single, a father-to-be)

Alec stated that the birth of a child entailed a couple's love, which in heterosexual couples referred to the sexual intercourse of producing children. But what does it mean when it comes to gay couples who cannot reproduce a biological child via two sets of sperm? Alec reasoned that if their child exhibited biological characteristics from either his or his partner's side, it would be visual evidence of their naturalised parent–child relationship, and thus their child would be recognised as the acorn produced by their loving marital relationship:

The child will look like either me or my husband. This is what I mean by the result of our love. The importance of the biological link.

(Alec, early 30s, single, a father-to-be)

The emphasis on bio-genetic ties not only provided a device for gay men to perform their fatherhood status, but it also served as a catalyst for the intimate relationship between two fathers to be strengthened.

Deciding the sperm provider: negotiating family continuity

Becoming single gay fathers

Gay men who did not have a partner and embarked on the reproductive journey alone (n = 10) considered that providing their genetic material to the future child would be a better way to build up the father–child tie compared to single adoption. Many single fathers found that it was ‘a very natural thing’ to use their sperm to have children to continue the family line.

Some people want to have children because the child could be the one to carry the photo and walk in front at the parent's funeral. I think our family needs this. I think we will need someone to pass on our family bloodline and the family fortune.

(Joe, late 30s, single, a father-to-be)

Joe’s quote indicated the symbolic and practical meanings of family continuity in Taiwanese society. Ritually, in Han society, it must be the eldest son who holds the censer, the memorial ancestor tablet shrine, and the photo of his passed-on parent in the funeral line. This gesture implied that the family had an heir to carry on the family line and that this male heir would care for the afterlives of all the ancestors of the family. This story also demonstrated how biological relationships can be used to normalise a gay son's reproduction within an extended family. The bio-genetic tie not only solidified the parent–child relationship but also connected the child to a wider network of familial relationships and enabled that baby boy to be annexed to the family tree as an heir.

The inheritance of the family fortune was another crucial element in family continuity. From Joe’s quote, only a biologically related child would be considered qualified and legitimate to inherit family money. Biological connections seemed to be inscribed as the pledge for the foreseeable close relationships and harmonious family fortunes transitioning from generation to generation. However, bio-genetic ties did not have the magical power of uniting people as families; rather, it was social and cultural norms that elevated biological relations above other types of relatedness.

I wanted to continue the family line. I think that I want an offspring to continue the family. Both my husband and I like the idea of having a child to inherit our heritage in the future.

(Alan, early 30s, in a relationship, a father-to-be)

Alan mentioned that he hoped one day his child could inherit the wealth from both sides of his and his partner's families since they were both the only sons in their families-of-origin. Thus, the birth of a child into the family carried multiple meanings: the reconnection of gay men with their families-of-origin and the fulfilment of the duty of family continuity. Some gay men regarded it as a responsibility in a more conventional way (Joe). Some considered it the mechanism of inheritance (Alan). Gay fathers strategically normalised their family-making by employing the bio-genetic relatedness discourse that has been long practiced in patriarchal society. They did not find themselves very different from their heterosexual partners when it came to carrying out the responsibility of family continuity. Rather, they felt that this might be a normalising pathway to play into society and to repair their relationship with extended families.

Pursuing fatherhood as couples

Two significant themes emerged when gay couples (n = 43) shared their discussions of who would provide sperm. Some couples talked about it rather matter-of-factly, saying that the one who was more motivated to become the father would be the one to provide the sperm. Others, however, addressed family continuity and the rather sensitive topic of financial arrangements. There were two approaches identified for normalising gay father-family formation. First was the biogenetic tie, and second was the use of the surname.

There is a lot to do with my family-of-origin. My mom asked me which one of us was going to provide the sperm. Let us be frank about this: It is because of the money. My family and I will pay the bills.

(Oliver, late 30s, married, a father-to-be)

Oliver and his boyfriend were planning on surrogacy by the time the interview happened. He admitted that since the costs would be covered by his family's money and his salary, he felt entitled to be the one who shared the genetic connection with their child. The sustenance of family continuity was practiced through financial consecration, which is intricately interrelated with the symbolic meaning of bloodlines and with the substantial act of providing genetic materials.

Unlike Oliver, whose partner had less power to claim the right to provide sperm due to the disparity in their salaries, the couple Cohan and Richard, who had similar incomes, both encountered great pressure to fulfil the familial duty of passing on the family line:

Both of us are the only sons. The problem is that if the child only carries one family name from both sides, our parents might play favourites. We named our children with a double family name. No matter who would be the one to provide the sperm.

(Cohan, married, a father to twin sons)

Cohan and Richard understood both of their parents were concerned about the family name and biogenetic ties, so they took a different approach by giving their twin sons compound surnames and not disclosing who was the biological father. They had been asked about the sensitive question of who the biological father of the twins was all the time by both sides of the families, but they kept it a secret and considered that it was the best way to maintain harmonious relationships between the two families. They employed the strategic normalisation method to secure their children's kinship ties to both families-of-origin by using the compound surname. Simultaneously,they selectively distinguished themselves from heterosexual families, indicating that parent–child biological ties were not the only way to establish kinship between two extended families.

Selecting ovum donors: from racial matching to mixed-race children

Taiwanese gay fathers embarked on different pathways from their Western counterparts. Studies on the reproductive decisions of gay men in the UK and the US demonstrated that gay men applied‘racial matching’strategies in selecting egg donors to seek ethnic resemblance between both parents and children (Smietana & Twine, 2022). This was alsoconceptualised as ‘strategic racialisation’ to indicate that ‘the racialised biogenetic model of kinship remains dominant in Western society’ (Smietana & Twine, 2022, p. 18). Similarly, Taiwanese gay fathers’ preference for Asian egg donors is embedded in the multi-faceted considerations of introducing gay-father families to a heterosexual society. By doing so, they intend to eliminate as many elements of difference as possible to let their children blend easily into society.

I was worried that my child could not blend well into society. But Asian egg donors were very few. I struggled for a while and then gave up.

(Ted, late 40s, married, a father to a son)

Different from the prevalent practices of ‘racial matching’ in the West, only a few attempted to seek East Asian egg donors to better blend into Taiwanese society, where Caucasian-Han Taiwanese mixed race is not common.³ Most of them relinquished the pursuit of racial-matching egg donors and opted for Caucasians by formulating alternative discourses around ethnic similarities and distinctions. A practical consideration for abandoning the hope for an East Asian egg donor was its relatively higher price compared to those from other racial backgrounds. Because Asians are an ethnic minority group in the US, there is an imbalance between the supply and need for Asian gametes in the US reproductive market. Thus, they developed an alternative discourse that emphasised the queer nature of their gay-father family – the use of foreign donated eggs. Since gay men cannot reproduce a biologically related child by themselves, they differentiated their gay-father family from heterosexual families by highlighting that their children were mixed-race with distinguishable appearances.

Most queer families have mixed-race children. When families hung out together, they often attracted people’s attention. It is not that common to see mixed-race faces in Taiwan.

(Fieldwork notes)

However, the rationales behind these two approaches were not contradictory; rather, gay fathers tended to employ dynamic ‘strategically normalising’ and ‘selectively differentiating’ ways. For example, while gay-father-families embraced their identity as queer families with mixed-race children that differentiated their family appearances from others, they still tended to approach ‘strategical normalisation’ to better blend into Taiwan society by selecting white donors with certain biological features:

We want the egg donor to have brown eyes and hair. We feel that we are a gay father family, which is already very different, and we do not want our children to be that different from others. I think it is not necessary to find an ethnic Chinese, but we want someone whose hair and eye colour are not that bright.

(Bibby, early 30s, married, a father to twin sons)

Brown hair colour and brown eye colour were the two major biological features preferred by fathers-to-be. Considering that the hair colour and eye colour of Han Taiwanese are black, the colour brown might somehow be less noticeable compared to blond hair colours or blue/green eye colours. This demonstrated the dynamic process of strategic normalisation and selective differentiation that gay fathers employed while choosing a suitable white egg donor.

Despite the reasons gay fathers articulated for their choice of selecting non-Han Taiwanese or Chinese egg donors, not all ‘foreign egg donors’ were equally welcomed:

A friend of mine sent me a photo of two boys. The egg mother is from Vietnam. I won't say they're not cute, but I prefer the mixed-race of white and Asian.

(Kevin, early 30s, in a relationship, a father-to-be)

I feel like the discrimination is targeted at Southeast Asian immigrants in Taiwan. As for people from other places, they just seem to be less likely to be discriminated against.

(Joe, late 30s, single, a father-to-be)

Kevin admitted his desire for mixed-race children from specific racial backgrounds after seeing Thai-Taiwan mixed-race children, and Joe echoed the racial discrimination in Taiwan that mostly targeted people from Southeast Asia. Southeast Asian new immigrants encountered difficulties blending into Taiwanese society due to social, cultural, class, and gender stratifications and were stigmatised as ‘unqualified mothers’ for their capability of the Mandarin language and cultural differences from Han ethnicity (Lan, 2018). In the hierarchy of marriage, those Taiwanese men who married Southeast Asian women often failed to date Taiwanese women and were of lower economic capability. Thus, mixed-race children with darker skin tones were stigmatised as coming from lower socioeconomic and culturally deficient backgrounds.

As a result, most gay men tend to avoid egg donors from Southeast Asia. Even those who went to Thailand for surrogacy were determined to select one who was ethnically Han Chinese.

We preferred Asian appearances because our children will grow up in Taiwan, so it would be better for them not to be very different from others. Thai people looked different than Taiwanese. We chosea woman who is ethnically Chinese with Thai nationality.

(Ben, late 30s, married, a father to two daughters and a son)

Intended gay fathers tend to avoid egg donors from certain racial backgrounds because they do not want their children to be stigmatised in society. This is a strategy to normalise the racial contour of what a family looks like in order to blend into society.

People's perceptions of attractive appearances are shaped by the social context that implies the biological features.

I think people from the Middle East are rather good-looking. The only problem is that they are often stigmatised because they are not white enough.

(Joe, late 30s, single, a father-to-be)

Joe intrinsically preferred the appearance of Middle Eastern women, yet he quickly abandoned the idea as he consciously acknowledged that people with dark skin are easily designated as foreigners in Taiwan and unfortunately, often stigmatised. The white-Han-mixed-race children were the result of the dynamic normalising and differentiating strategies employed by gay fathers.

However, this selective differentiation method of reproducing mixed-race children by intentionally choosing egg donors did not always work smoothly. Sometimes it went down a bumpy road.

My mom told her neighbours that ‘these are my grandsons,’ but when the neighbour asked her, ‘Your son marries a foreign wife?’ My mom said, ‘Oh, yes, she does not live in Taiwan.’ I was upset. But my mom felt like she was not lying, even though she was not telling the truth either. She thought it was not wrong to say that the egg donor was the mother of our babies. And indeed, she lives in Russia, not Taiwan.

(Bibby, early 30s, married, a father to twin sons)

It took some time for Bibby to reconcile with his mother and to understand that ‘coming out’ was a hard task for his mother, who lived in a small village where rumours went very fast. What made Bibby upset was the glitch in his selective differentiation strategy. He intentionally chose a Caucasian donor to distinguish his mixed-race children from those ‘naturally conceived’ in heterosexual conjugal couple families; however, this gave the wrong impression to those who kept the ideal heterosexual family model in mind that Bibby was married to a foreign woman. Bibby’s mother instantly picked up the social scrip of ‘a child must have a father and a mother’ and mobilised it to refer to the egg donor as the ‘mother’ of her grandson. Bibby’s story also exemplifies the fragility of kinship-making in gay father-son families. Despite the strategies employed, sometimes the dominant family ideal just comes up.

Egg donors and surrogates: the kind aunts

Gay fathers differentiated their family-making from that of heterosexuals and redefined the roles of egg donor and surrogate in their family's formation.

I used to refer to them as egg mothers and surrogate mothers. I heard the talk from Lance, and I talked to egg donors and surrogates in the US. They mentioned that they did not want to be your children’s mothers. Now I use the term ‘surrogate’.

(Tsou-Tsou, late 30s, married, a father-to-be)

Tsou-Tsou recounted his transition to understanding the two important roles that gave birth to his childafter encountering Lance Chen-Hayes. Despite living in the US with his American husband and their son, who was born via traditional surrogacy⁴ kindly provided by his husband’s sister, Lance was the first Taiwanese gay father to come out publicly and often shared his parenting experiences when he visited his families in Taiwan. Lance and his husband also wrote two autobiographies (one in English and another one in Chinese) on gay father parenting (L. T.-L. Chen-Hayes & Chen-Hayes, 2021; S. Chen-Hayes, 2019). Their experiences were indeed very different from those of gay fathers who went to the US for gestational surrogacy and donor eggs, but their role as pioneers to guide the latecomers on parenting and strategies to cope with social discrimination helped.

In Taiwan, people address ‘surrogate mother’ when talking about surrogacy, sometimes with negative judgement, considering that it is illegal locally. With ‘mother’ in the term, it implies that this woman was the mother to the child in the first place before the transition of parental rights to the commissioning parent(s). As a result, not only Tsou-Tsou, but many gay fathers felt it necessary to use the proper term to address the women who carried their children to justify the integrity of their paternity.

It [the use of proper terms] is a way to dilute controversies. It might help society to eliminate the ideology that a child must have a mother.

(Tsou-Tsou, late 30s, married, a father-to-be)

The clarification of the terms used to address surrogacy and egg donors also acted as a means for gay fathers to differentiate their family formation from conventional heterosexual families that consisted of a father and a mother. This is also a process of normalising their fatherhood by implying that there are only fathers and no mothers from the start. In the reproductive process that required the involvement of two women, the intentional emphasis on the absence of ‘mother’ in the egg provider and the surrogate was to signify the nature of gay fathers’ family-making by articulating the nature of gay-dad(s)-family, in which the role of mother did not exist.

Ben is a gay dad to three children, and he is experienced in educating his children to cope with questions about their family:

Someone asked my daughter, ‘Don't you have a mother?’ My daughter answered, ‘I do not have a mom.’ My children knew that two healthy aunts had given birth to them. They also tell others in the same way. Now they turn to educating others. There are various types of families, like single mom or single dad families and two-mother families.

(Ben, late 30s, married, a father to two daughters and a son)

Ben's story exemplified how gay fathers and their children distinguished their family formation by articulating the void role – mother – without any sense of deficiency or loss. The way gay fathers and their children articulate their family-making indicates the creation of a particular discourse of differentiating their father–child relationship from hetero-families. By doing so, they reshape and redefine the meaning of what a nuclear family looks like. The family picture of a mother and a father with children is transformed into the reconfiguration of two gay fathers and their surrogate-born children. The recognition of becoming, being, and making queer families does not end with the birth of children; rather, gay fathers and their children constantly communicate their family formation to others to achieve a recognisable position of family formation in society.

Gay fathers have been developing a normalising and differentiating discourse to prepare the birth story to tell their children in the future and to rehearse what terms they would use to address the egg donor and surrogate.

I am thinking that there is a kind aunt in the United States who will help you come to the world.

(Mike, early 40s, in a stable relationship, a father-to-be)

Identity disclosure is highly emphasised. We create a booklet and then include all the photos from all the participants so that we can tell the children theirbirth story. There are two nice and kind aunts who help us.

(Tsou-Tsou, late 30s, married, a father-to-be)

Thegay father community provided intended fathers with guidelines on when and how to prepare for the identity discourse with their children and potentially with others in the future. Gay fathers-to-be document their reproductive journeys not only for their future children but also for themselves and others.

We made a handwritten booklet to explain every detail of the surrogacy, and we kept the photos in it as well. This is for our son to know about the surrogate.

(Martin, late 40s, married, a father to a son and a daughter)

The pictures of all participants – including the surrogates, the practitioners in clinics, the agents, the nannies, and others who take part in the reproductive process – give a unique picture of the creation of a gay father family. Unlike the Mama Book in Taiwan issued to pregnant women for documenting the gestational process and the conditions of the mother and the baby, gay fathers’ booklets include all people who are involved in their reproductive journey, including the egg donor, surrogate and her family, coordinators from the clinics, agents, medical practitioners, attorneys, and their extended families.

Among them, the two crucial women – egg provider and surrogate – are often addressed as ‘kind aunts’ who help gay fathers conceive children. Gay fathers insist on using the kinship term ‘aunt’ to keep a close yet distant relationship with them. This strategy helps avoid the confusion of misunderstanding them as the mothers of their children:

I explain to him that a mother is someone who looks after him, whereas the kind aunt who gives birth to you is not your mother but simply the kind aunt.

(Steve, late 40s, married, a father to two boys)

The kinship term ‘aunt’ in the Taiwan context could carry a wide range of meanings with different levels of closeness and intimacy. Aunt refers to the biological kin of one's mother's sisters in its original meaning. In everyday life, this kinship termalso extended its use to refer to any elder females, including family friends or any female strangers that were older than the person who used this term to address the female. As a result, aunt can refer to very close family members (a mother's sisters) and those with distant relationships (random women who meet on the street). The adaptability of this term's usage allows gay fathers to navigate flexible relationships with the egg donor and surrogate.

Most gay fathers kept contact with their surrogates in the US context, and the reason was to maintain their relationships in case one day their children would like to meet them. However, when it came to the egg donor, they tended not to keep contact with them.

We did not have any contact information about our egg donor. I know some of the agencies will provide the contact information of the egg donors, but not in our case.

(Howard, late 40s, married, a father to a son and a daughter)

The practical reason that gay men did not even have the contact information of their egg donors was the result of the regulations that were commonly practised in the reproductive industry in the US, where many egg donors preferred to remain anonymous. Another hidden reason was the distancing strategy to cope with the potential anxiety raised by acknowledging that half the genetic material came from another person outside of this family. This also demonstrated how people consider bio-genetic materials to provide an unmistakable link to children. Gay fathers strategically normalise their kinship ties by keeping a distance from egg donors while maintaining a closer relationship with the surrogate.

We could have contacted the egg donor, but we did not. We kept in contact with our surrogate because we spent more time together. Most people do not contact egg donors. They are young and might have their families later. They might not want others to know they donated eggs.

(Bruce, early 50s, married, a father to a son and a daughter)

According to Bruce, the reason he contacted the surrogate rather than the egg donor was because of their interactions with their surrogate. Bruce reckoned that the egg donor might not want her donor identity to be revealed. Gay fathers were aware of the anxiety over what biological connections might have impacts on identifying relations in both gay father families and the egg donors’ future families. They downplayed the importance of the genetic materials from the egg donors yet allowed more emotional connections with the surrogate, who carried the children for nine months.

This strategy also implies the transition from emphasising biological connections to a more complex and intricate crafting of queer relatedness. Gay fathers built up their attachment with the surrogate by keeping in contact and maintaining the possibility for their children to meet them in the future. Yet, they were more detached from the egg donors who provided half of the genes to their children on the premise that both society and they considered that shared bio-genetics have the potential to connect people together as kin, as family, and as a closer relationship – despite the fact that bio-genetic connection is one of the many crucial reasons why these gay men opted for transnational reproduction in the very first place. The construction of queer relatedness in gay father families is a subtle and nuanced normalising and differentiating process in which they perceive biogenetic relationships differently depending on the subjects.

Conclusion

This paper delves into gay fathers’ reproductive decisions, including the reasons for surrogacy, the selection of the sperm provider and egg donors, and the discourses on positioning egg donors and surrogates. Firstly, it looked at the rationales for why gay men preferred attempting transnational third-party reproduction. They strategically normalised their family-making by aligning with heterosexuals, which emphasised the genetic traits shared among family members. Secondly, it explored the decision-making process of choosing the sperm provider in terms of negotiations and compromises. It also touched upon the issue of family continuity, especially the obligation of gay men, who were the only sons in the family, to fulfil the duty. Gay fathers’ strategies for responding to the ideology of family continuity make Taiwan stand out from the existing studies on gay fatherhood. Thirdly, it analysed the process of selecting donated eggs. Gay men oscillated between the desire to blend into society by using Asian donors and the inclination to conceive mixed-race children by using Caucasian donors. They employ the selective differentiation discourse to make sense of their decisions on choosing a non-Asian donor, by which they navigate their reproduction as different from their heterosexual counterparts. Fourthly, it examined how gay fathers positioned egg donors and surrogates in their families by addressing them as ‘aunts,’ and it allowed gay fathers to employ normalising and differentiating strategies to justify their fatherhood.

Gay men navigated the dynamic process of ‘strategically normalisation’ and ‘selectively differentiation’ to position their family-making in society (Table 1). On the one hand, gay fathers innovated ‘new’ ways of claiming ‘relatedness’ via mobilising flexible discourses aroundbio-genetic ties and choosing egg donors from particular racial backgrounds. On the other hand, they (re)constructed their relatedness by referring to the existing social norms that have been giving meaning to ‘kin ties’ and ‘the family’. Gay men employed both strategic normalisation and selective differentiation processes to make the gay-father family, and to substantiate the relatedness they desired – with their children, their partner, extended families, and those who were considered to be chosen family members (Weston, 1991).

Table 1. Creating relatedness via reproductive decisions and practises.

	Strategical normalisation	Selective differentiation
Opting for third-party reproductive methods	Normalising reproduction by emphasising the bio-genetic ties between father and children	Differentiating reproduction by addressing the use of donated eggs, ARTs, and surrogacy
Deciding the sperm provider	Normalising parent-child relationships through the connection of bio-genetic ties	Differentiating queer family-making by employing a shared surname
Selecting the egg donor	Normalising gay father families by choosing Asian donors or donors with Asian-like features	Differentiating gay father families by using Caucasian donors or donors considered white
Making gay-father families	Emphasising family formation based on bio-genetic ties	Emphasising queer family formation with gay dad(s) and mixed-race children

This paper argued that gay fathers employed normalising and differentiating strategies to achieve fatherhood by hopefully imagining (the appearance of future children), consciously sensing (the presence and absence of biogenetic connections), and deliberately planning (potential scenarios of using disparate eggs). They embarked on alternative routes that were unmoored from the conventional family inscribed in the heteronormative script of conceiving children and making kinship. In the past, gay men tended to escape from their families and have no reproductive future (Edelman, 2004); nowadays, gay fathers-to-be are determined to leave home in order to return. Their departures from conventional family-making and the travels from their homeland to foreign countries were for the purpose of homecoming with children and reconnecting with their families. Gay fathers pictured their children thriving in Taiwan and sharing life moments with families; hence, they consolidated father–child relations by giving novel yet persuasive accounts for their reproductive decisions.

Conclusively, gay fathers’ strategies of normalisation and differentiation, on the one hand, offered potentials and possibilities that challenged the heteropatriarchal reproductive scripts and assumption of family-making. On the other hand, their queer reproductive attempts were once again reinscribed into the discourse of biogenetics and family continuity as the normalisation process that allows their gay father families to be recognised by society. This article also proposed the analytical framework of ‘strategically normalisation’ and ‘selectively differentiation’ that might inspire future research on gay fatherhood in other sociocultural contexts.

Ethics approval statement

This research is approved by the Ethics Committee of the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge.

Acknowledgments

I thank Professor Sarah Franklin and Dr Marcin Smietana for supervising my PhD project on Taiwanese gay fathers’ transnational reproduction. I am grateful to the Cambridge Trust and the Ministry of Education Taiwan for supporting my PhD study at the University of Cambridge since 2020. Thank you, European Association of Taiwan Studies, for awarding me the Young Scholar Award. It was my honour to present and share the early version of this article at the 2023 Conference, Taiwan Studies in Twenty Years: Retrospect, Prospect. I thank all whomI met at the British Sociological Association Human Reproduction Study Group Annual Conference: Reproduction and Progress? Reflections and Revisions for their feedback. I thank the NORMA editors and anonymous referees for their comments. My special thanks go to my participants and Taiwan LGBT Family Rights Advocacy; your life experiences and your determined spirit of activism for queer rights most inspire me. My thanks also go to my dearest LGBTQ + friends, who provide me with ideas for my research, as well as my partner, who brightens my academic and queer lives.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Research data are not shared.

Additional information

Funding

This research project is supported by the Cambridge Trust and Ministry of Education Taiwan.

Notes on contributors

Jung Chen

Jung Chen is a PhD candidate at the Department of sociology, University of Cambridge. Her research interests are medical sociology, sociology of reproduction, sociology of family, andLGBTQ + studies. She is under the supervision of Prof. Sarah Franklin and Dr Marcin Smietana and her PhD project looks at queer reproductive justice and queer relatedness in Taiwan with a specific focus on gay men who pursued fatherhood via transnational assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and surrogacy.

Notes

1 US surrogacy costs approximately $200,000–300,000 USD in 2022. Data was gathered from the experiences of gay fathers who were interviewed.

2 Gay fathers went to Thailand before 2016, the year foreign commissioning parents were banned from accessing local surrogacy. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, no Taiwanese gay men went to Russia for surrogacy.

3 Around 95 percent of Taiwan's population is of Han Taiwanese ethnicity; 2 percent are indigenous Taiwanese; and 2 percent are new immigrants from China and Southeast Asia (mostly females via marriage migration). Approximately 21,000 Westerners live in Taiwan, accounting for only 0.1% of the total population.

4 Traditional surrogacy, also known as direct surrogacy, refers to the situation when the gestational surrogate and the egg donor are the same woman.