From Aspiration to Decision: Why Surrogacy Becomes the Preferred Route to Fatherhood among Chinese Gay Men

• In Event: Family Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 14: Sexual and Gender Minority Families

Abstract

This article examines why surrogacy becomes a preferred route to fatherhood among Chinese gay men under conditions of legal ambiguity, moral contestation, and unequal access to resources. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 30 sets of 32 Chinese gay men who had pursued, or were in the process of pursuing, parenthood through surrogacy, the analysis shows that surrogacy is rarely an immediate or self-evident choice. Instead, surrogacy becomes preferable through a process of negotiation and elimination, as participants assess adoption, marriage to heterosexual women (zhihun or pianhun), and marriages of convenience (xinghun) in light of kinship expectations and institutional uncertainty. Adoption is viewed as both procedurally restrictive and culturally insufficient for securing lineage continuity. Marriage to heterosexual women is rejected as ethically fraught and relationally entangling, while xinghun is seen as a form of symbolic compliance ill-suited to sustained co-parenting.

Against these alternatives, participants frame surrogacy as comparatively manageable. They describe it as a time-limited project in which costs can be planned, roles can be more clearly defined, and relational risks can be more tightly bounded than in marriage-based routes. The article further shows how such manageability is achieved in practice through information work and trust-building under conditions of regulatory ambiguity. Participants rely heavily on digital platforms, peer networks, and long-term observation of agencies to reduce uncertainty. Finally, surrogacy decisions are shown to be relational projects shaped by three patterned modes of decision-making: autonomous decisions, couple negotiation, and family-involved decisions, highlighting how reproductive projects are embedded in partnership dynamics and in some cases, intergenerational participation. The article contributes to existing research by demonstrating that the appeal of surrogacy lies not simply in reproductive technology itself, but in its capacity to be organised as a controllable pathway to fatherhood under intersecting moral pressures, legal ambiguity, and relational constraints.

Author

• Congwei Zheng, University of Glasgow