Will The New Normal Get Surrogacy?

The desire to be a parent can overwhelm all other concerns and dominate a person’s thoughts, actions and lives. When building a family proves elusive,and the process of understanding and coping with the causes is underway, the stress is immense, the pain profound.  Life becomes a series of acronyms—IVF, ICSI,ART, IUI, IP’s—and navigating the intricacies of options—adoption, surrogacy,donor—is a full-time job. 

So, when those same wounds are mined for material, it might prove uncomfortable if done without sensitivity or understanding.  A soon-to-debut television show in the US, The New Normal, will use surrogacy as its storyline.   That’s not to say it can’t be done well; a sense of humor in addressing a serious situation serves to make the subject more relatable.  Yet, in the written description of the show, there are clichés surrounding the surrogate mother who, of course, has a “checkered past”; she is described as “A Midwestern waitress and single mother looking to escape her dead-end-life.”  That is a tired stereotype.  Women who serve as surrogates come from all walks of life.   Their unifying trait is their desire to extend the great gift of parenthood.

Conversely, in the preview online, there are glimmers of hope.  The surrogate mother says, “Family is family and love is love.”  Would like to see that the Intended Parents don’t go with the advisor/agency/attorney who describes surrogates as “an Ez-Bake Oven with no right to the cupcake.”  If instead they walk away from him and into the office of an agency that is as respectful of its surrogates as it is with its clients, then The New Normal will be a celebration of the new family and not just an easy-to-digest version of one.



These days, families come in all forms - single dads, double moms, sperm donors, egg donors, one-night-stand donors... It's 2012 and anything goes. Bryan (Andrew Rannells,"Girls," "The Book of Mormon") and David (Justin Bartha,"The Hangover") are a Los Angeles couple, and they have it all. Well,almost. With successful careers and a committed, loving partnership, there isone thing that this couple is missing: a baby. And just when they think the stars will never align, enter Goldie (Georgia King, "One Day"), an extraordinary young woman with a checkered past. A Midwestern waitress and single mother looking to escape her dead-end life and small-minded grandmother(Emmy and Tony Award-winner Ellen Barkin), Goldie decides to change everything and move to L.A. with her precocious eight-year-old daughter. Desperate and broke - but also fertile - Goldie quickly becomes the guys' surrogate and quite possibly the girl of their dreams. Surrogate mother, surrogate family.

Ryan Murphy serves as creator/executive producer and director along with creator/executive producer Ali Adler ("Glee," "Chuck") and executive producer Dante DiLoreto ("Glee," "American Horror Story").
"The New Normal" isproduced by 20th Century Fox Television and Ryan Murphy Productions.
-Excerpted from NBC.com

Learn more about surrogacy at www.westcoastsurrogacy.com