Born without ‘mama’: the inconvenient truth about surrogacy

A five-month-old baby, reaching instinctively for ‘mama’, is met not with recognition but with laughter. Behind the camera, two fathers mock the child’s cry, captioning the moment with a glib ‘who’s going to tell him’. It was posted by Shane McAnally, a Grammy award–winning country artist, and quickly circulated online as light-hearted content. The clip is not just uncomfortable, it is disturbing: a baby separated from his mother, crying out, while the adults who arranged it laugh. What is presented as a joke reflects a culture where surrogacy, and the loss it involves, is becoming normalised.