Halm’s path to parenthood is fairly typical of how things worked before Growing Generations existed. “We were looking at domestic and international adoptions, and in those days you had to be closeted. The home studies had to be doctored up to make you look like roommates,” he recalls. “We didn’t want to go through that kind of lying, so we started trying to find a surrogate.” At the time, fertility doctors largely controlled access to egg donors and surrogates, and, Halm says, “a lot of doctors wouldn’t touch us with a 10-foot pole because of AIDS, and psychologists were talking about children not having a ‘mommy.’” So the couple took matters into their own hands, asking friends, people they met at dinner parties—“basically trying to inseminate any woman who would raise her hand,” he says.
In hindsight, Halm realizes that they picked the worst possible candidates: women who hadn’t already delivered children of their own, women in unstable financial situations, strangers about whom they knew nothing. Though eventually they delivered their daughter with the help of a friend, Halm is well aware that things could have turned out differently.
The goal with Growing Generations was to prevent such risky situations by connecting gay prospective parents with suitable surrogates and helping to navigate the relationship between the two parties. About two years after Taylor and Halm joined forces, psychologist Kim Bergman came on board to develop standard screening procedures for surrogacy and egg donor candidates. (Enlisting a third-party egg donor is now a common practice because it decreases the risk of the surrogate claiming maternal rights.) Bergman and her staff also provide support for surrogates and the intended parents. The agency’s fourth partner, Stuart Miller, joined the group in 2001 in order to introduce Growing Generations and the concept of gay parenthood through surrogacy to the media. The birth of Halm’s second child, a boy, was covered by 20/20 and The New York Times. Ten years later, the agency is still at the forefront of innovation in the field. And though most of its clients are gay, the group is working with more and more fertility-challenged straight couples. “We have clients who say, ‘Please help our straight friends,’” says Taylor. “We’re not going to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.”
Growing Generations pairs surrogates with prospective parents on the basis of interviews and a 25-page questionnaire. Whereas at most other agencies prospective parents essentially do the choosing—they’re presented with profiles of a number of surrogates and asked to pick among them—at Growing Generations the decision is more mutual, with introductions between the two parties set up by the agency. “We say, ‘Here’s the couple we think you’ll fall in love with, and here’s the surrogate you’ll fall in love with,’” says Halm. “The system is usually very successful.”
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