My “Before”

Friday 10 July 2026

I took the long way home from the internship and went to the British Library. I would not have done that a month ago, but lately I keep wanting to check whether the patterns I notice are real.

I went looking for research about children born through surrogacy.

There was more than I expected. A lot of it came from the Cambridge Centre for Family Research and Professor Susan Golombok. The researchers followed families for years, from when the children were very young into their teenage years.

Some of the papers were difficult to read. I understood the abstracts better than the statistics. The main point seemed to be that children born through surrogacy generally do as well as other children on the things the researchers measure. That was reassuring.

I also came across the phrase “narrative identity”. As far as I understand it, it means the stories we tell about ourselves help shape how we see ourselves. That made sense to me, because the whole reason I started writing was that my own story felt too short. A name that kept coming up next to that phrase was a psychologist called Kate McLean. I do not know yet whether her work is relevant to me, but I wrote the name down.

On the Tube home I kept thinking about two things.

First, the research exists, but a teenager would have to know what to search for and then get through a lot of academic language. I only understood parts of what I read.

Second, the researchers answer important questions, but not always the questions I have. A study can say that young people are doing well. It cannot tell me whether another person my age also wonders about the woman who carried them.

I am glad the research is there. I just wish there were an easier way into it.

— D.