A critique of industrial-scale fatherhood, contrasting elite surrogacy and dynastic ambition with a biblical vision of present, faithful fatherhood that money, technology, and optimisation can never replace.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported on a Chinese video-gaming executive, Xu Bo, who has used commercial surrogacy to father more than 100 baby boys, at least a dozen of them born in the United States. Some of his arrangements have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per child.

The whole story is rather dystopian. Xu’s stated aim is to build a family dynasty to one day take over his business, and he’s said on the record that he prefers sons, since he believes they’d be superior to daughters for such a purpose.

Reading about Xu Bo, I was reminded of Elon Musk, who enjoys a much higher profile in the Western world and has made no secret of the fact that he, too, has fathered a large number of children across multiple relationships, including through IVF and surrogacy.

Musk’s motives are arguably a little more noble. While Xu’s children are tied to his business dynasty, Musk seems more concerned by the global birth rate collapse, about which he has offered repeated warnings.

I share Musk’s concerns about the worldwide birth dearth. And in an age when many take a doom-and-gloom view of parenthood — and even of civilisation itself — there’s something very striking about men who affirm life, who want to build a family line and leave a legacy, and who have hope for the human project.

Even so, I’m certain their approach is not at all what God had in mind when He said, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28).

In fact, it’s a very poor reflection of what God intends for fatherhood — and how fatherhood functions best.

Stable Presence

Let me illustrate with a story.

We recently got home from a family holiday near the beach. It was a wonderful time. The only downside was that our almost-one-year-old son woke up every morning before the crack of dawn, allowing us — my wife especially — little hope of a much-needed holiday sleep-in.

On the final day, I decided to embrace the chaos. I got up early with my son, grabbed a coffee at one of my favourite cafes, and took him for a stroll on the beach as the sun emerged from the horizon. On one section of the path, we had to abandon the pram. I picked him up, and we climbed a flight of steps, from which I pointed out to him the waves, the rocks and the surfers below. He stared with fascination and delight.

This was a moment I’ll remember with my boy for a long time. And the truth is that I get to enjoy moments like this with him every day — and he benefits from them in immeasurable ways — because I’m present in his life.

The same cannot be said for the children of Xu Bo or Elon Musk. Occasional or scheduled moments, perhaps, but not the kind of ongoing, daily, reliable presence that children need to thrive.

The problem with Xu and Musk’s approach to fatherhood is that they apparently view it in the same way as their business ventures and entrepreneurial innovations — as an asset to manage, a system to optimise, a goal to achieve.

That’s not how fatherhood works, and it’s not how children work. Human nature is fundamentally fixed. Even in an economically streamlined or technologically advanced world, one thing children will always need is a present father. The studies are unanimous on this fact.

Real Family

The problem with industrial-scale surrogacy isn’t just that it treats pregnancy as a service or children as transactions. In the cases of Xu and Musk, particularly, it assumes children will be fine if they have access to all that money can buy.

But children are formed by the loving presence of their father and mother, not by optimisation. A child can have access to elite schools, exotic travel, luxury homes, private tutors and endless wealth, but they’ll be psychologically stunted — and therefore held back in every other sphere of life — if they’re deprived of a present and caring father.

It takes more to be a father than just starting a life, funding it, and moving on. Fathers shape children by staying — by being present in the ordinary, unglamorous ebb and flow of daily life. That presence is something that can never be outsourced to third-party providers. Nor should we want it to be. It’s the very crux of fatherhood.

Fertility, legacy and dynasty are all great aspirations. But civilisation won’t be renewed because powerful men produced large numbers of offspring. It will be renewed when ordinary fathers show up every day and give their children what no money or technology could ever replace: themselves.

That, in the end, is what our kids still need most.

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Image courtesy of Unsplash.