Would You Outsource Your Baby?
By Padma Shandas
I am an Indian-American. The advantage of a hyphenated identity is that you can see two sides of an issue, by changing your perspective rather easily. You get used to “seeing double” in everything, be it a question of dating or marriage, education or job, or even the most modern phenomenon of outsourcing babies.
What is “outsourcing?” What we call “outsourcing” is the common practice of sending various types of skilled labor outside the U.S. for the sake of more economical returns. The precursor of outsourcing was the infamous “Year 2000 bug”, also known as the Y2K problem, which began to scare us all during the late 1990s.
There appeared to be too few qualified engineers and technology workers in this country to replace the 2-digit year designation with 4 digits in our computers. On the surface, it appeared to be a simple correction, but to change the internal programming of millions of computers before the beginning of the millennium was indeed daunting. So, we brought qualified workers into the U.S. to fix the bug. In the late 1990s, an influx of engineers and programmers from across the globe, especially from India, pushed open our H1-visa gates.
When these temporary workers returned home on finishing their assignment, they took other similar jobs with them, thus creating a pool of “cheap” workforce abroad. On the other side of the globe, they would turn their work schedule upside down. They worked on a sort of permanent night shift, to accommodate our working hours. Eventually, more and more companies discovered this convenient set-up, because there was an enthusiastic workforce in India, willing to redesign their work-life for better pay. Large campuses of “call-centers” were invented in the City of
Those workers acquired American accent, changed their long, traditional names to brief nicknames, such as “Jack”, “Joe” and “Deb.” They learned how to say American phrases: “Have a nice day”, “Take it easy”, “So nice to talk to you”, and “Happy July Fourth.”
Today there are thousands of men and women in India who stay up all night answering our technical questions, composing our medical transcripts, designing our grocery inventory software, compiling our bank records, testing manufactured goods, and anything else that can be accomplished from a remote site. We have a whole world out there to support us, to give us what we need in silver platters.
These outsourced workers in India seem happy too. They get better pay, more holidays, even more prestige. I heard parents speak happily about their college graduate children working for American companies as distant programmers and transcribers. A very popular college degree called MCA has emerged, which is a graduate degree in computer applications. Every young man and woman aspires to be an MCA.
If I were a young Indian graduate living there, I would work through the nights to get that extra salary. But what about my married / family life? What if my husband or neighbor disagrees with the idea of a woman taking on night shift? I may also think, “how does it benefit India if I put all my energy into streamlining American grocery business?”
From my American perspective, outsourcing is the best idea since the credit card. If I get the support I need, I don’t care if it comes from
But, do you know you can even get your own babies outsourced to India? Not through adoption, but, real, American, biological baby of your own with your spouse. A young woman in India would carry the baby to full term and deliver it for a fraction of what it would cost you here. Would you go for the baby-outsourcing?
In a recent Oprah Show, I saw that it really happens today. This clinic in North-western India takes care of the surrogate mother service very well, apparently. Young Indian women come here ready to get pregnant with foreign fetuses for a reward of about $5000, which is a fortune for them. The mother stays at the clinic until the birth of the baby, gives away the baby to the parents, and returns home, richer than her neighbors.
An Indian woman faces the stigma of having babies for money. And yet, for her, the service may be more than the monetary reward; it is also about offering a life-changing experience to another human being.
In America, one may think: what if I can’t have babies? Or if I am too busy to go through the ten months of pregnancy and birth? Or the whole process is too difficult for me? What if I can as well give the job to somebody else? What’s wrong with that? After all, I am paying her.
Is this helping a poor woman earn extra income? Or is it exploitation by American capitalist attitude? Do we have the right to ask a woman in dire situation to suffer for us? What happens if something goes wrong? I am baffled.
What do you think? Please send us your comments.
Padma Shandas is the author of Spices in the Melting Pot: Life Stories of Exceptional South Asian Immigrant Women.