Do intended parents pick a surrogate, or does the surrogate pick the intended parents?
Learn the answer to this week's user-submitted question about surrogacy in this week's installment of Ask a Surrogacy Expert! Have a question about surrogacy that you'd like answered? Submit it at https://www.brightfuturesfamilies.com/ask
Matching Process for Gestational Carriers and Intended Parents
The matching process is a mutual selection where both gestational carriers and intended parents choose each other, ensuring alignment on key preferences and readiness.
Mutual matching approach ensures fit and comfort
Bright Futures Families Surrogacy starts matching by reviewing key criteria such as termination policies, vaccination status, and geographic preferences. Intended parents and surrogates both get to review profiles and ask questions about each other before any commitment. This approach helps prevent mismatches early by focusing on shared values and logistics. It ensures both parties feel no pressure and have full freedom to decline without penalty.
Structured matching meeting facilitates trust and clarity
A meeting with agency staff present supports open dialogue and helps surface important but sensitive topics like medical history and termination preferences. Bright Futures Families Surrogacy Agency’s presence is to guide difficult questions, not to control the decision, helping build trust quickly. Only after this meeting do both parties formally decide if they want to proceed. This step prevents misunderstandings and strengthens transparency for both sides.
No-pressure policy supports ongoing matching efforts
If either side says no at any stage, the agency restarts the matching process without affecting timelines or priority. This policy encourages honesty and preserves goodwill so parents and carriers feel safe to express their true preferences. BFF surrogacy agency remains proactive in finding the best match continuously until both sides agree. This approach aims to create lasting, positive relationships and successful surrogacy journeys.
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Transcript:
Hey everyone, this is Jennifer with Bright Futures Families Surrogacy, and I'm here with the Ask a Surrogacy Expert question. And today's question is, “Do the intended parents pick the gestational carrier they want to match with, or does the gestational carrier pick the intended parents?” And the answer for us is both. It's actually a mutual match. We want to make sure that everybody is happy together and really wants to move forward together. So, in our process, we as a program, we start in the background. Whenever somebody clears, we say, “Hey, who's going to be a good fit for each other?” We start at the top of our parent list, working our way down, and we're, of course, looking at the important things like termination, vaccination. We look at location if people are looking at very specific locations or have requests for locations, and that's true for both sides, right? Some surrogates don't want to travel. Some parents only want to surrogate in specific, you know, geographic regions. If anybody has a special request. We want to make sure that everybody is in alignment in that regard from the start. Once we think we potentially have a good match, we then send a profile on the gestational carrier to the intended parents. They get to look. They can ask as many questions as they want. And if they say yes, then we send a profile on the intended parents over to the gestational carrier. She gets to look, ask as many questions as she wants about them. If she also says yes, then we'll set up a match meeting. It's really important to note that if either side says no, it is completely fine. It doesn't affect anything else about, you know, like how quickly we're going to make an attempt to match, where parents are on the match list. It is really absolutely no obligation. We really want people to feel no pressure and want to move forward. So at that match meeting, we as an agency have at least one person there. And it's not because we're like creepy and don't trust anybody. It's that it can be really hard when you're both trying to make a great first impression to ask the hard questions. So we're just there to help guide the conversation and ask about things like termination, vaccination, run through the history. Sometimes the questions that people might not remember or might not think are that important to kind of help establish trust really quickly. So only after that meeting do we actually reach out and ask people if they're interested in potentially matching. If either side says no, again, no harm. Just go back to the drawing board for matching for either side. But if both sides say yes, then it is a match and people have both chosen each other. So I hope that helps. Our answer is the very short answer is that it is mutual matching for us. And we are always just so excited to support these matches. So have a wonderful one.