Lily Collins is dealing with a lot more than adjusting to sleepless nights as a new mum: she’s facing an uproar over her decision to use a surrogate for her new baby. The Emily in Paris actor, 35, and her film director husband Charlie McDowell, 41, announced the birth of their daughter, Tove, last Friday in a post on Collins’s official Instagram. They shared their “endless gratitude for our incredible surrogate”, along with a photo of their baby wrapped up in a soft blanket embroidered with her name.
As any new parent knows, the joy of welcoming a new baby into the world is unparalleled. But since the couple’s baby announcement, hell has broken loose. Some social media users have attacked Collins, who is the daughter of musician Phil Collins, for using a surrogate, accusing her of being part of an “unethical trend” that feminists and anti-surrogacy critics argue involves “rich people renting women’s bodies” and is “akin to human trafficking”.
There is also speculation that Collins, along with other A-list celebrities, may have hired a surrogate in an effort to stay thin and preserve her body, in what is termed “social surrogacy”. This is when women choose not to be pregnant for non-medical reasons, often to prevent disruption to their career. Fertility experts have also weighed in on the debate, claiming that surrogacy is big business for celebrities who lack the level of body fat needed for regular ovulation – and asking whether this could have driven Collins’s decision to use a surrogate, or indeed the decision of countless other famous women, such as Nicole Kidman, Grimes, Paris Hilton, and Sarah Jessica Parker, to do the same.
Collins candidly discussed her teenage struggles with bulimia in her 2017 memoir, Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me. One result of her eating disorder was that her menstrual cycle stopped. “I was terrified I had ruined my chances of having kids,” she wrote. But whether this played a part in her decision to use a surrogate is impossible to know unless she tells us. Perhaps it’s none of our business. Her husband, McDowell – the son of A Clockwork Orange star Malcolm McDowell – took to social media in the wake of the “unkind messages”. “It’s OK to not know why someone might need a surrogate to have a child. It’s OK to not know the motivations of a surrogate, regardless of what you assume,” he wrote.
Rather than judging Collins for how she has chosen to have a baby, we should be asking ourselves why this surrogacy story has hit such a raw nerve. It isn’t so much about the morally grey area of surrogacy – it’s about money (or rather the lack of it). Given the current heated conversations about the average millennial or Gen Z woman not being able to afford children, and the plummeting birth rate, it’s easy to understand why hearing about rich celebrities paying surrogates to have cute babies might unleash deep-rooted resentment.
Although surrogacy has become more popular in the past decade among the wealthy, including infertile and gay couples, it’s still seen as “luxury childbirth” and the pinnacle of spending on kids. The going rate for surrogacy in America is between £80,000 and £100,000, with celebrities offering their carriers VIP perks including private chefs and personal trainers. Yet for the ordinary woman in 2025, having a baby is out of reach.
According to research, only a quarter of millennials who say they want children are actively trying to get pregnant, with others citing financial pressure as the main reason for their hesitance. As a single working mother of two children, Lola, 8, and Liberty, 6, I can easily understand why these women are holding off. You only need to take a look at nursery fees, which cost thousands of pounds a month once you exceed your 15 hours of free childcare, to know it’s tough. The cost-of-living crisis, lack of housing security, and minimal infrastructure to support parents make having a child impossible for many people.
Lots of women are delaying pregnancy to focus on their careers, and leaving it too late to conceive naturally, or with IVF. Many others haven’t met the right person to have a child with. If women do try for a baby later in life, as I did aged 40, when my biological clock was a ticking time-bomb, it’s terrifying. I spent my entire life savings on IVF, even continuing after my partner died from suicide midway through our fertility journey, using his frozen sperm and travelling to clinics all over Europe to find the cheapest deals – before an old friend stepped in to fund the final four IVF rounds. I don’t know if I would have gone ahead had I sat down and considered the financial implications of my actions rather than following my heart. But I don’t regret it – ever.
I’m not alone in attempting motherhood on my own. The number of single women undergoing fertility treatment in the UK has more than trebled in the last 10 years, according to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. But it’s often too expensive for a single woman to embark on the journey to have a baby – donor sperm is around £1,630 per vial, on top of private IVF fees, which can be up to £10,000 a cycle, including medication and doctor consultations.
While some women under 40 – those who meet the criteria – can get up to three NHS-funded IVF cycles, it’s much harder for single women and same-sex couples to obtain the same help.
The truth is, given the choice, plenty of women would opt for surrogacy if they had the cash – whether to help them in their infertility journey or if they have missed the boat with using their own eggs. The criticism that Collins faces is wrapped up in moral arguments, but it’s not the whole picture.
Many of the women outraged by surrogacy feel that way because children are becoming little more than expensive commodities. Kids are now akin to a status symbol, a lifestyle option for the rich and/or famous. Instagram and celeb culture doesn’t help by selling unrealistic expectations of perfect mums and their offspring. It might sting even more for British millennials, for whom surrogacy is not even really an option – in the UK it is illegal to pay a surrogate, except for their reasonable expenses.
Sometimes people invest heavily in moral arguments because they feel powerless to achieve their own hopes and dreams. Ultimately, if it wasn’t all down to a lack of resources for women at large, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. It’s that social crisis we need to be arguing about, not a celebrity baby.
