The Parent Act

Amy Opstal

Keywords: Parenthood

Internship: Sarah Carlier
amyopstal.com, amyopstal@hotmail.com

‘The Parent Act’ is a series of photographs that capture the legitimate and legal act of parenthood that went through the unconventional process of family composition. 

With this work I aim to show the intimacy between legal parents and their children. Through my visual art research, I would like to promote and contribute to the discussion of freedom, acceptance and diversity of anyone who chooses to conceive through surrogacy and showcase intimacy in a non-sexual and radical form of conceiving. For independent women and LGBTQIA who aspire to have children of their own. 

Due to the lack of law for these want-to-be parents, they resort to transnational surrogacy, complicating further the already complex process of legislation and social acceptance of being a legal parent. 

In the past decades, science and law have improved to give more options for the privileged minority to create families with kinship through surrogacy. However, there is still a lot to be achieved in Europe when it comes to the acceptance and emancipation of parenthood.