If you’re looking for a way to talk to your child about their family, you might take a hint from Ricky Martin.
During a recent interview on Univision radio’s Enrique Santos Show, Puerto Rican pop star Ricky Martin revealed how he handled the inevitable origin questions from his six-year-old twin sons, Valentino and Matteo.
Martin fathered the boys via gestational surrogacy in 2008, and has forever defended the woman who birthed them as an extremely close friend, not a rented womb.
When asked whether he’d reveal the identity of the boys’ birth mother to them, he said that the boys have already started asking about their origins.
He says they once asked: “Papa, was I in your belly?”
He answered: “You were in my heart and you are still in my heart. There is a woman who I adore with all my heart who helped me bring you to this world and she lent me her belly so that you could come and when you were born, she put you in my arms.”
Martin also revealed during the interview that he’s not done having children, and hopes to have “not one, four!” little girls. “I’m just getting started with this fatherhood thing,” he said.
Originally published at queerty.com.
Photo: Eva Rinaldi/Flickr
It was a very nice response except for this part, “..she lent me her belly..” I’m not a fan of talking about her body as if it was disassociated from the rest of her and as if she gave a part of her body “away”.
It was the answer to the question of whether the boy was in Ricky Martins belly, so it makes perfect sense that he tells them that they grew not in his but in that lady’s belly. And she did that for him otherwise she wold be the boys’ mother now. So she lent him her belly makes perfect sense here.
I have no issue with him explaining how they grew in a woman’s belly. I have a problem with talking about a part of her body as something that was lended to him. You lend someone some sugar or a flashlight, not a body part. Like I said, I liked everything he said except that part. She didn’t “lend” him her belly. She grew the baby in *her* belly, so that he could have a baby of his very own.