Technological advances have pushed the envelope, and today the term has blossomed in its applications.

In theory today, a child could be born to two infertile legal parents who contracted his or her gestation with a surrogate mother after he or she had been conceived in vitro with donated sperm and a donated egg. The term maternity could be properly used to describe that child’s relationship to any adult female in this chain of relationships. This child would have a surrogate mother who carried him or her and gave birth; an donor mother who provided the egg; and the adult female who contracted for his or her existence and person he or she would know as mother and his or her legal mother.

In all, therefore, if this child came into the lives of married couple, he or she could have three woman and two men play significant roles in his or her conception, birth and nurturing.