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SummaryEngendered by classified" adds" in the newspapers, shaped by the discourse of the media, lawyers, doctors and psychologists, the so-called "surrogate mother" phenomenon was born of a language dominated by masculine body metaphors, fantasies and codes. This breaking up of childbearing, an amazing linguistic operation which robs the mother of the same language responsible for the making of the father, is, at the same time, a brilliant example of the collusion of the three powers of language, the three dominant powers of modern society, according to Michel Serres. We see at work here the performing power of administration (lawyers, agencies and courts) associated with the power of seduction of the media and with the power of scientific truth (doctors and psychologists) to assimilate childbearing to masculine patterns of sexuality and fathering, to the profit of the begetter/buyer. Moreover, the very essence of contractual motherhood is to deny the highly symbolic and cultural character of childbearing by putting the feminine body as purely instrumental under the control of language. At the same time, it ensures that the sign (monetary and contractual) takes first place over the experience and consciousness of procreation, and that the fragmentation of the body - "we are paying her for her uterus" - is given first place over the physical and psychological integrity of the mother. As an epistemological critique and semantic analysis of the lexical construction of the phenomenon of contractual motherhood, this paper explores one of the facettes of the transformation of the relationships between the sexes in the context of procreation, as observed in the developments of the techno-economy of reproduction.