Jamie Chung: 'I used a surrogate because I was terrified of putting my career on hold'

Actor Jamie Chung – who has starred in an array of popular movies and TV shows including Dexter, The Hangover and Big Hero Six – has revealed she used a surrogate to welcome her children due to fears that pregnancy would put her career "on hold".

To recap, Jamie and her actor husband Bryan Greenberg (who you'll recognise from iconic noughties romcom, Bride Wars) welcomed twin boys in October of last year. Now, nine months on from the arrival of their sons, Jamie has opened up about the reason the couple opted for surrogacy.

"I was terrified of becoming pregnant. I was terrified of putting my life on hold for two-plus years," the 39-year-old told TODAY Parents in a candid interview. "In my industry, it feels like you’re easily forgotten if you don’t work within the next month of your last job. Things are so quickly paced in what we do."

Based on their busy acting schedules, Jamie explained that using a surrogate was a "compromise" that she and her husband "made together as a couple." And they're not alone in their way of thinking, with a recent study by Working Families finding that 41% of mothers in the UK feel that being a parent is holding them back from a promotion.

Speaking about why they opted to keep the details of their surrogacy journey private until now, the actor pointed out that sadly there's still so much stigma around this route to parenthood. "I think there’s a little bit of shame. It’s still not a very common thing and we weren’t ready for judgment," she explained. "We really just did it to protect ourselves. We announced things when we were ready to."

Jamie continued: "People probably think, 'Oh, she's so vain. She didn't want to get pregnant,' and it's much more complicated than that. For me, personally, and I will leave it at this, it’s like, I worked my ass off my entire life to get where I am, I don’t want to lose opportunities. I don’t want to be resentful."

But not everyone is of the mindset that becoming a parent – specifically a mother – can hinder your career, as one writer recently shared their experience with Cosmopolitan UK, telling us that motherhood did quite the opposite. Read their account of motherhood in the workplace, here.

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