Doctoral Dissertation Research: Contracts, Intimacy Restrictions and Emotional Labor - How Law Matters When Managing Relationships

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Drawing upon the literatures on law and emotions, law and gender, and law and society, this research examines how parties to surrogacy agreements, their lawyers, and fertility groups attempt to shape and manage the emotional aspects of relationships through contractual language and in the broader exchange relationships that surround contract formation. To examine how law matters in structuring the emotional aspects of social interactions, this project focuses on several more specific questions: (1) how contractual language reflects efforts to manage emotions; (2) how parties to surrogacy contracts derive the terms of their agreements, including compensation, role assignment, and "intimacy restrictions" intended to manage feelings; and (3) the relative roles of both formal contract provisions and other social norms in managing surrogacy relationships. The research plan involves a multi-method empirical approach that combines content analyses of a sample of surrogacy contracts with semi-structured interviews across the United States of parties to these agreements, attorneys who draft them, and fertility agencies that coordinate matches between parents and surrogate mothers. The results of this research could have important implications for policymakers regarding family formation using assisted reproductive technology, and for the judiciary as they address contract disputes regarding motherhood and the establishment of parental rights.