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

本研究利用有关法律与情感、法律与性别、法律与社会的文献，考察代孕协议的当事人、他们的律师和生育团体如何试图通过契约语言以及围绕契约形成的更广泛的交换关系来塑造和管理关系中的情感方面。为了研究法律在构建社会互动的情感方面的重要性，这个项目集中在几个更具体的问题上：(1)合同语言如何反映管理情感的努力；(2)代孕合同的当事人如何得出他们协议的条款，包括补偿、角色分配和旨在管理情感的“亲密限制”；以及(3)正式合同条款和其他社会规范在管理代孕关系方面的相对作用。这项研究计划采用了多方法的实证方法，将对代孕合同样本的内容分析与全美各地对这些协议的各方、起草协议的律师以及协调父母和代孕母亲之间匹配的生育机构进行半结构化采访相结合。这项研究的结果可能会对使用辅助生殖技术组建家庭的政策制定者产生重要影响，并对司法机构在处理与母亲和确立父母权利有关的合同纠纷方面产生重要影响。

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.