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The Legalization of Emotion: Managing Risk by Managing Feelings in Contracts for Surrogate Labor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Hillary L. Berk
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Abstract

Despite a rich literature in law and society embracing contracts as exchange relations, empirical work has yet to consider their emotional dimensions. I explore the previously unmapped case of surrogacy to address the interface of law and emotions in contracting. Using 115 semistructured interviews and content analyses of 30 surrogacy contracts, I explain why and how lawyers, with the help of matching agencies and counselors, tactically manage a variety of emotions in surrogates and intended parents before, during, and after the baby is born. I establish that a web of “feeling rules” concerning lifestyle, intimate contact, and future relationships are formalized in the contract, coupled with informal strategies like “triage,” to minimize attachment, conflicts, and risk amidst a highly unsettled and contested legal terrain. Feeling rules are shared and embraced by practitioners in an increasingly multijurisdictional field, thereby forging and legitimating new emotion cultures. Surrogacy offers a strategic site in which to investigate the legalization of emotion—a process that may be occurring throughout contemporary society in a variety of exchange relations.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 143 - 177
Copyright
© 2015 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

This work was supported both by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research grant, Award #1123500, and the Berkeley Empirical Legal Studies Fellowship. The author is grateful to the four anonymous reviewers for their time and constructive feedback, and especially to Lauren Edelman, Calvin Morrill, Kim Voss, Kristin Luker, Kathryn Abrams, and Joan Hollinger for extensive support and insights. Further acknowledgement goes to Rosann Greenspan, Jennifer Carlson, Margo Mahan, Diane McKay, Deborah Klein, and Barbara Ayares. This research would not be possible but for each of the engaged and willing participants in the study.

References

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