Hostname: page-component-669899f699-chc8l Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-03T18:20:21.690Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

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

References

Abrams, Kathryn, & Keren, Hila (2007) “Law in the Cultivation of Hope,” 95 California Law Rev. 319–82.Google Scholar
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Committee on Ethics (2002, reaffirmed in 2009) “Exercise During Pregnancy and the Postpartum Period,” 99 Obstetrics and Gynecology 171–173.Google Scholar
American Society for Reproductive Medicine, Ethics Committee (2013) “Optimizing Natural Fertility: A Committee Opinion,” 100 Fertility and Sterility 631.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
American Society for Reproductive Medicine, Ethics Committee (2014) “Misconduct in Third-Party Assisted Reproduction” 101 Fertility and Sterility 38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ayres, Ian, & Klass, Gregory (2005) Insincere Promises: The Law of Misrepresented Intent. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Babbie, Earl (2009) The Practice of Social Research, 12th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.Google Scholar
Bandes, Susan (1999) The Passions of Law. New York: NYU Press.Google Scholar
Barbalet, Jack (2002) Emotions and Sociology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Lisa (1992) “Opting Out of the Legal System: Extralegal Contractual Relations in the Diamond Industry,” 21 J. Legal Stud. 117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blau, Peter (1968) Bureaucracy in Modern Society. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Brinig, Margaret (2000) From Contract to Covenant. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Burawoy, Michael (1979) “Thirty Years of Making Out,” in The Politics of Production. Verso: New Left Books.Google Scholar
Cahill, Spencer (1999) “Emotional Capital and Professional Socialization: The Case of Mortuary Science Students (and Me)” 62 Social Psychology Q. 101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calhoun, Cheshire (1999) “Making Up Emotional People,” in Bandes, S. A., ed., The Passions of Law. New York: NYU Press.Google Scholar
Charmaz, Kathy (2006) Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through Qualitative Analysis. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Clay-Warner, Jody, & Robinson, Dawn T. (2008) Social Structure and Emotion. San Diego: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Collins, Randall (1984) “The Role of Emotion in Social Structure,” in Scherer, K., & Ekman, P., eds., Approaches to Emotion. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Conley, John, & O'Barr, William (1998) Just Words. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Crockin, Susan, & Jones, Howard (2010) Legal Conceptions. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dasgupta, Sayanthani, & Dasgupta, Shamita (2014) Globalization and Transnational Surrogacy in India. United Kingdom: Lexington.Google Scholar
Edelman, Lauren (1992) “Legal Ambiguity and Symbolic Structures: Organizational Mediation of Civil Rights Law,” 97 American J. of Sociology 1531.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eigen, Zev (2008) “The Devil in the Details: The Interrelationship Among Citizenship, Rule of Law and Form-Adhesive Contracts,” 41 Connecticut Law Rev. 381.Google Scholar
Eigen, Zev (2012) “Empirical Studies of Contract,” 8 Annual Rev. of Law & Social Science 291.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellickson, Robert (1994) Order Without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Ertman, Martha, & Williams, Joan (2005) Rethinking Commodification. New York: NYU Press.Google Scholar
Fineman, Martha (2008) “The Vulnerable Subject: Anchoring Equality in the Human Condition,” 20 Yale J. of Law & Feminism 1–23.Google Scholar
Flavin, Jeanne (2009) Our Bodies, Our Crimes: The Policing of Women's Reproduction in America. New York: NYU Press.Google Scholar
Friese, Susanne (2012) Qualitative Data Analysis with Atlas.ti. Thousand Oaks: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galanter, Marc (1983) “Reading the Landscape of Disputes: What We Know and Don't Know (and Think We Know) About Our Allegedly Contentious and Litigious Society,” 31 UCLA Law Rev. 4–71.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Abbie, Gartrell, Nanette & Gates, Gary (2014) Research Report on LGB-Parent Families. Los Angeles: The Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law. Retrieved from the Williams Institute website: http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/lgb-parent-families-july-2014.pdf.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Jeff, Jasper, James, & Polletta, Francesca (2001) Passionate Politics. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, Michele Bratcher (2010) Baby Markets. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Steven (1981) “The Sociology of Sentiments and Emotion,” in Rosenberg, M., & Turner, R., eds., Social Psychology: Sociological Perspectives. New York: Basic Books. 562–92.Google Scholar
Granovetter, Mark (1985) “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness,” 3 American J. of Sociology 481–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hatzis, Aristides (2003) “‘Just the Oven': A Law and Economics Approach to Gestational Surrogacy Contracts,” SSRN Perspectives for the Unification or Harmonisation of Family Law in Europe 412–33.Google Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie Russell (1979) “Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure,” 85 American J. of Sociology 551.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie Russell (1983) The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie Russell (2003) The Commercialization of Intimate Life. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar
Hollinger, Joan Heifetz, , & Cahn, Naomi (2004) Families by Law: An Adoption Reader. New York: NYU Press.Google Scholar
Kahan, Dan (2008) “Two Concepts of Emotion in Risk Regulation,” 156 U. Pa. L. Rev. 741.Google Scholar
Katz, Jack (1999) How Emotions Work. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kemper, Theodore (1987) “How Many Emotions Are There? Wedding the Social and the Autonomic Components,” 93 American J. of Sociology 263–289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kindregan, Charles, & McBrien, Maureen (2011) Assisted Reproductive Technology: A Lawyer's Guide to Emerging Law and Science. Chicago: American Bar Association.Google Scholar
Lewin, Tamar (2014) “Coming to U.S. for Baby, and Womb to Carry It,” New York Times. Available at: http://nyti.ms./1rAjFG8 (accessed 5 July 2014).Google Scholar
Lively, Kathryn (2013) “Age and Its Effect on the Experience and Management of Emotion,” 30 Advances in Group Processes 231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lofland, Lyn (1985) “The Social Shaping of Emotion: the Case of Grief,” 8 Symbolic Interaction 171–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luker, Kristin (2008) Salsa Dancing Into the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Macaulay, Stewart (1963) “Non-Contractual Relations in business: A Preliminary Study.” 2 American Sociological Rev. 55–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macaulay, Stewart (2000) “Relational Contracts Floating on a Sea of Custom? Thoughts About the Ideas of Ian MacNeil and Lisa Bernstein,” 94 Northwestern Univ. Law Rev. 775.Google Scholar
Macaulay, Stewart (2005) “The New Versus the Old Legal Realism,” Wisconsin Law Rev. 365–403.Google Scholar
Macneil, Ian (1974) “A Primer of Contract Planning,” 48 S. CA. Law Rev. 627.Google Scholar
Madeira, Jody (2012) “Infertile Women's Decision-Making Autonomy.” 71 Maryland Law Rev. 339.Google Scholar
Maldonado, Solangel (2008) “Cultivating Forgiveness: Reducing Hostility and Conflict After Divorce,” 43 Wake Forest Law Rev. 441–48.Google Scholar
Markens, Susan (2007) Surrogate Motherhood and the Politics of Reproduction. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar
Maroney, Terry (2006) “Law and Emotion: A Proposed Taxonomy of an Emerging Field,” 30 Law and Human Behavior 119.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Massaro, Toni (1999) “Show (Some) Emotions,” in Bandes, (ed.), The Passions of Law. New York: NYU Press.Google Scholar
McCreight, Bernadette (2005) “Perinatal Grief and Emotional Labour: A Study of Nurses' Experiences in Gynae Wards,” 42 International J. of Nursing Studies 439.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Merry, Sally Engle (1990) Getting Justice and Getting Even: Legal Consciousness Among Working-Class Americans. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Merry, Sally Engle (2009) Gender Violence: A Cultural Introduction. London: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Nader, Laura (1990) Harmony Ideology: Justice and Control in a Zapotec Mountain Village. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha (2001) Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pasquetti, Silvia (2013) “Legal Emotions: An Ethnography of Distrust and Fear in the Arab Districts of an Israeli City,” 47 Law & Society Rev. 461.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patton, Michael (2002) Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods. Thousand Oaks: Sage.Google Scholar
Pierce, Jennifer (1995) Gender Trials: Emotional Lives in Contemporary Law Firms. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar
Plaut, Victoria, & Robert Bartlett, III (2011) “Consent? A Social Psychological Investigation of Non-Readership of Click-Through Agreements,” 36 Law and Human Behavior 293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radin, Mary Jane (1987) “Market-Inalienability,” 100 Harvard Law Rev. 1849.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Dorothy (1995) “The Genetic Tie,” 62 Univ. Chicago Law Rev. 209.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roberts, Dorothy (2011) Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century. New York: The New Press.Google Scholar
Rothman, Barbara Katz (1993) The Tentative Pregnancy: How Amniocentesis Changes the Experience of Motherhood. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.Google Scholar
Rothman, Barbara Katz (1994) “The Tentative Pregnancy: Then and Now,” in Rothenberg, K. H., & Thomson, E.J., eds., Women and Prenatal Testing: Facing the Challenges of Genetic Technology. Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Saldana, Johnny (2009) The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers. Thousand Oaks: Sage.Google Scholar
Sanger, Carol (1996) “Separating from Children,” 96 Columbia Law Rev. 375.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanger, Carol (2012) “Bargaining for Motherhood: Postadoption Visitation Agreements,” 41 Hofstra Law Rev. 309–39.Google Scholar
Sanger, Carol (2013) “Legislating with Affect,” in Fleming, James, ed., Passions and Emotions. New York: NYU Press.Google Scholar
Sarat, Austin, & Felstiner, William (1986) “Law and Strategy in the Divorce Lawyer's Office,” 20 Law & Society Rev. 93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Savage, David (2014) “Supreme Court Halts Utah Gay Marriages,” Los Angeles Times, published Jan. 6, 2014, Los Angeles Times website.Google Scholar
Siegel, Reva (2008) “Dignity and the Politics of Protection: Abortion Restrictions Under Casey/Carhart,” 117 Yale Law J. 1694–800.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Allen, & Kleinman, Sherryl (1989) “Managing Emotions in Medical School: Students' Contacts with the Living and the Dead,” 52 Social Psychology Q. 56–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, David, Morrill, Calvin, & Anderson, Leon (2003) “Elaborating Analytic Ethnography: Linking Fieldwork and Theory,” in Ethnography. Vol. 4. Thousand Oaks: Sage. 181–200.Google Scholar
Solinger, Rickie (1990) Wake Up Little Susie New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Suchman, Mark (2003) “The Contract as Social Artifact,” 37 Law & Society Rev. 91–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suchman, Mark, & Cahill, Mia. (1996) “The Hired Gun as Facilitator: Lawyers and the Suppression of Business Disputes in Silicon Valley,” 21 Law & Social Inquiry 679–712.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thoits, Peggy (1990) “Emotional Deviance: Research Agendas,” in Kemper, T., ed., Research Agendas in the Sociology of Emotions. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Turner, Jonathan, & Stets, Jan (2005) The Sociology of Emotions. New York: Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wharton, Amy (2009) “The Sociology of Emotional Labor,” 35 The Annual Rev. of Sociology 147–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yngvesson, Barbara (1988) “Making Law at the Doorway – the Clerk, the Court, and the Construction of Community in a New England Town,” 22 Law & Society Rev. 409–448.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Cases Cited

Culliton v. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, 756 N.E.2d 1133 (Mass. 2001).Google Scholar
Gonzales v. Carhart, 550 U.S. 124 (2007).Google Scholar
In Re the Marriage of Buzzanca, 61 Cal.App. 4th 1410 (1998).Google Scholar
In Re the Matter of Baby M., 109 N.J. 396 (1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson v. Calvert, 851 P.2d 776 (Cal.1993), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 874 (1993).Google Scholar
Perry-Rogers v. Fasano, 715 N.Y.2d 19 (2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar