Risk and Intimate Labor in the US Commercial Surrogacy Market

• In Event: Sociology of Sex and Gender Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 6. Care, Intimate Labor, and Social Reproduction

Abstract

As a form of intimate labor (Boris and Parreñas 2010) and embodied labor, surrogacy is a meaningful case through which to examine how reproductive labor—a critical dimension of reproductive rights and justice—continues to be systematically devalued and contested within the global economy. Using data from qualitative, in-depth interviews with surrogates and intended parents from an ongoing dissertation project about the relationship between economic and reproductive rights in the US commercial surrogacy market, this paper addresses the following questions: 1) what kinds of intimate labor do surrogates and intended parents partake in through the process of surrogacy; 2) how does risk shape the experiences of intimate labor that surrogates and intended parents partake in through the process of surrogacy; and 3) what implications do the relationship between risk and labor in the context of surrogacy have for other forms of intimate labor? In addressing these questions, this paper finds that both surrogates and intended parents acknowledge the intensive work of surrogacy and the importance of compensation, and that surrogates gain both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards from pursuing surrogacy that echo other forms of care work.

Author

• Lauren Nicole Danielowski, University of Connecticut