Families, Relational Attachments, and the Law of Collaborative Family-Making

Book excerpt: This book points to a crisis at the heart of modern family law’s treatment of “collaborative family-making”: gamete contributions, surrogate motherhood, adoption, functional parenthood, foster care, and kin caregiving. Born of inequality and anchored by exclusivity and secrecy, the dominant legal framework governing collaborative family-making focuses on the acquisition of collaborative services by legal and intended parents without expecting or fostering any lasting bonds between them. This acquisitional framework is starkly disconnected from empirical accounts of the lived experience of collaborations, which demonstrate complex and ongoing relational attachments that extend beyond a transactional moment. At the intersection of law and sociology, the book is to account for relational realities that fail to conform to neat legal categories of parent and stranger, asking: How should the law reflect the complex interconnections between families and family-making collaborators? Should collaborators be treated as legal strangers? Who is impacted by the lack of legal status possessed by family-making collaborators? Who benefits and who loses? Ultimately, this is a work of optimism that seeks to facilitate family-making collaborations in more ethical ways by insisting that family law recognize and support family-making collaborators. It introduces a bold new legal framework of interconnection and guides the reader in implementing practical legal and contractual changes that promote human dignity, uphold children’s right to identity, and support ongoing relational attachments with adults who are fundamental to children’s lives. The volume provides deep and accessible insight into families and family law for legal practitioners, academics, students, and laypersons interested in family-making collaboration.