Beyond Care: Recognising Pregnancy and Childbirth as Reproductive Contributions in Family Law

Lanlan Zhang, Associate Professor at China University of Political Science and Law will present her paper "Beyond Care: Recognising Pregnancy and Childbirth as Reproductive Contributions in Family Law." Professor Jonathan Herring, Univeristy of Oxford, will serve as a discussant.

Abstract

The paper starts from feminist scholarship on the legal recognition of care work and asks whether pregnancy and childbirth are adequately captured by the category of care. While family law has increasingly recognised childcare, homemaking, and other forms of care as contributions to family life, pregnancy and childbirth tend to remain implicit rather than being conceptualised as a distinct form of reproductive contribution.

This paper explores whether pregnancy and childbirth should be recognised as reproductive contributions in their own right, and what legal consequences such recognition might have, particularly upon the breakdown of a marriage. In developing this argument, I distinguish between the recognition of reproductive contribution and compensation for reproductive disadvantage: pregnancy and childbirth may constitute contributions to family welfare, while also generating distinct economic disadvantages, such as career interruption and reduced earning capacity.

I would also like to bring a Chinese perspective into the discussion. Recent developments in Chinese family law have begun to give greater legal significance to reproductive and caregiving contributions, particularly in the context of property division and economic compensation upon divorce. I hope to use these developments both to introduce some recent changes in Chinese family law and to consider, from a comparative perspective, how different legal systems might respond to the gendered and embodied costs of reproduction.

Bio

Lanlan Zhang is an Associate Professor and an Outstanding Young Scholar at China University of Political Science and Law. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford. Her research and teaching interests include civil law, family law, succession law, comparative private law, and legal methodology, with a particular focus on reconceptualising family law through the lens of the law of obligations and exploring gender equality across legal systems and legal domains. Her publications include Chinese Civil Law (co-authored), Proportionality as a Method of Balancing in Private Law (monograph, forthcoming), and the Chinese translation of De jure und de facto: Professorinnen in der Rechtswissenschaft (by Ulrike Schultz et al., forthcoming).