It is very common in the United States for Mexican and Central American immigrant women to work as nanny/housekeepers and housecleaners, especially in certain cities such as Los Angeles. The growth of this paid domestic work is associated largely with the increase in women entering employment, especially as mothers and wives. Private caregivers are often preferred because patents feel they gain control and flexibility, while their children receive more attention. The fact is that most of these workers doing domestic work are not viewed as real employees. Much of this is because the work they do is private in the home, and has traditionally been unpaid. The work they perform is also associated with women’s “natural” expressions of love for their families. The personal, idiosyncratic nature of the work also prevents paid domestic work from being recognized as real work. With some exceptions, most domestic work as always been reserved for poor women, immigrant women, and women of color, but more recently it has become more homogeneous. One reason for the cause of paid domestic work, especially Latinas, is due to high rates of immigration in more recent years. Worldwide paid domestic work continues its long legacy as racialized and gendered occupation. Paid domestic labor has also developed the idea of transnational motherhood. Domestic responsibilities are transferred from one mother to the next from all across the world. Many times workers live and work in different countries than their husbands and children and therefore do not see their families for years.
There are three common types of paid domestic work jobs. Live-in-nanny/housekeepers live in employee’s homes and work fro one family. Responsibilities usually include caring for children and housework. Live in jobs are less common now than before the early 1900s. There is usually no clear line between work and non-work time. Food can also be a huge issue. Most earn less than $5 an hour. Live-out nannies/housekeepers usually work five to six days a week for one family. They usually tend to the children and household, but return each evening to their own homes and families. This form of work is much more common today in the US. They have more autonomy then live-in nannies and actually earn slightly more. A housecleaner usually works for several different families/employers cleaning homes. It is a contractual basis, and child care is usually not involved. Housecleaners earn significantly more on average, ranging from between $50 and $60 per housecleaning, suggesting an hourly wage of about $9.50. Housecleaning represents the “modernization of paid domestic work.” Latinas tend to be wanted for these jobs because they are seen as more trustworthy, more submissive, and more responsible. Images of Latinas include them to be exceptionally warm, caring, patient, and clean. For this reason they are more often preferred.
Human care has often been viewed as love, duty, and destiny, but rarely as work. While women now make up one-third of the world’s formal labor force, the still do four-fifths of all informal work. Yet, they still only receive 10% of the world’s income and own less than 1% of property. Much of this is due to the ignorance of domestic work. Care giving is not usually seen part of housework, yet housework is a part of the process of human care. Women have to do this all, while being managers of the household. Besides physical work they need acknowledged management skills to plan, organize, and carryout many elements of parenting. This has caused toe dual work roles of women. They have dual occupations, at work and work at home. Since the work at home has traditionally been unpaid, it is undervalued and not seen as real work. There are a few theories on how to help this situation. One is to rearrange the time demand of employment. Another is to modify the wage variable by paying wages in relation to the time they devote to child care work. Some people do not support any of these claiming that there needs to be a separation between the market and domestic spheres.
Question has been raised if the hiring of domestic workers due to women going into the work force has actually furthered social inequality and injustice. After more women began working, child care became an issue in which parents needed to seek out. Upper-class and upper-middle class families usually hire a paid full-time domestic caretaker who may or may not live in the house. Workers in the home are paid woefully low wages. Besides low pay, the work is lacking respect and dignity. Domestic workers are also very susceptible to exploitation due to the nature of the work. This can also be harmful to the children having them come to expect that other people will always be available to meet their needs. So why do people continue to hire domestic workers. Much is out of necessity and the ideological construction of intensive and competitive mothering. Mothers feel the need to provide an environment for their children for intellectual stimulation. Because they are at work, they feel a nanny is the next be substitute. As a result, upper and upper-middle class mothers exploit lower class and poor women in order to be able to work and have their children cared for. So what can be done? One option is making the professor more humane but enforcing labor laws such as minimum wage and social security benefits. A more radical approach includes industrialized societies providing child care facilities that are publically supported, locally organized. The most radical view is to rethink and recognize the ways in which the assignment of responsibility for children’s success to their patens reinforces the “winner take all” attitudes in our culture.
I find transnational motherhood a very sad occurrence. Mothers have to leave their own children to take care of others. It barely makes sense and is only done out of pure necessity. Growing up I had a housekeeper who had a daughter back in Guatemala. Gabriella lived with us for five years, barely returning home. Every Christmas we would fly her home to see her family. She lived with us and performed much of our housework, and had a part-time job as waitress too. She felt like part of the family and I was very close to her. I was like her daughter, but much of her love towards me was probably displaced. I know she missed her daughter greatly so one way to deal with that was treating me and my siblings as her own.
I know a lot of families who have live-out nannies/housekeepers and even more families with housecleaners. Most of the families hire them because both parents work, but some families have housekeepers even with stay-at-home mothers. The reason for this is emphasis on other work, such as child care and volunteer work over housework. Most all of the workers hired are Hispanic. I wonder how these female workers are able to survive on such low wages.
In regards to ways in which the child care problem could be solved, I believe a good option would be to implement a child care program in which all children would be eligible for. The problem with this is though as long as people out there are willing to pay more for individual care, desperate workers will still provide the services and stay employed in domestic work.