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Live-in Foreign Domestic Workers and their Impact on Hong Kong’s Middle Class Families

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Abstract

This paper discusses the impact of foreign domestic workers (FDWs) on parental roles and family dynamics of Hong Kong’s middle class families. The increase in married women’s labor force participation in Hong Kong has led to a greater demand for childcare, which has been filled by FDWs. Based on interviews with 15 dual-earner couples in middle class nuclear families employing FDWs, how FDWs affect the mother’s gender role and family dynamics is discussed. Boundary work is used by parents in their daily interaction with their children and their FDWs so as to reconcile the perceived indispensability of these workers on the one hand, and the challenges they pose to the definition of parenthood on the other.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Politics and Sociology, Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, N.T., Hong Kong, China

    Annie Hau-nung Chan

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  1. Annie Hau-nung Chan
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Correspondence to Annie Hau-nung Chan.

Additional information

This research was funded by a Lingnan University Social Sciences Program Research Grant RES/SOC010/978. I am grateful to the guest editors and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

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Chan, A.Hn. Live-in Foreign Domestic Workers and their Impact on Hong Kong’s Middle Class Families. J Fam Econ Iss 26, 509–528 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-005-7847-4

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