Child Care Work: Intimacy in the Shadows of Family-Life

Abstract

This study analyzes the relationships between child care workers and the families of the children they serve. Because paid child care operates in the borderlands of family, many workers develop intimate relationships—both emotional and physical—with the children they care for and their families. Based on three and a half years of participant-observation fieldwork, and in-depth interviews with child care workers, the researcher examines how worker's subjective meanings are shaped through daily interactions, through organizational processes found in child care centers, and by the gendering of child care as women's work. The child care workers in this study saw themselves in “family-like” relationship with the families they served. This designation as “like-moms” and “pseudo-parents” also meant that workers continually engaged in “emotional labor”—managing the intimacy they experienced as caregivers against the expectations placed on them as workers.