Tenuous relationships - Exploration, emotion, and racial ethnic significance in paid child care work

The relatively recent shift of family caregiving to the public market of service work raises questions about how to theorize paid caregiving. This article examines how to conceptualize child rearing when it is transferred to a paid worker. The gendered character of commodified caregiving is complicates try structural locations of race and class that define the employer-employee relationship. Previous discussions of paid child care work as emotionally meaningful work have ken criticized as idealizations that mask the exploitative nature of the work. Yet, emotional meaning is not simply a cover-up or an idealization of the label; rather, it is an integral component of the work of caregiving, the practice of which is distorted by societal assumptions about gender and race. To better understand paid child care work, the significance of emotional meaning, as well as gender race, and ethnic dimensions of paid child care work need to be explored.