Childcare seen by...
Childcare during...
Topic of the Past
Impact today
In the U.S. the history of baby care is largely a history of the economically disadvantaged. By the end of the 19th century, the child care system was largely subsidized by wealthy philanthropists. It consisted of a range of provisions for minorities....
Every parent wants to provide their child with every possible advantage to survive in a highly competitive world. During the 90's, one of the potential advantages that was most focused on was parents' increasing their child's IQ...
Impact today...
As every parent knows, children are as individual as snowflakes. For optimum growth and learning, some require more structure than others. If your child is one of those, one of the nine popular books on parenting that Gina....
Meanings of Words
Child psychologists
Meanings of Words...
Parenting styles and meaning associated with having children are as diverse as parents themselves. Often, there are multiple and complex meanings associated with having a child. Although it would be wonderful if every child were wanted, it would be even more....
Fundamentals...
A diagnosis of cancer can affect both the patient and other members of the family in many different ways. Telling the family is often one of the most difficult aspects, and many women reported dreading taking this step. For those who have....
Child psychologists...
Dr John Watson was an influential American psychologist, and editor of the Psychological Review from 1910 to 1915. In a 1913 article titled "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It", he presented the foundations of his philosophy....
Meaning of Words
Animals offspring
Meaning of Words...
Alison Gopnik, is a professor of philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley. As an international pioneer in the study of child development and learning, she was the first to posit the theory that children's minds could teach adult minds a thing....
With every new form of genetic testing comes a new controversy. One of the most recent controversies concerned the 23andMe saliva DNA test. The test was designed to give individual consumers information about their ancestry and any potential....
Animals offspring...
To imagine new events you need an open-ended system capable of combining old information into new scenarios. If mental time travel evolved for this purpose, then the price of this flexibility is that we may at times reconstruct past events....
Social Institution
Primitive Societies
Non Western Societies
Social Behavior...
We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children....
Social Institution...
Media and Middle Class Moms: Images and Realities of Work and Family by Lara J. Descartes and Conrad Kottak raises questions about the extent to which parents, as well as their parenting style, are affected by the media....
Non Western Societies...
I do think that women could make politics irrelevant; by a kind of spontaneous cooperative action the like of which we have never seen; which is so far from people's ideas of state structure or viable social structure that it seems to them like total anarchy....
Barbara Ehrenreich
Cultures, Social Institution
The Plight of Nannies and Maids from Poor Countries
Women pursue careers today out of personal preference or perhaps out of necessity to pay bills. According to a 2010 article in The New York Times by Catherine Rampell, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development stated in a report that
"Across the industrialized world, about 15.9 percent of children live in single-parent households."
Between 1960 and 2011, the percentage of mothers who were the sole or primary source of income for their families rose from 11 to 40 percent, according to a Pew Research Center study.
Couple these statistics with information from the same Pew study that 74 percent of families said that it was harder to raise children with the rise in women working outside the home, while 67 percent felt that it made it easier for families to earn enough money to live comfortably, and you see a difficult and delicate situation parents face. The pull in two different directions means that something has got to give. For many families, that means hiring domestic help to manage the household, kids, and care for elderly family members.
Migration of Nannies and Maids
The migration of women from poor countries, typically in the southern part of the world, to the North, is the topic of a 2004 book edited by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild entitled Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy. The contributors to the book delve into the emotional and financial world of mothers who leave their homelands in search of a better economic life in richer countries. I wrote another article here, on one of the authors, namely Arlie Russell Hochschild.
One topic that is explored in depth in the book is the idea that mothers from poorer countries who work as nannies in other countries take their love away or redirect it from their own children and give it to the children in their care in the rich country. Some feel that there is a cultural care breakdown in First World countries, and parents in these countries seek out caregivers, like nannies, who still hold to "traditional" maternal ways of caring for children that busy, anxious parents cannot provide. This often means hiring caregivers from poorer countries.
This transference of love from biological children to children they are paid to care for often results in problems in the biological children. They may have problems in school, be resentful, or otherwise have difficulties in life. The mothers move to countries where they earn much higher salaries and pay for their children to have nannies themselves while they live with relatives as well as receive a good education. Still, the maternal bond with the children is often damaged, and this causes a lot of emotional pain for both parents and children.
Maids fill in the gap that is created when women start to work outside the home. Men have not contributed much to household work as women started working outside, as far as the number of hours goes each gender spends cleaning and cooking.
"With the decrease in cleaning hours spent by the woman of the house, men were still found to spend only 1.7 hours per week by 1995 in scrubbing, vacuuming, and sweeping, whereas women still spent 6.7 hours per week performing these particular chores,"
reports Paula Smith-Vanderslice, B.S.
Problems with Working Overseas
Maids who work in other countries also face leaving their children in the care of others. Nannies and maids may even have to leave their children in orphanages, sending home remittances to the orphanage or perhaps to relatives to pay for their care and education.
These domestic workers work long hours, and they are often isolated from the larger communities in which they live. They may suffer emotional distress, culture shock, isolation, and other difficulties. They live on very little in many cases, with their money being sent back home. Some of them may even be forced to work as sex workers to their employers, but they live in isolation and cannot get help.
Perhaps an important take-away from this book is that if a mother in a First World country hires a domestic worker to help her manage her home while she works to provide for her family, it is important to remember that that worker probably has a family at home and faces financial and emotional difficulties in caring for her family.
Some understanding and encouragement to make friends and acquaintances with and outside the family, as well as the opportunity to take time for themselves and to travel home regularly to see their children could make their lives just a bit easier. Paying attention to their needs, and making an honest effort to assist them can make an important and positive difference for them.
Ia Orana Maria (Hail Mary), Paul Gauguin, Atuona, Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands, 1891, Credit Line Bequest of Sam A. Lewisohn, 1951. Metropolitan Museum of Art
June 15,2015 |
Editorial Selection
On Reproductive Consciousness and the Power of Creating and Sustaining Life
Female Deities, Mother Figures and Motherhood Symbolism
The Initiative Facts For Life: A Vital Source for Safe Motherhood
The Developmental Psychologist: How They Help Us Grow Into And Inhabit Our Identity
The Dangers of Parenting as a Competitive Sport
!Kung women A. L. Kroeber Aaron Cooper Abby Arnold Abraham Maslow Acton Bell Adalgisa Giorgio Adam Adriana Iliescu Adrienne Burgess Adrienne Rich Agnes Elizabeth Lloyd Bennett Alain de Botton Alan Ginsberg Albert Bandura Albert Einstein Alexander Berkman Alexis Herman Alfred Adler Alfred Binet Alfred Conrad Alfred P. Sloan Alice Munro Alice Neel Alice Rossi Alice Walker Alisa LaGamma Alison Gopnik Alva Myrdal Amanda Spink Amir Lahav Amy Tan Andrew Meltzoff Andy Warhol Angela Davis Angela Merkel Angelica Blabanoff Angelina Jolie Anita Desai Anna Gottlieb Anna Jarvais Ann Dally Anne Behnke Kinney Anne Brontë's Annette Lareau Anne Wojcicki Ann Hulbert Arapesh people Aristophanes Aristotle Arlie Russell Hochschild Arnold Adolph Berthold Arnold Gesell Arnold Gessel Arnold Rice Rich Ashley Merryman Ashurbanipal Aung San Suu Kyi Azizah al-Hibri Barbara Bush Barbara Ehrenreich Benazir Bhutto Benjamin Spock Berger Betty Friedan Beyonce Bill Gates Billie Jean King Bobby Riggs Boudicca
Errors from the past
"Men should be active and strong, women passive and weak; it is necessary the one should have both the power and the will, and that the other should make little resistance." Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) in Emile, 1762.
More Errors→
"The young girl (and the woman she becomes) is willing to deny her father's limitations (and those of her lover or husband) as long as she feels loved. She is more able to do this because his distance means that she does not really know him. The relationship, then, because of the father's distance and importance to her, occurs largely as fantasy and idealization, and lacks the grounded reality/ which a boy's relation to his mother has." Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering
More Quotes→
The toxic baby? – video Filmmaker Penelope Jagessar Chaffer was curious about the chemicals she was exposed to while pregnant: Could they affect her unborn Read More
More video's→
Why we think about motherhood the way we do.
Childcare seen by…
Childcare during…