Making Care Work: Employed Mothers in the New Child Care Market

Abstract

Making Care Work: Employed Mothers in the New Child Care Market. Lynet Uttal. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 2002. 208 pp. ISBN 0-8135-311-X. $22.00 (paper). Although numerous articles and books have examined the increased rates of employment among mothers and the increased need for child care, few researchers have examined the mechanisms that mothers use to select and maintain care for their children. To fill this gap, Lynet Uttal offers a rich and illuminating study of the paid care system and the burdens that mothers shoulder to find and maintain adequate care for their children. Using interviews with 48 employed mothers from Memphis, Tennessee and Santa Cruz, California, Uttal illustrates how the political and economic terrain of child care has changed for working mothers. It is well documented that the use of relative care in the United States has declined, while the use of market-based care has increased. Uttal argues that the shift in the sources of child care from family to the private market has altered the way that mothers locate and come to terms with their child-care selections. Unlike other services that can be purchased from the private market, child care is a complex and emotional commodity. To grapple with the difficulty of finding the right care, Uttal shows that mothers employed several techniques, including hiring providers with similar childrearing values and/or racial backgrounds and finding arrangements that offer educational opportunities. In addition, mothers often tried to find care that they believed would serve as a competent maternal substitute. Although Uttal nicely details how mothers find care in the emerging child-care market, her most important contribution to the literature is her analysis of the experience of transferring one's children to paid caregivers (p. 117). In contrast to other studies, Uttal goes beyond issues of supply and demand and instead heightens our understanding of not only the child-care system but also the changing context of motherhood in the early 21st century. The child-care process does not simply end once a mother finds an arrangement; instead, mothers often struggle to find a balance between care and market-based principles. Uttal explains that there is no social script that mothers can use to sustain their child-care arrangements. To maintain their child-care arrangements, the mothers in Uttal's study develop interpersonal relationships with their child-care providers so that they can manage, negotiate, and monitor the care that their children receive. …