The Tender Trap

Abstract

In this article, I analyze elder care in Southern California through the ethnographic case of Sunta Barbara. Specifically, I investigate the power-laden work relationships that exist in private homes through Mexican immigrant women’s narratives of paid care. In these narratives women say that they contest structural conditions of work, but also the care ethics imposed by employers. In so doing workers create a “tender trap” for themselves and contribute to “stratified reproduction. ” These experiences illustrate that even in dissent, human care workers of necessity may participate in the maintenance of social inequality.