We are not babysitters: Family child care providers redefine work and care

Abstract

We Are Not Babysitters: Family Child Care Providers Redefine Work and Care. Mary C. Tuominen. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 2003. 207 pp. ISBN 0-8135-3283-3. $22.00 (paper). ISBN 0-8135-3282-5. $60.00 (hardcover). According to 2003 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 75% of mothers with children under the age of 18 and 58% of mothers with children under the age of 6 currently are employed in the United States. These growing employment rates translate into rising public demand for child care. To be able to contribute economically to their families, employed mothers rely on child-care providers, who are most likely to be women of color. Formal child care is also essential to businesses that employ mothers and to the economy, yet it remains devalued both economically and socially, ultimately resulting in women subsidizing care work for businesses. In We Are Not Babysitters: Family Child Care Providers Redefine Work and Care, Mary Tuominen contributes to the growing scholarship on care work by documenting the experiences of family child-care providers. This group comprises the most understudied type of all providers, although one fifth of all children under 6 in paid child care attend family childcare centers. Tuominen's research makes visible the organization and provision of family child care, demonstrating the skill and intensity that this work entails, our dependency on it, and its overall importance to the economy. Based on her previous research on gender and employment policy, Tuominen strives to increase the economic, social, and professional recognition of women who provide child care in their homes and the work rewards they receive. This exposition carries important implications for policy because the majority of family child-care providers work 60-65 hours per week, yet their earnings fall below the federal poverty line and they have neither health insurance nor retirement benefits, making it difficult to meet the needs of their own families. Tuominen bases her analyses on data gathered through a combination of observation and semistructured interviews with 20 family childcare providers of various ethnic and class backgrounds in the state of Washington. She draws upon standpoint theory and diversity feminism to investigate three dimensions of care work: (a) how ideologies, social structures, and personal choices converge to shape women's experiences of providing care to children within their own homes; (b) the changing nature of family, care, and work; and (c) the persistence of the care deficit. She uses an institutional ethnographic approach to understand how the institution of the family affects daily life as a family child-care provider. We Are Not Babysitters contains seven chapters that discuss how race and gender structure women's employment opportunities, what family child-care providers do and the meaning they derive from this work, how providers define motherhood, how these workers balance work and family, and what factors shape their decisions to offer state-subsidized child care. …