Triangulations of “Motherly Love”: Negotiated Intimacies among Migrant Domestic Workers,Mothers,and Children

Abstract

Persistent economic inequality between men and women, combined with differences in gender expectations and growing inequalities among women globally, has resulted in families “outsourcing” childcare by employing migrant domestic workers (MDWs). While studies have addressed the intimacy and complexity of “mothering” in such contexts, the agentic position of child-recipients of such care have seldom been explored. This article increases our understanding of care-relationships by examining their triangularity among children, MDWs, and mothers in Hong Kong. Drawing on in-depth interviews with young people who grew up with MDWs, alongside interviews with MDWs themselves, this article describes processes through which care work transforms into what Lynch describes as “love labor” in these relational contexts. In these contexts, commodified care from MDWs can develop, through a process of mutual trilateral negotiations, into intimate love-laboring relationships that, in turn, reflect larger dynamics of familial transformation that are endemic to “global cities.”

Keywords

paid childcare young adults migrant domestic workers family practices motherhood

Introduction

There is one time that I feed the youngest one and then he said “I love you Rosa,” and then gave me hug. And then, obviously, like I push [him] a bit because the mother is there, and then the mother said [to the child]: “What about me? Do you want to give me a kiss?,” and he said “no.” And then the mother said “you don’t love me?” And then the son says “I just love you a little bit, I love Rosa the whole world”. (Interview with Rosa, who has worked as a migrant domestic worker for a family with two children for 10 years)

The quote given here exemplifies the fraught emotional environment frequently found in households in Hong Kong that hire live-in migrant domestic workers (MDW) for childcare. Such dynamics are not unique to Hong Kong. Domestic workers—referring to paid housekeepers and carers of children and the elderly—have become an increasingly prevalent familial care-arrangement globally (Cox, 2006; 2016; Gullikstad et al., 2016; Lutz, 2016; Sarti, 2014). This trend is largely driven by the following: (a) an increase in middle- to upper-class women’s access to education and employment opportunities (Gregson & Lowe, 1993); (b) persistent gender inequality regarding couples’ division of domestic labor/care (England, 2010; Hochschild & Machung, 1989/2012); and (c) greater inequality between women (Milkman, et al., 1998; Parreñas, 2008). Additionally, paid care work has become more “proletarised,” being seen increasingly as a necessity for the working population rather than a luxury (Marchetti & Triandafyllidou, 2015, p. 231). When looking at childcare specifically, in global cities such as Hong Kong, for example, approximately 44% of dual-career couples with children hire a live-in MDW (Legislative Council Commission, 2017).

Within the privacy of the home, close ties may develop between MDWs and the children they care for (e.g. Hochschild, 2002; Souralová, 2013, 2016; Yelland et al., 2013). Studies and personal accounts have highlighted how MDWs may spend more time with the children than the parents do (Michel & Oliviera, 2017), raise the children they care for as if they were their own (Hochschild, 2002; Macdonald, 2011), and, at times, know the children better than parents do (Stevens, 2019; Transient Workers Count Too, Internet [TWC2], 2015). Because the care-arrangement may be perceived as threatening to the women’s role as a mother and wife, tensions can arise, and female employers (more often than their male counterparts) may develop feelings of guilt and jealousy as they hand over childcare to a MDW (e.g. Constable,1996; Moras, 2017). It is the relationship between the MDW and the child, then, that affects the traditional bilateral mother-child relationship and results in the creation of a new “care triangle” (i.e. parent-child-domestic worker; Tobío & Gorfinkiel, 2007), that may transform understandings of primary care relations.

A growing body of research has explored the dynamic between employers and domestic workers (e.g. Cheng, 2013; Cox, 2011; Groves & Lui, 2012; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2001; Lan, 2006; Macdonald, 2011). However, research has generally failed to include the voices of care-receiving children (with the exceptions of Eldèn & Anving, 2019; Souralová, 2013, 2016; Spyrou, 2009). This inattention is unfortunate and surprising: while the hiring of MDWs involve contracts between the worker and the employer, the dynamics of the relationship between the MDW and the child may significantly differ from the worker-employer relationship, and may have long-term influence on the child’s developmental trajectory. After all, the substantive content of the employment itself (i.e. caregiving) largely takes place between the MDW and the child, who may come to regard the MDW as the person they, as quoted, “love the whole world.”

Additionally, while the few other studies cited earlier that include children deliver important insights, particularly within their own specific geographical constituencies (Sweden, the Czech Republic and Cyprus, respectively), Hong Kong is a particularly relevant research site for studying the experience of children growing up within this familial care-arrangement, for two reasons. First, our contemporary world is characterized by ever-increasing levels of globalization and urbanization (United Nations [UN], 2018), and Hong Kong is, in this regard, a paradigmatic “global city” (Sassen, 2001). Second, there is an increase in the demand for MDWs in Europe and newly industrialized regions in Asia, which has driven an increase in MDWs who hail from the Philippines and other regions in South/South-East Asia (Gallotti, 2015). Hong Kong is in this regard also ahead of the trend: approximately 380,000 MDWs are employed and housed in Hong Kong within the homes of their employers, with most of these MDWs coming from the Philippines and Indonesia. By focusing on families in Hong Kong who have hired a MDW for childcare, and by focalizing the MDW-child relationship, this study contributes to our understanding of a crucial feature of family life as it is expressed in global cities. The present study demonstrates the co-production and transformation, among children and MDWs, of commodified care-relationships—processes that often destabilize attempts to express “traditional” and/or “nuclear” family arrangements in the global city.

Unseen Labor and Unheard Voices

Migrant Domestic Workers: “Invisible but Essential.”

Empirical studies have pointed out how domestic workers may spend more time caring for the children they look after than the children’s parents do (Hochschild, 2002; Yelland et al., 2013), and how MDWs are often cognizant of the need to avoid becoming too close to the children (Macdonald, 2011, drawing on Nelson’s “detached attachment” [1996]). In turn, children may become so attached to the women who care for them that they can come to perceive MDWs as close family members (Souralová, 2013, 2016). In societies with high female labor force participation that rely heavily on MDWs for childcare, such as Hong Kong (He & Wu, 2019), one would therefore expect that caregivers’ “attachment and investment” (Souralová, 2016, p. 130) would explicitly be acknowledged and recognized within the family. However, MDWs’ work often remains invisible. As is common with “feminized labor” generally, care work is stigmatized, undervalued, perceived as low-skilled (Engster 2005; Romero & Pèrez, 2016) or “dirty” (Anderson, 2000; Duffy, 2007)—particularly in comparison with the “clean” middle-class female employer—and increasingly associated with and undertaken by racialized groups from lower classes (Gregson & Lowe, 1993). Rather than remedying traditional stigmas, contemporary developments thus recapitulate, as they complicate received wisdom that positions care as “women’s work” that is “naturally” done by women out of love (i.e. as daughters/mothers/wives; Friedan 1963), or as something done by women who have few other employments options (i.e. [migrant] women of lower class). When a woman is hired as an MDW, childcare mostly takes place in the “shadow” of public life and within the realms of the private sphere—a space that since antiquity has been reserved for “women and slaves” (Arendt, 1958/1989). In current times, due to many countries excluding MDWs from labor law protections, the precarious practices of MDWs “physical and social isolation” is still being likened to modern day slavery (ILO, 2010). In short, many MDWs are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse (Hafiz & Paarlberg, 2017; Vandermeerschen et al., 2019).

As a result of this fraught situation, care work in Hong Kong is also often characterized by invisibility, despite its impact and pervasiveness (see also, Masterson & Hoobler, 2019). As Cruz Bacani suggested, MDWs are “like air”—“invisible but essential” (Carvalho, 2018). Macdonald (2011, p. 132) coined the term “shadow mothers” to describe the MDWs that she found functioning as mere “extensions” of the biological mother instead of “autonomous caregivers” in their own right. Understandings about the role of the MDW, then, seem to be mainly constructed with reference to considerations about the precarity of the place of the mother in the family. Although there is no doubt that these valuations and practices are not merely emergent from contemporary micro-level interactions—rather, they are codes for behavior that emerge from longstanding structures that have their root in colonial labor practices that drew on racist, sexist, and classist social hierarchies (e.g. Parreñas, 2000; Rollins, 1985)—it is time to wonder how this relationship is experienced by the children who are participating interactants in the care triangle.

The Silence of Children on the Receiving End of the Care-chain

While it has been theorized that children on the receiving, or ‘winning’ end, of the “care chain” (the structure that connects women’s care and work across global systems [Hochschild, 2000]) enjoy the luxury of an abundance of care (Hochschild, 2002; Romero, 1997), we know little about the actual experiences of those children growing up with an MDW. The few empirical studies that have explored the experience of children who grew up with a MDW have included Swedish children who grew up with a nanny or au pair (Eldén & Anving, 2019), Greek-Cypriotic school children and their perceptions on Filipina/Sri-Lankan domestic workers (with an emphasis on racialization practices; Spyrou, 2009), and children of Vietnamese migrant families living in the Czech Republic who hired a Czech caregiver (Souralová, 2013, 2016). The Swedish study found that, while some children could be critical on an intellectual level towards their parents for hiring a nanny/au pair, emotional dimensions held primacy when they were considering the women who were entering and exiting their lives. The Czech study demonstrated how Vietnamese immigrant children may regard Czech nannies as a substitute for a Vietnamese grandmother, and how both children and domestic workers mutually negotiate and express care for one another (Souralová, 2016, p. 88).

Rather than being based on a merely “transactional” agreement among children and MDWs, care work, according to Souralová (2016, p. 5), establishes ties that are primarily “based on emotional exchange and sharing intimacy.” As this study will demonstrate, this may even result in children experiencing more emotional intimacy with the MDW than with their own parents, while the positive contributions and qualities of MDWs are, at times, simultaneously downplayed by the (female)employers (also Lan, 2006; Macdonald, 2011). Authors have noted that this empirical reality is reflected in our sense of research priorities: the silence with respect to the positive qualities of domestic workers, “seems to have been perpetuated by the absence of research in this area” (Yelland et al. 2013, p. 444). This understudied dynamic is echoed by professionals and scholars (particularly those focusing on early childhood development) who have addressed the often-ignored emotional and psychological significance of the role of domestic workers (e.g. Scheftel, 2012; Yakeley, 2017). If we shift the focus to the child—as is intended presently—we may be able to break the silence regarding the importance of MDWs to children and their families, thereby generating insights that promise to benefit both children growing up with a domestic worker and the caring adults involved.

‘Taxonomy of Care’

When seeking to further explore the care-relationship between MDWs and children, it is important to adhere to a child-centered understanding of care by conceptualizing care as a concept that goes “beyond the ‘family’” (see Eldèn, 2016). After all, family ties here take on a different form than the traditional nuclear two-parent family that consists of blood relations and legal kin. MDWs are more characteristic of “fictive kin” (see Braithwaite et al. 2010 for an overview). Thus, this study explores the care-relationship between the MDW and the child they care for as a type of kinship care—kinship relations are “made” through daily activities including caregiving, rather than being biologically “given” (Carsten, 2000, p. 19). To explore how this kin relationship is experienced and negotiated by children and MDWs, this study draws on Lynch’s (2007) “taxonomy of care” framework, in which a distinction is made between three different types of care relationships: love labor (primary care), general care work (secondary care), and solidarity work (tertiary care) (visualized by Lynch [2007, p. 556] as three concentric circles, with love labor being closest to the center, that is, the care-receiver; see figure 1).

Figure 1.

Concentric circles of care relations

A prime example of love labor is the parent-child relationship, because these primary care relationships are marked by mutual interdependence and high levels of attachment, engagement, and intensity (Lynch, 2007, p. 555). General care work, in comparison, refers to relationships that consist of less moral/emotional obligation and depth, but which can in theory develop into primary care relationships (e.g. friends, neighbors, or other fictive kin). Tertiary care relationships are furthest removed from the center, and include statutory obligations (such as paying taxes) and community/voluntary work (Lynch & Walsh, 2009, p. 47).

According to Lynch (2007, p. 565), love labor can be clearly distinguished from general care and solidarity work, in that love labor cannot be commodified and is not transactionally fungible: “the emotional work involved in loving another person is not readily transferred to a paid other by arrangement; neither can it be exchanged.” This distinction is valid as a means of highlighting issues pertaining to affective inequalities, as well as the controversial nature of neoliberal attempts to commodify even “the non-commodifiable dimensions of [care]” (Lynch, 2007, p. 565; i.e. love, and love relationships). Despite this, the framework seems applicable in this study insofar as I demonstrate that relationships between domestic workers and children can come to be experienced as love laboring relationships in the truest sense—even if they have their origins in a commodified care.

Method

Using the method of narrative inquiry (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990), this study explores how domestic workers, young adults, female employers, and children experience and negotiate care relationships within the care-triangle. This qualitative method was preferred because, as Crouch and McKenzie (2006, p. 487) note: “complex reactions and feelings are best given meaning and are optimally articulated. . .through a dialogue which encourages reflection on, rather than mere reporting of, experience.” Narrative inquiry, specifically, focuses on the respondent’s lived experienced through stories (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). These stories were collected via 27 in-depth conversations with young adults (18–34 years) who grew up with a MDW in Hong Kong (n=13), and MDWs working in Hong Kong (n=14; see Tables 1 and 2)—all of whom were recruited as part of a larger research project that also includes interviews with female employers and their children who live with an MDW. Young adults were initially recruited via personal referrals, and MDWs were recruited via local social enterprises. Snowball sampling was adopted for further recruitment. Because child-centered research is relatively rare in this field, and because relationships between MDWs and children have often been neglected in the literature, this study is exploratory and “intensive, rather than extensive” (Crouch & McKenzie, 2006, p. 494). It seeks to be persuasive in a conceptual, narrative manner, rather than harboring pretentions toward generalizability in a quantitative sense.

Table 1.

Characteristics Young Adults.

Name*	Age	Parents Employed during Childhood		Age Living with MDW (From–Until)	Multiple MDWs (Yes/No)/ Longest Contract (Years)
Name*	Age	Mother	Father	Age Living with MDW (From–Until)	Multiple MDWs (Yes/No)/ Longest Contract (Years)
Eric	22	Yes	Yes	0–12	Y/6
Benny	32	Yes	Yes	13–28	Y/5
Monica	33	No	Yes	0–current	Y/9
Candice	32	Yes	Yes	7–31	Y/5
Bella	32	Yes	Yes	0–30	Y/10
Katherine	23	Yes	Yes	0–13	Y/3
Aaron	24	Yes	Yes	0–16	N/16
Chelsey	24	Yes	Yes	0–current	N/24
Mandy	25	Yes	Yes	0–25	Y/13
Daphne	27	Yes	Yes	0–27	Y/20
Melvin	19	Yes	Yes	1–15	Y/4
Natasha	23	No	Yes	0–current	N/23
Daniel	23	Yes	Yes	0–current	Y/19

Names have been altered

Table 2.

Characteristics Migrant Domestic Workers.

Name*	Age	Country of Origin	Left-behind Children	Years Working as MDW	Age of the Children in MDW’s Care (Years)	Longest Time Working for One Family (Years)
Lorraine	42	Philippines	Yes	9	6	5
Naomi	35	Philippines	Yes	1.5	10 months	10 months
Claudia	42	Philippines	No	23	12	19
Rosa	37	Philippines	Yes	14	5;7	10
Yana	46	Philippines	No	16	6;8	8
Dara	36	Indonesia	No	17	2	6
Joyce	33	Philippines	No	3	7;8	3
Angel	31	Philippines	No	8	9;6;3	5
Lydia	31	Philippines	Yes	5	7	4
Larissa	40	Philippines	No	16	9	7
Dewi	40	Indonesia	Yes	10+	8	6
Dina	45	Indonesia	Yes	19	7	7
Putri	34	Indonesia	No	11	8	6
Rachel	44	Philippines	No	20	7 months; 8;9	9

Names have been altered

The interviews with the young adults are retrospective in nature. Enquiring about the young adult’s memories of their childhood experience and family stories alongside current MDW’s narratives allows for two pathways of inquiry into the dynamics of this form of care. Additionally, interviewing young adults provides the additional benefit of allowing access to the longer-term aspects of childhood-MDW relationships (Souralová, 2013).

Ultimately, this study highlights how concepts such as “care” and “family” are acquiring new meanings within the commodified “care-triangle.” The analysis describes processes through which general care work can transform into love labor in these relational contexts.

Findings

General Care Work, Love Labor, or Somewhere in Between

The interviews with young adults suggest that many of them view MDWs as centrally important in their childhood. For some, this significance has carried forward to the present day, and only two out of thirteen young adults felt significantly distanced from their MDWs. The relationships that the young adults described could be classified into three separate care-relationship forms (see Figure 1): (a) relationships that fall under general care work (an “outsider” in the family); (b) relationships that fall somewhere in between general care work and love labor (an “extra” family or friend); and (c) relationships that fall under love labor (a near parent-like role). These three themes pertaining to MDW roles are described further.

Theme 1: An “outsider” in the family

Two young women, Candice and Daphne, would fall into the first category, regarding the presence of a MDW from a perspective that emphasized their status as outsiders who are at times even a “nuisance” within family life. For Candice, who experienced care from a variety of women who worked for her family, MWDs were not deemed significant on an emotional level. She explained that, within her family, the MDW “was just another person living at home. I never really paid attention to her because I think that she’s just doing housework. . .she is an outsider in the family.” Throughout the conversation it became clear that, as she was already 7 years old when a MDW first moved into her home, there were some grievances regarding the fact that the MDW was mainly caring for her younger siblings rather than her. She maintained: “I didn’t really like them because they didn’t help me with my schoolbags—only my siblings, because I’m the oldest.” Daphne explained that, while growing up with a succession of MDWs, her mother would often be critical of the workers, and she learned to ignore the women who would come and go in her household. This partly stemmed from the “noise” and the “feelings” that came along with having different people living in the house, whom everybody needed to establish relationships with. These different relationships in the household were rather stressful and confusing to her, and she noted that at any given moment, “my mom might be giving [the MWD] orders, my brother is treating [the MWD] like a half-mom, [and] I kind of got used to ignor[ing] their existence.” She further explained her rationale for ignoring them:

Like, there’s a new person living [with] you, and they change every now and then, and they have their own family as well—they have their own problems. And then they use their own language, the Philippines language and the Indonesian language sounds very aggressive, right? So, it’s basically living in the noise.

Throughout the interview, she described the immense pressure she experienced from her mother, whom she characterized as a “tiger mom” who was physically and emotionally abusive towards her and her brother. The fact that the MDW could not do anything to prevent the abuse from happening, and that her father instilled in her the notion that she was responsible for protecting her younger brother, has undoubtedly affected how she experienced care-relationships in her childhood.

Theme 2: An “extra” family member or an “extra” friend

In the examples related earlier, both interviewees grew up with multiple MDWs. The duration of the contracts, and the corresponding number of MDWs, was something that came up throughout many conversations with young adults, but a high turnover rate was not something that necessarily caused young adults to relegate workers to an “outsider” status. Monica is a case in point. Her family also hired multiple domestic workers, some of whom she regarded as “an extra friend.” Others took on the status of “someone else in the family, it’s like an extra family member.” Especially in her younger years, she experienced a close bond with the MDW, with whom she felt uniquely able to talk about personal matters. She confessed: “especially when I was younger, I definitely felt [it was] easier to talk to the domestic helper than to my mom.”

This theme, in which the domestic worker becomes a confidant who is easier to talk to than other family members, resonated with other young adults as well (and corresponds with the “being there” narrative that emerged in Eldèn & Anving’s [2019, p. 106] interviews with Swedish children). In some cases, MDWs became an intimate advisor on sensitive matters such as experiencing “puppy love” or getting a bad grade in school. Some of them noted how the care-triangle could be depicted as a hierarchy in which, as respondent Katherine explained, “the status was like my parents [on top], tse-tse [below] and then me and my brother [at the bottom].” In such a hierarchy, the MDW (commonly referred to as “auntie” or “tse-tse,” meaning “big sister” in Cantonese) was comparatively closer to them than their parents, and, as such, it was perceived as less threatening to share sensitive issues with them. Eric, who grew up with three different MDWs over the course of 12 years, explained that he would tell the MDW when he felt sad or when he received a bad grade in school: “I would tell my domestic helper [because] I don’t want to tell my parents—I thought they will get sad, upset or they will blame me.” Eric also felt particularly close to one MDW who lived in his home for six years, and the goodbye gift she gave him 10 years ago remains a treasured relic of their intimacy: “She bought me a toy, [it’s] still at home. It’s just a normal toy but it’s meaningful for me, because it’s her.”

This intimacy was at times interpreted as constituting a direct challenge to the mother’s role. Katherine explained to me how, as a child, she would spend most of the days with “tse-tse” and that while she would look forward to seeing her mother again after a workday, there was a significant difference in the interactions she had with her mother and with “tse-tse.” She elaborated: “the most vivid feeling to me was that I have closer body contact with my tse-tse than my mom. I would feel like really we’re more intimate.” Sensing this, her mother would tell her, “‘you’re growing up so don’t always cuddle so much with your domestic worker, don’t act like a baby,’—that sort of thing.” Such interactions display tensions inherent in the “mother-manager” (Katz Rothman, 2000) position, whereby the mother desires to be released from the “second shift” (Hochschild& Machung, 1989/2012) without being displaced in the emotional world of her child (also, Tronto, 2002). The mother thus employed a discursive strategy that constituted a double-move: in one direction, the emotionality of the child’s comportment toward the worker is conceived as inappropriate—belonging to an earlier stage of socialization (i.e. she was “behaving like a baby” in her physical intimateness with the worker). In the other direction, the emotional-physical labor of the MDW is devalued, constructed “as functional or menial. . .; higher-level tasks, such as educational, or complex emotional management, are ignored” (Yelland et al. 2013, p. 444).

While a full exploration of the psycho-social impact of growing up with MDWs would go beyond the scope of this study, the literature on family transitions demonstrates that the effects on a child’s well-being can be most significant when transitions happen more frequently (Brown, 2006; Lee & McLanahan, 2015). This literature does not explore transitions involving live-in MDWs specifically. However, my interview data suggests that the transition of an intimate other in the close quarters in Hong Kong has significantly impacted the childhood experiences of children/young adults, and it stands to reason that the psychological effects of these impacts could very well carry forward into later life. Katherine explained how her mother would “keep changing people [MDWs],” up to the point that her father decided to put an end to the process and decided against hiring another MDW altogether when she was 13 years old. Even though the frequent turnover did lessen her sense of attachment (she had seven different MDWs living in her home over the course of her childhood), she did become especially close to one who stayed for three years. Over the long term, however, she believed that the frequent comings and goings of MDWs (coined the “nanny circle” by Eldèn & Anving, 2019, p. 112) did affect her current ability to establish relationships with people. The separation issues from which she was currently suffering were “maybe partly because I always [had to] say goodbye to my domestic workers.” Ironically, a female employer interviewee explained to me how she programmatically decided to let go MDWs after two-year intervals (contracts are signed for two years but can be extended on mutual agreement) because of her fears about negative separation effects on children. This strategy was borne out of experience: her oldest daughter became very close to the first woman who cared for her (for six years), leading to “a very painful separation” when the MDW had to leave. With that in mind, the mother felt, “if I keep this [short-term] employer-employee relationship, it’s better when [the MDWs] leave—the children wouldn’t be so upset. . .. I don’t want them to have that experience in childhood.” Motivations like these add complexity to the care-relationships and to the concept of ‘mothering care.’

The final section will examine the relational environs where such complexities emerge in force: families who have hired one domestic worker for the entire duration of the child’s upbringing, and where distinctions between “love” and “labor” are blurred to the point of almost losing their meaning.

Theme 3: “Like parents and children.”

Young adults who received long-term care from one MDW throughout their childhood years for the most part highly treasured the love and care they experienced from these women. The fact that “love” in these cases supersedes “labor” is indicated also by the fact that, without exception, young adults remained in contact with their former MDWs after the formal contracts would end. The relationships described in the interviews with these young adults were characterized by commitment, mutuality, trust, and a sense of responsibility—all prerequisites for love laboring relationships, according to Lynch (2007).

In order to detail the processes through which this intimacy deepened, it is helpful to parse and examine the relational patterns in terms of three distinct but interlocking dimensions; namely, (a) the time spent in the relationship, (b) the emotional gravity or intensity of the relationships, and (c) the close spatial proximities inherent in these relationships. These dimensions emerged consistently both in interviewees accounts of the development of “love labor” and in the sheer facts of their relational arrangements. Along the temporal dimension, in all the cases, the MDWs lived-in with families from the birth of the child and throughout their childhood and into young adulthood. In terms of gravity or intensity, the care-relationships all underwent a remarkable development toward a state where children interpreted them as being “like family” ties. In terms of space, in all cases, small living spaces forced the household members to live physically close together, and in all but one case, the MDW shared a bedroom with the child. Using this tripartite framework, the experiences of these young adults will be relayed and triangulated with MDWs’ narratives to provide a rich illustration of the development of “love labor.”

Temporality: The duration of the relationship

Chelsey, who had been living with the same MDW for over 24 years, described their relationship in simple terms: “I think we’re like parents and children.” This intimacy, so clear and so treasured within her own experience, nevertheless was a source of ambivalence for her in her ethical evaluations since, while she feared the moment when the MDW would have to go back to the Philippines, she also admitted to feeling guilty about taking the MDW from her biological family:

[S]ometimes I do feel a bit guilty, because she is working for me—for our family—while she has hers [her family] back in the Philippines. So somehow it’s like. . . . I took her from her family, so I do feel a bit guilty. But I just don’t want her to go. . . . It’s like, well I do feel guilty if I say “don’t go,” but actually she’s more like a part of a family member now. . .so I am just avoiding the conversation about this.

From the moment of birth, Chelsey’s MDW was a central player in “ritual family activities” (Souralová, 2016, p. 95), sharing her bedroom, evening-meals, weekly routines, and major life-events. Investing high levels of time is a crucial aspect of love laboring relationships, as it allows for high levels of self-investment and cognitive labor (e.g. getting to know each other’s deepest needs [Lynch, 2007]). MDWs and children spend most of the time together during the childhood years, as in many two-parent families that hire MDWs both parents work, and maternity leave is relatively short in Hong Kong (10 weeks).

MDW perspectives confirm the importance of time. Claudia, who worked as a MDW for one family for 19 years, explained how, after working closely together with a couple and experiencing the full pregnancy of her employers, she was the one responsible for most of the care of the new-born girl. She described the first four months of providing intense infant care:

She [the baby] doesn’t want to be put on the bed. . .she just wants to be held and I sleep like this [gestures how she is holding the baby on her chest while sitting]. “My god,” I said, ‘I think I am the one who gave birth!’. . . . I know she [the female employer] loves the kid, but I think because I am there I am more the one who is taking care of the baby. . .[for] 4 months I cannot do any [other] work anymore: I cannot cook, I’m drowsy during the day, I didn’t have a day off for 4 months.

This quote demonstrates both the intense physical aspect of care, and also the precariousness of the role of the MDW in the household. First, the physical and intimate nature of the job makes her almost feel like she went through the childbirth herself, an experience further compounded by the utterly demanding nature of the early infant care. Drawing a comparison between herself and the baby’s mother, she hews to the notion that she is basically usurping the biological mother in the role of “nurturer,” stressing that while the female employer does love her own child, it is clear that she is the one who is providing most of the mothering love. Second, due the infant’s basic care needs, and the MDW’s own sense of responsibility, she sacrificed her legal entitlement to take the Sundays off and instead took full-time care of the baby for four months straight. The family itself recognized the importance of the role that the MDW was taking during this time, hiring an additional MDW to provide household tasks. Claudia described that, as the child grew older, she took on many of Claudia’s own traits, much to the frustration and jealousy of her female employer (a dynamic discussed in previous studies on female employers-MDWs, e.g. Constable, 1996). When the child was seven years old, Claudia was therefore asked to work as a live-out MDW (something that is illegal in Hong Kong), and to start her working days when the child had left for school. This was, as she explained, very hard for both herself and the child. On some days, she would still be at her employer when the child returned home, and one day the girl remarked to her, after begging for her to stay overnight: “you know, my mom and my dad they live in one house [and are married]. . .maybe I can just marry you so you don’t have to leave!”

Gravity: intensity and interpretations of the care-relationship

Spending so much time together may indeed lead to questions regarding the roles of the primary carers in the household (i.e. MDW and parents) when children are young. It is not uncommon that children in the care of MDW’s will seek clarification regarding the status of this “other” woman in the care-triangle. The children I interviewed often sought to understand her position by comparing her role to that of their parent’s—often the mother’s. Mason and Tipper (2008) document a practice whereby children define a set of “like family” kinship ties—a practice that enhances the symbolic meaning of the care-relationship between carer and care-receiver. Mandy, a young adult, was all too aware of the fact that she loved the MDW like a mother, and would tell the MDW so, but she maintained that she would never express this love while her mother was around “because it might be hurtful for my mother.” Along these lines, similar feelings of ambivalence also prevented some of the young adults I interviewed from sharing their feelings of sadness and loss with their parents upon the departure of the MDW from the family.

MDWs frequently described how they would explain their own roles to children in their care; a process that often involved making an explicit demarcation between themselves and the female employer. As Rosa, who had been working for a family with two children for 10 years elaborated:

I always say [to the children]. . .“I appreciate that you always say ‘I love you’ to me, you always give a hug and kiss to me, and I appreciate that sometimes you compare me to your mommy, but, don’t compare me to your mum, because your mum is your mum. You come from your mummy’s womb. It’s just that they’re so busy now working, that’s why I am here. That’s why they hired me, to help them to watch over you”. . . . That’s what I always told to them: “it doesn’t mean that, [because] I always take good care of you they don’t love you anymore, they just need my help, because they need to work”. . . . And then they said [to me] that “you always have the time for us,” and then I said “of course, because mommy and daddy pay me to have time for you”.

Yana, who has worked for a family with two children for over eight years, explained how she clearly establishes boundaries between herself and the mother when the issue comes up:

The eldest is very close to me, she treats me like a mom. I say “no, just treat me like a tse-tse” . . . . She will talk to me: “Yana tse-tse, I wish you were my mom”. . . . Because sometimes she feels not loved, she says: “mommy don’t love me.” I say, “no, she loves you.” [She asks,] “Why she never takes care of me?” [I reply] “Because she works so hard”.

In both of the examples given here, the children thus seem to have relatively traditional expectations of their mothers: a mother is someone who will care for them and always have time for them. With the lack of their biological mother embodying these traits, they seem to transfer such expectations to the MDW, who does in fact spend the majority of her time caring for them (a complexity that Macdonald [2011] also outlined in her study, when noting that children may come to perceive the workers as mother-figures). The children in such circumstances are looking for affirmation that their mothers do love them and seek to find explanations for the discrepancy in the level of care they receive from their mothers versus their MDWs. Recognizing the destabilizing implications—for the child, and no doubt for themselves—of a growing mother-child-style attachment between themselves and the child, most MDWs, like the women in the earlier examples, work to preserve the traditional mother’s role by arguing that it is in fact out of love that the mothers are working so hard to provide for the children—other underlying reasons for emphasizing their role as, in a way, “inferior” to that of the mothers of the children could be explained in two ways: (a) due to a fear of repercussions from the parents, that is, jealousy could lead to termination of contracts; and (b) enforcing or upholding boundaries, both to protect the feelings of attachment of the children, as well as the MDWs themselves (the latter one, for many, may prove challenging, since human relationships are often emotional, rather than rational [Lynch & Walsh, 2009]). Furthermore, expressing love and care in this way is, after all, a familiar concept to many MDWs, who are in many cases sacrificing mothers themselves. The woman in the first quote (Rosa) has a daughter in the Philippines that she cares for mainly through remittances that, she hopes, will allow her daughter to receive a better education and future (see Fresnoza-Flot, 2009; Jordan et al., 2018; Parreñas, 2005 on transnational motherhood and the importance of remittances). Many women are therefore trying to emphasize their status as a “tse-tse”—someone who is merely hired to provide care and spend time with the children. For the children, however, the transactional, economic nature of the care relationship seems harder to comprehend, since they experience first-hand the tangible expressions of care and love from the MDW.

Aaron (a young adult) remarked how he had always felt more comfortable sharing his emotions with his “auntie” who cared for him for the first 14 years of his life, than with his parents. This is a level of comfort that extends to present day, even though he is now 23 years old and the “auntie” is back at home in Thailand. He noted: “sometimes I’m morally condemned by myself—shouldn’t I be emotionally connected with my parents? Because I remember when my maternal grandmother passed away . . . I called my auntie and cried to her.” He conveyed to me that he had been seeing a counsellor with whom he discussed this inner conflict:

[M]y counsellor, she kind of criticized me, made me to reflect upon “oh what’s going on? You do not appreciate the qualities of your parents, but you’re kind of more emotionally connected to your auntie?. . . . They [his parents] didn’t want to do that [hiring a MDW] but they had to make money for you. . .for the family, but know that your auntie was paid to do this.” So, something like that.

After recounting this interaction with his counsellor, he explained that he also did not have a choice with respect to being raised by a MDW; that he “was put into the situation as well.” Arguably, as this respondent suggested to me, “I think [the emotional struggle] may also be an outcome of growing up with an auntie that you feel so close with.”

Mandy (another young adult who lived with the same domestic worker for the first 12 years of her life) revealed how her consciousness of the different tasks assigned to both women in the home (i.e. the domestic/caring tasks assigned to the MDW vs. the economic-earning and planning tasks assigned to the mother) taught her that love and care can be expressed in different, but complementary, ways:

My first helper, she is a very caring person and very, very warm-hearted. Yeah, she was able to teach us how to care (tearing up)—oh, I am a bit touched (laughs)—yeah she really cares about her work and our family. . . . I think comparing my auntie with my mother, I learned more about how you love one another. . . . And from my mother, she is more rational because she taught math (laughs). . .so I learned how to organize my timetable, how to set goals, and how to set the plan to achieve the goals from my mother.

Although young adults like Mandy often experienced MDWs as being “like family,” many also noted that their parents would attempt to maintain clear employer-employee boundaries within the home. Daniel, a 23-year-old young adult who still lived with his family and the MDW who had cared for him all his life, had fond memories of both his parents and the MDW. While he was somewhat embarrased to explain that, in the first years of his life he considered the MDW as more “like a servant,” (a narrative that would be in line with Tronto’s [2002, p. 40] concern that children receiving care may come to regard people merely as means) he later came to regard her as “a motherly figure.” He also recalled that in the past his parents and the MDW generally upheld a clear employer-employee boundary. However, as he grew older, he observed that his mother and the MDW seemed to be moving from a formal relationship to one that he described as “closer.” Increasingly, he noticed that they shared “family” and childhood memories. While he has fond childhood memories of both women, he was surprised to learn, by observing a conversation between his mother and the MDW, that his mother seemed to lack many basic memories of him as a child. He explained: “my mom actually doesn’t know too much about this stuff [his childhood]. . .[the MDW] would come up with a story [about me] and my mom was like ‘what, you [Daniel] used to do this?’” While it did not bother him overly that the MDW, rather than his mother, was the repository of most of his childhood stories, he noted that this revelation did surprise him and made him rethink the position of the MDW within their family.

Space: Inseparable living and care-giving

The spatial aspects of relationships between MDWs and children also have a dramatic impact of the development of love labor. At an average of 430 square feet of living space per household, Hong Kong is one of the most densely arranged societies in the world (Hong Kong Government, 2018). These extreme space constraints, combined with the standard employment contract that stipulates that workers must be provided with “suitable and furnished accommodation” (Hong Kong Immigration Department), result in a situation where it is common for MDWs to sleep in the same bedroom as the children under their care (Yelland et al. 2013, p. 452). Some studies have highlighted how maternal nighttime responsiveness may increase an infant’s sense of attachment (Higley & Dozier, 2009), and how parental room-sharing may positively affect children’s pro-social relationships (Beijers et al., 2019). Nine out of the 13 young adults I interviewed shared their bedroom with the MDW as a child, and their experiences reflect how this arrangement significantly deepened the care relationship.

Aaron shared his bedroom with the MDW. He explained that the MDW knew him so well that she was generally more aware of his needs than his parents, including at night. He described what happened when he would wake up from a bad dream:

[W]hen I was 8 to 9, I remember that there was a month that I kept having some bad dreams, and I was crying at night and everyone in the home got up to see what’s going on. And my parents were crazy, what they were saying is: “don’t cry, don’t cry,” but they didn’t ask what’s going on in the dream at all. And it’s always like, after my parents left our room, then my auntie would ask me “What’s going on? What happened in that dream?”. . . . My parents wouldn’t bother to know, maybe they just want me to stop crying, maybe to have things back to normal as soon as possible, but, you know, they would not look into why and what happened at all.

In this instance, Aaron needed a person whom he could express his feelings and fearful dreams to, and the MDW, being in his bedroom, was well-placed to be that sounding board after the rest of his family had left.

Dewi (MDW), developed an especially strong relationship with a boy whom she cared for from birth to age 6 years, treating him like her son. Their relationship was so close that the boy’s first words were “tse-tse”—a fact that became the occasion for some jealousy on the part of the boy’s parents. The boy developed a habit of being unable to sleep without a very specific need: “he needs to hold my ear at night, otherwise he can’t sleep. . .he always comes to my bed at the night-time.” Recognizing this need after watching the boy’s movements at night on CCTV, the parents, after some initial misgivings, moved the beds of the MDW and the boy together, creating one larger bed so that the boy could have easier access the MDW. Ironically, as Dewi was moving closer to this boy, she was experiencing displacement vis-à-vis her own son, a four-month-old whom she left in the care of her husband and sister in Indonesia. As Dewi explained, “when I go back home to Indonesia he don’t know me, he cannot recognize [me]. Until now, he calls my sister ‘mommy.’” As such, Dewi had a distinct capacity for empathy for the situation of her employer-parents, relating to the sadness they feel at being decentered within the boy’s world.

Room-sharing does not mean that the children and MDWs develop a close bond per se—the two young women introduced in “Theme 1” both shared their room with multiple MDWs and did not develop a significant emotional bond with the women, for example. Rather, it seems that spatial and temporal factors can combine and reinforce one another, serving as preconditions for the development of intensity within these relationships. Ultimately, as the earlier vignettes suggest, the intimate environment of care-arrangements in Hong Kong result in a complex care-triangle in which children, parents, and MDWs invest in care-relationships in different ways. These investments, in turn, “cash out” through forms of love and care that they receive.

Discussion

Working within the “taxonomy of care” framework, this article increases our understanding of the triangularity of care-relationships among children, domestic workers, and mothers. High levels of mental, physical and emotional labor indicate that these should be classified as “love laboring” relationships. The observation of this study—that the MDW-child relationships typically evolve into love laboring relationships—supports Tronto’s (2011) critique of the dubious moral dimensions of in-home care work as being potentially exploitative, because care workers are required to establish more intimate relationships here than in any other work environment.

Despite the precarious nature of the work terms within which these relationships occur, this study demonstrates that such relationships can become intensely emotional and meaningful for children and MDWs alike. Many young adults indicate that growing up with MDWs has enriched their childhoods and lives significantly, as they had an important person in their lives who would be there for them day and night, a person with whom they could share intensely personal matters, and, most generally, a person from whom they could learn what “love” and “care” means. In turn, many MDWs talk with pride about the children that they care for, viewing them as being in some sense their own. At the conclusion of our interviews, they would invariably show me pictures and videos of the children in their care, expressing pride and gratitude about their opportunity to give witness to the positive impact they had on their upbringing. The conversations with MDWs who had left the families they worked with for many years were also some of the most poignant—these were very often women who were still grieving the loss of the children they practically raised, and often the parents with whom they had become close. The position of the young adults I interviewed was no less fraught. Frequently, they would feel ambivalent or guilty about the fact that they had “taken” their tse-tse from another family. Within the household, they would quickly learn about the disruptive effect their expressions of love—toward the MWD—could have on their biological parents (particularly their mothers), and as such they would develop a host of strategies for managing emotions as carers in their own right. Some young adults would hide the extent of their love for the MDW or internalize feelings of sadness when the MDW would leave their homes. Emotion work is therefore multifaceted and multidirectional. Ultimately, and despite obvious power asymmetries, the mother, the MDW, and the child can all be perceived as care-givers and care-receivers at different times, as their roles influence and reinforce one another within the care triangle.

This research produces several recommendations. The complexity of the dynamics explored earlier corresponds to insights already provided in the literature on children who undergo parental divorce—these children have been observed to be both competent, agentic actors and, at the same time, vulnerable and dependent during the family transition (Haugen, 2007; Neale, 2002). First—as is now standard practice within research on divorce—children should be included, as a matter of course, in research on childcare. Including these “stakeholders” promises not only to increase sociological understanding but also to increase the well-being of all actors involved, since the force and impact of the child’s emotional agency has a direct impact on them.

Second, whereas in wealthy families MDWs may be hired to help parents “transmit the economic, social, and cultural resources needed to reproduce or enhance a child’s class status,” (Cox, 2016, p. 137), within the Hong Kong context, hiring a MDW has become a necessity for the simple maintenance of middle and even lower-middle class position (Hong Kong is the world’s least affordable housing market, and public options for childcare are non-existent, making hiring a live-in MDW often the cheapest childcare option available [costing HK$4,630, or 597USD a month]). In all conversations with the young adults, their grievances of this financial reality shone through, as the inclusion of MDWs into their family lives affected not only their childhood experiences but, most likely, also their assessments of their own future prospects. The young adults noted that, if they were to have children of their own, and if their own parents would not be available for childcare and parental leave policies would remain in their current, insufficient state, they too would hire a MDW out of necessity—not as a preference. For example, one young woman expressed her wish to not hire an MDW, as she worried that she would not be able to build a strong relationship with her child. She also remarked how some people who hire MDWs adhere to the belief that “blood is thicker than water,” in order to rationalize or cope with the fact that their children are being raised by a third party. After pondering on these things for a while, she remarked:

I think motherhood is actually a very complex concept because nowadays, people really don’t have time, especially in Hong Kong. . .. [I]f I have a child and then I still have to work with my current number of hours, maybe I would actually subscribe to the belief that “blood is thicker than water,” and, you know, ‘that will always be my child’ [but] let someone else take care of him

The challenge that this young woman faces, of letting go of traditionalized or idealized notions of parenthood, spurred on through the necessity of hiring a MDW, would be worthwhile for future research.

While current research frequently centers the “mother” and “worker” as prime loci of concern, the relationship between the MDW and the child should be further recognized, explored, and discussed. By foregrounding the child-MDW relationship, this article hopes to bring recognition to the fact that this work may go well beyond its taken-for-granted status as merely commodified care. These relationships often involve a level of mutual attachment and commitment that is best categorized, and best understood, as “love labor” in the traditional sense (Lynch, 2007).

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to professors Rosie Cox, Sara Eldén, Lucy Jordan, and Paul Joosse for valuable discussions and insightful comments on earlier versions of this work.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Work supported in part by Hong Kong Research Grants Council, General Research Fund, Project no. 17606815 &1761418

ORCID iD

Iris Hoiting

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