Abstract
Domestic Economies uses the trope of the “American Dream” to examine the reproductive labor of two groups of women in Los Angeles: middle to upper-middle class women and the immigrant domestic workers whom they are likely to hire. It also, however, seeks to capture the obverse of the “American Dream” – namely, its constitution through women’s relationships to reproductive labor. Based on 15 months of fieldwork conducted in 2002 and 2003, this book is a welcome addition to the literature on domestic work.
Including the perspectives of both employers and employees in domestic work, Rosebaum’s study offers an update to our knowledge of the shifting culture of domestic work in the United States. In particular, it raises the question of whether we see the maternalism embodied in employer perspectives of primarily African-American domestic workers in the 1970s or the strategic personalism or business-like relationship they cultivated with Latina domestic workers in the 1990s. Rosenbaum finds neither, as she instead identifies domestic workers as representing a foreign Other for employers and a reminder of their own privilege, one they constantly negotiate. In contrast, for the workers themselves, paid domestic work represents opportunity, even though stunted.
The book is composed of four substantive chapters with the first two devoted to employers and the latter two to domestic workers. Rosenbaum begins by situating our understanding of employers’ perspectives on and relationship to domestic workers in their struggle to maintain what they imagine as a middle-class lifestyle — one centered on social reproduction and ensuring their children’s upward mobility. In this scenario, reliance on paid domestic work no longer becomes an end but a means; as Rosenbaum observes, “domestic service seemed less important as status symbol than as a tool, something that afforded employers the time and flexibility to pursue other markers of middle-class identity” (63). Yet, reliance on paid domestic work also contradicts the moral values of hard work embodied in the American middle class as it reminds employers of their privilege. Rosenbaum spends time examining the negotiation of this privilege and its implications for employer-employee relations, which include the absence of employment standards, awkwardness, and the denial of class difference.
The next two chapters separately address and describe the distinct relationships of two groups of women to care work, illustrating remarkable differences between the college-educated, middle-class employers and the low-wage, immigrant domestic workers. Drawing primarily on participant observation with a mother’s group to address the middle-class perspective on care work, Rosenbaum finds that for these women, care work overall represents a disadvantage. Career aspirations and expectations of the highly educated, as they demand long hours, clash with maternal care work responsibilities so much so that “motherhood has become a predicament” defined by “exhaustion, deficiency and guilt” (85). Pragmatism, not ideology, usually determines how middle-class women negotiate this clash, with most hiring paid domestic workers whether they pursue careers or stay home. Overall, the responsibilities of motherhood disagree with these women’s ability to create a work identity and the social status that the latter provides them as members of the middle class.
In sharp contrast, motherhood does not disagree with the careers of the working-class immigrant women who perform domestic work. As we learn in chapter four, working outside the home provides them with a means to fulfill their social reproduction responsibilities. In other words, care work is not a disadvantage but instead gives meaning to paid labor. The sharp difference between middle-class and working-class immigrant women is one that Rosenbaum traces to their varying constitutions of self, with the former giving equal credence to motherhood and careers and the latter “defining themselves as mothers first” (117). For working-class immigrant women, the challenges of securing stable productive labor as domestic workers and the difficulties that these challenges impose on their ability to fulfill their reproductive labor responsibilities define their overall experience in the labor market.
We do not learn of the labor conditions of domestic workers until chapters four and five. Overall, the book establishes that labor conditions do not seem to have improved as the informal structure of employment continues to haunt domestic workers in the twenty-first century. As described by Rosenbaum, this is despite the rise of worker cooperatives and growth in advocacy efforts. Mistreatment, degradation, and humiliation define labor standards, despite the presence of some good employers. Aggravating this is the challenge of securing employment, which often leaves domestic workers dependent on unscrupulous agencies that overcharge for their services. Tolerance of domestic workers for substandard labor conditions also increases due to their absence of choice.
Domestic Economies provides a novel angle for examining domestic work through its focus on the identities of those who hire and do domestic work, rather than on employer-employee relations, as do most other studies. But what if the narratives presented by employers and domestic workers disagree with each other? In Domestic Economies, we learn that employers attempt to equalize their relationship with domestic workers so as to minimize their privilege, but we also learn from domestic workers that the job remains sub-standard and oppressive. These two contradictory findings still beg explanation as they remain unresolved in the book.