Domestic Policy Abroad

Timothy Burke reveals an interesting facet of the great blogospheric nanny debate in his latest post. (See also Harry's post on Crooked Timber, which contains lots of relevant links). He talks about how he just feels disturbed by the idea of having someone other than a family member in such intimate contact with his life:

What it boiled down to was that I was intensely uncomfortable about having strangers inside my domestic space. Not racially phobic, but generically, universally so. I didn’t want any people seeing my dirty clothes, my books, my things, my way of life, if they weren’t very close friends or family.

I was interested in this discussion, because John and I employ a maid here in Singapore (she is also a nanny). I realize that D^2 thinks we're jerks now, but I chalk that up to his having listened to the Clash so much as a young man:

There were masters and servants and servants and dogs
They taught you how to touch your cap
Through strikes and famine and war and peace
England never closed this gap

- "Something About England"

No, actually, I understand that some people just feel really strongly that you ought to clean your own toilet (like Chun, for example). Or, possibly have your wife clean it for you (but Chun doesn't think this. He's on toilet duty for all time.)

I have been trying to work up a post on this topic for some time, but got distracted by wanting to explain at great length the Singapore-specific aspects of the matter. I think I'll mostly let that go for now, just noting a few things. Having a maid is vastly more common in Singapore than in the US; about 1 in 7 households do. The women are all legal, temporary immigrants from other Asian countries (mostly the Philippines and Indonesia). So, they do have actual contracts and so forth. However, the legal situation for these Foreign Domestic Workers here in Singapore is unquestionably bad (for example, the maximum work hours are 16 per day. Enough said.) The actual working conditions vary from obviously expolitative to quite good, and though the pay is less than Hong Kong, there is a general perception among maids that Singaporean employers don't work you as hard.

Now, I think we would say that most of these women are being exploited. The standards of what Singaporeans regard as reasonable treatment differ from those of expatriate employers, so that jobs with the latter are highly sought after. It is relevant on this score to consider that just a short time ago, in the 1950's and 1960's, an impoverished Singapore exported FDW's to the Philippines. The "black and white amah", so called because of her uniform, with a long, coiled braid the symbol of her eternal spinsterhood, was a sought-after commodity for rich Filipino families. Some of the wizened grannies now lording it over some young Filipina in their HDB flat spent their own youth in the same occupation. Singapore looks like a modern, western city, but its economic development is very recent, and its culture is truly different under all the gleaming glass and steel.

Many of these FDW's have children at home, and I found this idea so disturbing that I initially wanted to rule out hiring a woman who was also a mother. After a bit of reflection, I decided this was discriminatory. Our maid, Tena Zamudio, does have two children in the Philippines, aged 13 and 14. If there is one thing that getting involved in this process has brought home to me, it is the deep and random nature of economic inequality in this world. In a just world, I would more likely be working for Tena than vice versa; she's got it on the ball a lot more than I do. In a counterfactual world in which the Philippines had good government and was prospering, she would be at home, running some business. (Thailand has just reached the stage of development where it becomes possible to earn in Thailand the same wage one would have gotten as an FDW in Singapore; a maid just left our complex here to do just that. Tena has been to Thailand with us and is very envious of their tourism-led prosperity). Or, if she had been born in America, she would be rich now. I say this not out of some starry-eyed faith in the American Dream, but because Tena is so intelligent and ambitious, and, frankly, hard-nosed no-nonsense about business.

I was talking with Tena about this debate in the blogosphere over the ethics of hiring a domestic worker. She agreed that being a domestic worker put you in a vulnerable position, in that if you got a bad employer you were in a bad way. This is why she thought no one should ever go work in Saudi Arabia, no matter how good the pay was. On the other hand, she thought it was silly that anyone would think it was so bad a job that no one should do it. Her comment was, "if I don't do it, you do it. Who thinks that is so bad?" As Burke points out, "In a way, it’s a silly point [that women are betraying other women by hiring them as domestics and nannies], because it’s awfully hard to contain to domesticity." Tena mentioned this too, that we hire people to cook food for us in restaurants, and that the toilets in malls and things don't magically clean themselves.

Tena and I went on to discuss generally similar jobs she wouldn't take over this one, even at a modest price premium (obviously, if we stipulatively raised the wages to the moon, she'd do any of them.) I thought it was interesting, especially in that her preferences are the inverse of Burke's, in a way:

1. Working in a hospital as a nurse's aide. She really doesn't want to wash people's sores and change bedpans and wound dressings. (She quit a job here in Singapore where the employer's father was becoming ill, as she could see a lot of this in her future. She lied that she had a family emergency in the Philippines and broke her contract, then came back to work for someone else.)
2. Cleaning up in a hawker centre. Obvious, this one; no one wants to clean public toilets and greasy old food (somone does, though. Old Chinese and Indian aunties, mostly.)
3. Working as a cleaner at the University. Same problem with public toilets, plus "students are messy, and professors are worse." Sorry, John.
4. Working the same hours, but in a store, cleaning up and restocking shelves. Public toilets again, plus you're busy the whole time. Her current job is no picnic, but she gets to have a nap in the afternoon, chat on the phone with friends, go out shopping with her friends and sister (taking my daughter along) and so on. She's not under continuous supervision.
5. Same job, but less living space/worse working conditions. This one is not counterfactual; she could make more working in Hong Kong, and a number of her friends do (and encourage her to). However, because HK apartments are smaller, maids often don't have their own rooms, sleeping instead on the sofa in the living room or on the kitchen floor on a mattress. She's got her own (small) room here, with cable TV etc., and her own bathroom. Plus, HK employers are reputed to want their money's worth. This is worth a pay cut.
6. Interestingly, of two jobs at equal salary, she's prefer to be a maid for a family with young children than without any, because it's fun to be with little kids.

Just her being here in Singapore means that she's not willing to take a massive pay cut to work near home, FDW's in Singapore make more than mid-level civil servants in the Philippines. Tena's family is not desparately poor; they own property and she has two years of college in a hotel hospitality course. She's not doing this so her children will have enough to eat. She's doing it so that they can go to college and get good jobs. I admire her for it. We like to think we would do anything for our children, but what if it meant being separated from them? Her feeling is that the blameworthy people involved are the jerks running the Philippines. If her home country economy didn't suck, she wouldn't be doing this.

Finally, John wants me to mention that I'm chronically ill, so I really do need the help. He thinks this will deflect the opprobrium otherwise visited on me because I am a stay-at-home mom and I have a full time maid (but hey everyone, don't be sexist! Fling equal amounts of opprobrium at John!). So, I mention it, but I have to say that I don't believe it would be wrong for me to hire Tena even if I were in perfect health, and I don't think my friends who have done so are bad or lazy.

Having Tena here helps us give our child the best life we can. She lives in a world that is always clean and orderly, where no one fights, and people don't get frazzled and lose their temper. Removing housework and childcare as sources of dispute mean that John and I don't have anything to get angry at each other about. I don't have to drag Zoë with me to the store and have tragic tantrums (we get groceries delivered, and if we need things from the hardware store I can go by myself). Zoë loves Tena very much. I cook good homemade food for everyone, every night. I get to spend happy, relaxed time with my daughter. In fact, being able to afford Tena's salary (and the taxes) is the main draw to living in Singapore. So, is our blissful life infected from within by the evil of exploitation? Chun? Other people, about whom I don't know what you'll say?

Comments

[dsquared]

No fair; all I've ever said on the subject is that you can't expect that lefties are going to be pleasant about it, or that it's a politicaly neutral thing to do. My own little boy is looked after by a nanny two days a week, otoh I gave up any real ambitions of being considered a Good Person ten years ago when I went into the City.

In general, when I think someone's a jerk I tend to express myself pretty clearly, so anyone who I haven't called one to their faces can assume they aren't.

[Belle Waring]

Sorry, dsquared. I was putting words into your mouth. We can raise a glass to our non-Good Person status together sometime.

[Russell Arben Fox]

Interesting post, Belle; thanks for sharing. Your caveat that you're often ill (and I'm very sorry to hear that, especially given your current pregnancy; that's a double burden for a body to bear) changes the calculus significantly in my view, even if you do say you probably would have made the same choices if that wasn't the case (which, of course, is probably unknowable--if you weren't chronically ill, then that fact would be absent from whatever reasoning you go through to make, for example, living in Singapore appealing). Taking a correct socio-economic stand in the world is one thing, doing right by your children is another (and much more important) thing. My mother was also often ill and unable to interact with us growing up, while my father was a rarely home workaholic. My mother's mood, and her ability to enjoy her children, was greatly improved when they finally broke down and hired a couple of women to come in and clean the house regularly.

As for exploitation, as your post demonstrates, the context for domestic labor is very different in East and Southeast Asia than it is in the U.S. Daniel A. Bell has an interesting discussion of foreign domestic workers in the first part of his book, East Meets West: Democracy and Human Rights in East Asia. And as for the bouregois ethics of the whole thing...well, is having a live-in maid and nanny really such a big component in your and John's domestic tranquility? I confess I find something vaguely discomforting about the idea of domestic service coming to play such a role in the minimizing of anger and arguments in the home, but I'm not sure I can articulate that feeling very well.

[Chun the Unavoidable]

The only people I'm criticizing for having people clean up after them are those who could do it themselves. I also think that the definition of "being able to do it yourself" is subject to considerable revision as the ability to pay someone to do it rises.

If I were in your situation, I would also employ a maid without any qualms at all. And I don't think that's inconsistent with what I originally wrote.

[Ray]

I'd be with Chun on this (and reading Ehrenreich reinforces the opinion). Cleaning up after yourself just takes energy* and some time (assuming you are healthy and able-bodied). Very few people are so completely lacking in either that they can't go around the house with a hoover and a damp cloth at least once a week. 'Not cleaning up your own mess' just seems, I don't know, almost like a _definition_ of laziness. Sure, you can pay people to do it for you, and they might be glad of the money, but you could also pay people to carry you around in a litter all day, and their willingness to do the job doesn't make you any less lazy.

(The situation described in SA is kind of different, I think, because the cleaner was tied to a particular set of apartments. She wasn't missing out on some hypothetical customer, she was missing out on the custom from an identifiable fraction of her potential business)

[Chun the Unavoidable]

Actually, I skipped over "in perfect health and other friends" remark when first reading this, which I don't, obviously, agree with.

[Timothy Burke]

But Ray, why doesn't that pertain equally in the US, then? The cleaning service that now comes in once a month to do the industrial-strength stuff comes from somewhere, and has an interest in all the customers they can obtain; were all of their potential customers to refuse to purchase their labor on the grounds that they can do it themselves, they'd be in the same boat that the family living behind my flat in Zimbabwe was. I lived Chun's prescription in Zimbabwe, doing everything for myself that I was capable of doing, and I ended up committing an act that everyone around me--and I mean everyone--regarded as socially unjust. I didn't pay for what I could pay for, and kept my wealth to myself. Never mind that I started by thinking that I was committing an act of civic virtue.

There are many things I could do for myself that I pay for. I buy restaurant meals that are at some point labored on by low-wage service workers. I can cook for myself and my family and often do--but not always. I buy brewed coffee in stores; I can brew it myself. I get some clothes dry-cleaned now and again: I don't need to do that, but I do. We take my daughter to swimming lessons now and again: I could do that myself. I've used caterers now and again for events at the college that I'm responsible for organizing: I could do that myself. I'm able-bodied and probably have the time if I care to find it. I could empty my own garbage in my college office, but the college hires a person to clean and maintain my building who does it every morning before I get there.

All those things I do because I can, because I've got the money to hire those services. Does that make me lazy? I suppose so. Such is the nature of privilege. There are some services I shun because I don't want even further intrusions on my privacy or domestic space. There are some services I don't hire because I can't afford them. There are some services I don't use for sheer bloody-minded cultural logics. There are some services I'd never hire because I enjoy doing them myself. There are some services I avoid availing myself of because I believe I can do them faster and better myself.

But the idea that one should not pay for one can do oneself, because it it definitionally wrong to pay for anything that you can do yourself is impossible to contain to maids or nannies, no matter how blandly Chun might assert that it is. That's a blanket morality that intrinsically spreads with great rapidity across the entirety of everyday life if you believe it with the apparent seriousness that Chun does. Russell at least tries to salvage the situation by maintaining that the household is completely distinct from anything else in our lives, but that's arbitrary, ignores the way that the household is also a domain of labor comparable to every other laboring situation, and probably overlooks the ways in which other people's labor outside the household invariably infiltrates it (through education, through food preparation and much more besides).

[Chun the Unavoidable]

We should be clear on something: the hosts of this site and Timothy Burke are certainly very thoughtful, well-meaning, and generous people who've thought very carefully about the power-relations and other implications of their domestic labor situations.

They and their like compose a negligible percentage of the maid-employing classes. In the U.S., at least, the vast majority of those with maids, cleaning services, etc., richly deserve being the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

[Russell Arben Fox]

Tim: You're right that I'm trying to draw a bright line here, perhaps without much success. (Indeed, now that I think about it, I wonder if this isn't related to the disagreements we had on CT over the amount of cultural "control"--read "unpermeability"--ought to be aspired to or assumed in regards to the home.) Maybe it's a fool's errand. Still, I do think it's possible to deny, at least partly, that the home is or should be "a domain of labor comparable to every other laboring situation"--the examples you give (education, food preparation, etc.) are telling, but wouldn't you agree that there's still the possibility of distinguishing between such acts and others (say, reading to your children, playing with them, teaching them household chores, etc.) that one really should insist belong to a realm "completely distinct from anything else in our lives"? If so, then we haven't invalidated the whole idea of domestic labor, but we have given ourselves grounds by which to judge the ethics involved in making use of it. Frankly, that's all I'm hoping for.

Chun: I agree completely.

[Ssuma]

I would like to follow up on what Tim Burke said (link messed up, sorry) about people cleaning up his messes giving him the hebie-jebies. It is sort of an uncomfortable thing, and I think that this is in part because you are introducing a commercial relationship into what is supposed to be a non-commercial space.

Chun cites Barbara Ehrenreich, saying “If you're healthy, and someone else is cleaning your house, you need to check yourself. I don't care how many kids you have.” Lots of other people chime in pointing out that we hire people to do work for us all the time, but I think they are missing the point that Chun and Ehrenreich are making, although they might reject it. The home is a sacred space and housework is one of the duties of a woman. We’ve modernized a bit so that the guys can help out, but a lot of the opposition to hired help is that there are some things you can’t hire others to do. Good old domestic ideology is alive and well on the left. Maids, nannies, etc. are all bringing commerce into the home.
Another side to this is American egalitarianism. Burke felt uncomfortable I assume because there is no more obvious sign of social distinction than having someone come into your house and scrub your toilets. That bothered him. It bothers me too. One of the things I hated about my grad student apartment was the big dumpster outside that would often have someone rooting around in it for cans. Walking past my garbage when another human was rooting through it was wrong, it violated all the things I had learned about the proper relationships between people.

As both Burke and Belle point out, this proper relationship is culturally determined. Belle’s maid can provide personal services without either of them feeling that she is degraded thereby, something that it would be hard for two Americans to think. Burke’s potential housekeeper probably would have been annoyed that he was failing to live up to his role as an rich American and thus cheating her out of money because of some bizarre American fixation. Had he talked to her she might well have been insulted not by cleaning his underwear but by his apparent belief that by taking money from him she would be less human.

Here is a bit of a story to illustrate some of this. (My experience with servants is limited) When I was in Grad school I went to spend a couple of weeks with my Uncle who was an oil pooh-bah living in Jakarta. He had a big expat oilman’s house with at least 6 servants. The servants came with the house, and he could not really fire them. The servants ran the place the way it was supposed to be run regardless of what the supposed employer thought. When we first arrived the butler-type guy met us at the door with two frosted mugs of Heinekin (The Dutch influence I guess.) He did this every time an adult male came home and would not do it for women or people he though were too young. (I was old enough, I guess) The whole thing used to annoy my uncle a bit, since Heinekin was not his favorite beer and my aunt liked beer too. I sort of agreed with him, although on the cosmic scale of oppression being met at the door with a cold beer does not rank very high.

Life in that house was a little weird. You could choose light or heavy starch in your underwear but not no starch. You could not leave your swimsuit hanging in the bathroom or it would be washed (I hid mine.) Mealtime was a constant struggle that my aunt usually won (she was an old hand at this) but still a struggle. The point of all this is that the house was a network of relationships and roles that we had to go along with. Tim Burke is happy enough to get his underwear washed by a stranger if he drops it off and there is no social relationship. Chun and Eherenreich are presumably saying the same thing; how can you have someone in your house without some sort of relationship? What sort of relationship could there possibly be between an American servant and an American employer?

Well, I could go on at some length but I need to get home. Got to get the house cleaned up for the maid.

[Jeremy Osner]

Fascinating... it seems to me there is less to be said in favor of "using a cleaning service" than in favor of "hiring an independent-contractor maid" -- cleaning services such as Merry Maids (tm) tend to be quite exploitative and your pay is subsidizing the exploitative company's management and advertizing; when you hire an individual you are paying her (generally 'her') directly. (If she is being exploited it is by you not paying her as much as she deserves.)

[Timothy Burke]

Very penetrating comments, Ssuma. And actually, you nail it right on the head vis-a-vis domestic service in Harare circa 1990--I did talk to the family living behind the block of flats, I explained my views. At first they thought I was just nuts or didn't understand English, but when they got it, they thought exactly as you say, that I was refusing to hire them because I saw them as less than human, unfit to touch my underwear, making me more racist in their eyes even than the ex-Rhodesians living in my building. This, as you might guess, made me really anxious. The second time I lived in Zimbabwe, I found a "laundromat", but you couldn't use the machines yourself--you dropped off the laundry and they washed it for you in the machines. Made me happier, but it really was no different in terms of the relationship between my social ability to buy labor and the labor being performed.

I think that my phobia about service goes significantly to what Ssuma is talking about, and I frankly think it goes to what Chun and Russell are articulating. For some it's ok to pay for other people's labor, to exert privilege, as long as it doesn't follow the sociocultural logic of rendering service. And that's what happens when labor comes physically into the home: it makes the social relation in the purchase of service clear to us, intimate to us. But it is the same social relation even if it's in a restaurant: it's just that in that context, the person performing service is out of sight in the kitchen or is removed from the unavoidable intimacy of the household enough that we can just pretend that we're not doing what we're doing. Once you make your peace with the fact of privilege, whether it's a restaurant or a cleaning service is all the same to me. If you can't make peace with privilege, you can't make peace with any form of labor-purchasing that you volitionally do as a middle-class person.

[Jeremy Osner]

Timothy, I don't quite get your restaurant example -- surely the visible service in a restaurant (waiter/ress, maitre d'hote if applicable, buscritters) is a huge part of what you are paying for, not just the kitchen service that you don't see? The people who serve you are performing a service and (at least in the U.S.) you are explicitly paying them for it in your gratuity. I felt a little uncomfortable about this as a teenager but got over the discomfort -- though I would like to see better wages for waitrons I am not letting that desire keep me from patronizing restaurants and tipping well.

[Russell Arben Fox]

"For some it's ok to pay for other people's labor, to exert privilege, as long as it doesn't follow the sociocultural logic of rendering service....But it is the same social relation even if it's in a restaurant....Once you make your peace with the fact of privilege, whether it's a restaurant or a cleaning service is all the same to me."

I'm not sure if you're describing your own perspective or making a more general claim, Tim, so I apologize if I'm misunderstanding you. That said, I just don't think what you say is truly the case. Think about Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London: one of the conclusions he draws from his crude labor experiences is that there are qualitative differences between forms of labor-purchasing (though of course he doesn't put it that way), differences that can give rise to appropriate judgments. For instance, he concluded his disturbing account of working in the highly exploitive economy of restaurants (he was a cook's errand boy) not by saying he'd never eat in one again, but by noting the kinds of restaurants he'd avoid. There, and elsewhere, and especially in the home, I think one can and should make distinctions. Relying on plumbers to fix your sink, and relying on maids to change your child's diapers are equally instances of middle-class privilege, it's true, but I don't see why that should oblige us to see them as morally equivalent. Maybe the good of functioning pipes is compataible with specialization and transfer, whereas the good of cleaning messy children is compromised by such? It's worth arguing about, in any case. Granted, maybe my beliefs rest upon some kind of "ontology of the home" which perhaps can and should be dimissed as a "domestic ideology" in Ssuma's words. But wouldn't doing so mean one would have to begin with arguments about the construction of the domestic sphere, rather than assuming that human beings operate in the home pretty much the same as everyplace else?

[jam]

I don't think it's people feeling really strongly you ought to clean your own toilet. Rather it's as Tim Burke implies: people preferring not to engage with servants.

Pre-C20, houses meant to be run by servants were architected so as to keep the servants and "the family" separated. You had a morning room and a drawing room so you could have private conversation in one while the other was being cleaned. You had a backstairs that the servants and only the servants used. Your husband had a dressing room so you could be lady's maided and he valetted without the servants seeing the wrong half of the couple in deshabille.

There are lots of stories about servants having to hide or freeze when they were about to encounter the master so that he could pretend not to see them.

And even today people tend to schedule their occasional servants to come to the house/apartment when it's empty: "I'd just get in their way." The effect is of magical little people. You just lay out money (and the makings of lunch) and the house cleans itself.

It seems to me that there's a history at least in England of psychological discomfort evinced by masters to their servants. Lord Peter and Bunter are fictional.

So we shouldn't be surprized if some moderns find it psychologically easier to do the work oneself.

[Laura]

We don't have a house cleaner, not because of moral reasons, but because of student loans. Even if we didn't owe Uncle Sam our next born, I am not sure if we would get a maid. We don't spend all that much time cleaning around here, and we have a high tolerance for dirty showers (a side benefit of wearing glasses).

I've been enjoying the discussion here and at Chun. I'm a little disturbed by the number of women who feel that they have to get maids to preserve their marriages. I just got an e-mail from a reader who said this. Men just won't do their share, women are tired of nagging, and thus, hire maids. Domestic bliss has a price.

[Invisible Adjunct]

"But wouldn't doing so mean one would have to begin with arguments about the construction of the domestic sphere, rather than assuming that human beings operate in the home pretty much the same as everyplace else?"

I might be game. How much time do we have? :-)

I'm all about the transformation of domestic economy (the moral, political and economic governance of the household) into two supposedly separate and different branches: political economy (which then becomes economics) on the one hand, and domesticity on the other. Or, to put it another way, the shift from "household" to "family," with household designating an explicitly hierarchical unit, governed by a father, organized around master-servant relations and understood as a smaller version of the larger world ("a little commonwealth," say), and family designating the newer form of conjugal unit, organized around putatively voluntary relations of affection and intimacy, presided over (if not governed) by a mother, and understood as something separate and distinct from the broader world (a "haven in a heartless world"). It all happened (well, most of it) over the course of the long eighteenth century. I'll spare you the gory details on early modern domestic economy ("oeconomicks"), which meant household management, which included large doses of frankly economic (and frankly exploitative) exchange, which was called political economy when its principles were applied to a broader field (eg, the state).

The main point is that the notion of the home as a private, protected space, free of the contamination of economic exchange, is of relatively recent coinage. And while it certainly does represent some real gains (in the development of rich interiority and intimacy), it's always been just a tad problematic on several fronts, most significantly in relation to women. And since the "haven in a heartless world" is a specifically modern notion (it simply would not have made sense to people in Europe and America c. 1650, or even 1750), and may also be a peculiarly western notion, it seems to me that some of the burden of proof in this discussion lies with those who want to suggest that human beings *don't* "operate in the home pretty much the same as everyplace else."

What's significant, I think, is that the transformation of domestic economy -- into domesticity on the one hand and economics on the other -- renders housework invisible as work. In a modern wage economy, if you don't get paid, you're not really working. When people hire maids and cleaners, wages enter into the picture, which then renders the "workness" of this work visible. I suspect this is one of the main reasons why some people feel more squeamish about housecleaners than about restaurant dishwashers or office cleaners.

(Sorry for such a long rambling comment).

[Belle Waring]

Thanks for all the kind and interesting comments. Russell: I didn't mean to imply that John and I would be at one another's throats all the time if not for the intervention of Tena. We managed just fine as graduate students, even when my health was worse (but the house was messier than I would have liked, and we didn't have a small child). I just know that in our present situation, it would be a real struggle for me to take care of Zoe all day and clean up and get dinner ready, with the result that John would have to do lots of things too even though he is the sole breadwinner. This would make for resentment. This is partly me being sick, but partly something that would happen in any home with a stay-at-home mom, I think; I would be yearning for a break from tot duty just at the moment he walked in the door from work yearning for a cold beer, and I think both of us would feel put upon to some degree. In our case it's either Tena or some combination of cleaning service and day care, and Tena is both cheaper and a million times superior to either.

I was surprised that none of you commented on what I thought would be the most interesting part of the post, namely Tena's own preference for a domestic sitation over many of the comparabe jobs we have been discussing (cleaning up in a public sphere) as forms of labor that it is less disturbing to buy. For her, the prospect of cleaning a toilet used by strangers (or sheets used by strangers; she also mentioned working in a hotel as less preferable) is much grosser than cleaning one in the house where you live or for people you know. For her the personal intimacy of dirty dishes or sinks or what have you persists across the "it's just a job" barrier of having a job for a cleaning service, restaurant, or hotel, so that it actually seems worse than working for a family. She also thinks a domestic situation allows for a variety of obligations that is more interesting than just doing one thing over and over (she also nixed factory work, although I'm sure she's thinking of sweatshop clothing assembly and not a well-paid unionized job at GM). What about that? Obviously there are cultural differences here, and I think that since Americans and Brits think of it as more shameful to be a servant, it really is so. It's not an accepted part of the culture anymore, except for types who are patently ripe for revolutionary wall-backing.

[Russell Arben Fox]

IA, I take your point, but it sounds to me like only half the story. Yes, I agree, "the notion of the home as a private, protected space, free of the contamination of economic exchange, is of relatively recent coinage." But by the same token, isn't the notion of the public sphere as a competitive, contractual space, defined by economic exchange, also of "relatively recent origin"? Perhaps it's older by a century or two than the "home is a haven" vision, but still--aren't both sides of the coin equally constructed? And if so, why should the burden of proof be upon those (like, I admit, myself) who believe that certain operations of the home ought not conform to the exchange model? Shouldn't it equally rest on those who assume that the intimacy of the domestic sphere (and I don't mean romantic intimacy, though obviously that can be part of it; I'm talking about the mutuality of roles and duties) is ultimately powerless before the market--that's putting it too harshly, I know, but for the sake of argument--and that therefore all us moderns cannot help but end up operating the same no matter where we are? Is the home an unknowing (and gender-dependent) enabler of the bifurcation of the modern world, or can it actually exist in opposition to it? Obviously I'd like to believe latter possibility, and I don't think it has been disproven.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Middle-class Westerners are often very concerned with their personal virtue. And in posts like this one, that concern tends to hijack the story. I think that we should just stipulate that no one can be free of the power relationships in their society. There is no way to be pure, even if you don't hire a maid. On the other hand, I've never met a middle-class person with a maid who didn't boast about how well they treated their maid as opposed to all the horrible exploitative employers there must be somewhere out there. Often this is done on more or less racist or at least nativist terms; "oh, maids hate working for those foreign people!" That part I could do without.

I think the reaction to Belle Waring hiring a maid should be about the same as if she posted about hiring a personal sex worker. All the same statements could be made about the sex worker (let's assume it's a woman): she makes good money, she says she'd rather do me than work in a brothel and do lots of people, it'd be worse if she wasn't legal, she enjoys her own room and our family life, our family has a particular situation that means that we really need her while less virtuous others might not, etc. Is there any real difference between the situations?

[Russell Arben Fox]

Rich, I can't tell if you're being ironic or not. Is your comment "Is there any real difference between the situations?" meant to imply that there isn't, in the sense of an approving "hey, sex or vaccuming, it's all just power relationships"? Or is it meant to imply "yes, sex and vaccuming are tarnished by the same brush, thus we ought to rethink the latter"?

In either case, in answer to your question: yes, there is a massive difference between the two situations, whether or not they occupy the same socio-economic category.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Well, Russell, maybe you could explain what you think the difference is between these two occupations primarily occupied by women in the same socioeconomic category. I would encourage you to think of my comment as being either ironic or not, depending on which you find most helpful in provoking thought. If the difference is only that "our society thinks one is wrong, and the other isn't" then what does Belle's story have to tell us, unless we're living in Singapore?

I find the similarities inescapable in this thread. There is the same concern with "introducing a commercial relationship into what is supposed to be a non-commercial space", the same feeling of ickyness from some about the thought of having someone outside the family in their personal space (with underwear mentioned repeatedly), the same thought about whether there are traditional family roles that you shouldn't be handing off to someone else, the same kind of defensive feeling I'd paraphrase as "but whenever my worker talks to me, she says she's really happy".

One important difference is that personal sex workers -- kept women, concubines, etc. -- have traditionally been for men, while maids and nannies have traditionally been for women. But , as Belle says, don't blame her and not John for the fact that they needed to hire someone to help out with the work that they wanted done and yet didn't want to do themselves.

[Matt McG]

I've written quite a lengthy response so it's here. It's too long to post in a comments box.

However, the point I want to make is that being a domestic employee (maid, nanny, au pair, etc.) is not like most other service jobs and the potential for abuse/exploitation is there in a way it is not in most other service jobs.

Belle's case seems a near-ideal case of the employer/employee relationship in this kind of case but it's simply not like that. I write from direct experience because both my wife (as an au pair) and I have been in this type of job (in my case as precisely the kind of hospital/school cleaner that Belle's maid would not want to be!)... and I would, in direct opposition to Belle's maid, take the latter over the former any day.

More here

[Russell Arben Fox]

Matt, thanks for the very thoughtful post. In many ways, it cuts right to the heart of the concerns which Chun (and Ehrenreich) we're highlighting in the first place.

Rich, I'm still not sure where you're going. I think those addressing this issue have been pretty consistent in their concerns about commodification across categories; even if it does just boil down to a feeling of ickiness (which I doubt), then I don't think there's any question that both wife and husband are implicated in such. But anyway, to answer your challenge: the difference between these two socio-economically similar occupations (maid and prostitute) is that sexuality pertains to the human person--to one's identity and worth--in a way that vaccuming does not. Consequently there is a reasonable basis to distinguish between the marketing of the two, even if their similarities are instructive.

[Invisible Adjunct]

"aren't both sides of the coin equally constructed? And if so, why should the burden of proof be upon those (like, I admit, myself) who believe that certain operations of the home ought not conform to the exchange model?"

Yes, definitely two sides of the same coin. And of course the burden of proof should be shared. What I meant was that your position should not be taken as the given, the normal or natural mode against which any alternative must be tested. If exchange relations have recently entered the home, or perhaps (and more likely) were never really absent from the home, then it seems reasonable to ask what's at stake in continuing to assert a notion of home as noneconomic realm.

"Is the home an unknowing (and gender-dependent) enabler of the bifurcation of the modern world, or can it actually exist in opposition to it? Obviously I'd like to believe latter possibility, and I don't think it has been disproven."

I'd say the home is partly a "gender-dependent enabler of the bifurcation of the modern world," but that it's not only that. There's a lot that's good about the development of a private sphere, and for women no less than for men. I certainly would not want to go back early modern patriarchal governance (master-servant relations through and through).

And in some ways, I think domesticity really is (or else should be) some kind of "haven in a heartless world." But that world will not become less "heartless" unless and until we leave off what I think is an artificial and unfortunate division. I honestly don't see why the home should exist in *opposition* to the rest of the world. Instead of a firm division, I guess I see things on a spectrum, with the home at one end and the workplace at the other, but with overlapping functions, characteristics and qualities.

And since you're a communitarian, I wonder why you want to hold onto this possibility. It seems to me that the split -- competitive individualism versus private altruism -- is one of the main reasons for the impoverishment of our notion (or maybe our lack of a notion) of the commons (ie, through the privatization of care, nonmarket values and etc -- nice stuff that you do in your own private realm, but of no relevance to any other goals or constituencies).