 New Ways of Doing the ‘Good’ and Gender Equal Family: Parents Employing Nannies and Au Pairs in SwedenSara EldéN and Terese Anving Sociological Research Online, 2016, vol. 21, issue 4, 44-56 Abstract: The last decade, Nordic families have started to employ nannies and au pairs to an extent previously never experienced. Political initiatives such as tax deductions for household services, together with global trends of ‘care chains’, have created a private market for care services, which have made it possible for families to hire cheap female, and often migrant, care labour. In the case of Sweden, this is an indication of a re-familializing trend in politics of care and family; a move away from a social democratic welfare regime, towards the privatized and marketized care/family solutions of other Western countries. This qualitative study of Swedish families who hire nannies/au pairs shows how the dual earner/dual carer ideal is being replaced by a dual earner/privately outsourced care ideal, a shift that requires particular forms of accounting for their practices on the part of the parents, related to the discourse of gender equality as well as narratives of what is ‘best for children’. This, we argue, indicates that gender equality and ‘good care’ for children is increasingly becoming a class privilege. Keywords: Care Work; Parenting; Gender Equality; Au Pairs/nannies; Family Practices; Welfare State (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socres:v:21:y:2016:i:4:p:44-56 DOI: 10.5153/sro.4163 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Sociological Research Online |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.