IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/socres/v21y2016i4p44-56.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

New Ways of Doing the ‘Good’ and Gender Equal Family: Parents Employing Nannies and Au Pairs in Sweden

Author

Listed:
  • Sara EldéN
  • Terese Anving

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Sara EldéN & Terese Anving, 2016. "New Ways of Doing the ‘Good’ and Gender Equal Family: Parents Employing Nannies and Au Pairs in Sweden," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 21(4), pages 44-56, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:socres:v:21:y:2016:i:4:p:44-56
    DOI: 10.5153/sro.4163
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.5153/sro.4163
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.5153/sro.4163?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Halldén, Karin & Stenberg, Anders, 2013. "The Relationship between Hours of Domestic Services and Female Earnings: Panel Register Data Evidence from a Reform," Working Paper Series 4/2013, Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research.
    2. Val Gillies, 2011. "From Function to Competence: Engaging with the New Politics of Family," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 16(4), pages 109-119, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hana Hašková & Radka Dudová, 2017. "Institutions and Discourses on Childcare for Children Under the Age of Three in a Comparative French-Czech Perspective," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 22(3), pages 120-142, September.
    2. Bodin, Maja & Björklund, Jenny, 2022. "“Can I take responsibility for bringing a person to this world who will be part of the apocalypse!?”: Ideological dilemmas and concerns for future well-being when bringing the climate crisis into repr," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 302(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anna-Maija Castrén & Kaisa Ketokivi, 2015. "Studying the Complex Dynamics of Family Relationships: A Figurational Approach," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 20(1), pages 108-121, February.
    2. Sarah Marie Hall & Clare Holdsworth, 2016. "Family Practices, Holiday and the Everyday," Mobilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(2), pages 284-302, April.
    3. Kirsty Morrin, 2018. "Tensions in Teaching Character: How the ‘Entrepreneurial Character’ is Reproduced, ‘Refused’, and Negotiated in an English Academy School," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 23(2), pages 459-476, June.
    4. Georgia Philip, 2013. "‘Extending the Analytical Lens’[1]: A Consideration of the Concepts of ‘Care’ and ‘Intimacy’ in Relation to Fathering after Separation or Divorce," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 18(1), pages 97-107, February.
    5. Albrecht, James & Skogman Thoursie, Peter & Vroman, Susan, 2015. "Parental leave and the glass ceiling in Sweden," Working Paper Series 2015:4, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    6. Jane Ribbens McCarthy & Val Gilles & Carol-Ann Hooper, 2018. "Introduction," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 23(1), pages 153-159, March.
    7. Shire, Karen A. & Schnell, Rainer & Noack, Marcel, 2017. "Determinants of outsourcing domestic labour in conservative welfare states: Resources and market dynamics in Germany," Duisburger Beiträge zur soziologischen Forschung 2017-04, University of Duisburg-Essen, Institute of Sociology.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:socres:v:21:y:2016:i:4:p:44-56. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.