Caregivers and Moms Mind the Race, Gender, and Class Rift

Moms and nannies have gone together like peanut butter and jelly since time immemorial, it seems. And for almost as long, the relationship between mother and caregiver has been tumultuous and riddled with gendered stereotypes, class barriers, and race differences.

Writer Veronica Chambers explores those relationships in an essay published in Essence magazine. Chambers, a dark-skinned Latina, is the mother of a biracial daughter who is routinely mistaken for her charge. Echoing the claims of many black and Latina women with biracial kids, Chambers describes encounter after encounter where she is not only identified as a caregiver, but written off and insulted as a result.

Feministing's Rose Afriyie finds Chambers' tones to be condescending to nannies and more than a little classist. "The notion of being in a 'position of servitude' or serving as a 'hired hand' completely obscures the educational and emotional support many nannies provide to other women's children," Afriyie writes about Chambers' characterizations. She also takes issue with another anecdote that finds Chambers describing her designer clothes as a means to expose how ridiculous it was for one parent to assume that she is a nanny.

It's easy to lose sight of the meaning of Chambers' essay and get lost in her wording. The thing is, nannies are in positions of servitude and generally can't afford designer blouses and heels. The history and lasting legacy of caregivers in this country has been that women with less education, less access to opportunity, less choice, and, yes, who are more brown than their employers enter the childcare profession. Today, nannies in New York are 95% people of color and 99% immigrants. My own grandmother worked as a nanny of sorts when I was growing up. She cared for an adult woman whose mental disorder left her with the mindset and emotional range of a three-year-old, not because she particularly loved to take care of other people or because her employers were good people to work for, but because there were little options for uneducated black women in the then-lily white town of Fort Worth.

Of course, this isn't always the case, especially not in the modern urban childcare environment. One of my best friends, who is African-American, educated, and world-traveled, works as a nanny because she loves children and finds the one-on-one dynamic more rewarding than teaching. So while there certainly are women with options who choose to become nannies, nonetheless women of color in this country have cared for white children for centuries not because they were particularly interested in providing "educational and emotional support," but because that's what poor women did.

I think it's completely valid to be offended when a woman is diminished to caregiver in the presence of her child. I say diminished carefully, because the tone of Afriyie's post seems to level the role of a nanny to that of a mother. Nannies (and baby-sitters and teachers and whoever else cares for kids) have heavy responsibilities, but they are ultimately working a job. I asked my friend (who couldn't possibly speak for all nannies, but is nonetheless a good reference) what she thought about the whole nanny vs. mother thing, and she sided with Chambers, agreeing that this wasn't about nanny rights, but about the racially charged disbelief that a white-like child could legitimately belong to a dark-skinned woman. She also acknowledged that while she loves the babies that she cares for, the relationship with her own children will be different.

Photo credit: *clairity*