In the Middle of a Family Story: Meaning of Commodification for Child Care Workers

The article focuses on paid child care work/commodification of child care in informal labor market and aims to understand meaning of this commodification for child minders and work relation; place of emotions in work, features transferred from familial relations and their impacts; and influence of private sphere as a working place. This study is based on in-depth interviews conducted with 19 child minders in the capital city of Turkey, Ankara. Results displayed that in Turkey, due to lack of any formal regulations targeting the paid child care work, ambiguity that surrounds frame of the work increases the tension. Both child minders and mothers refrain from considering their connection with each other as employee and employer. Hence, they are inclined to think and behave via family terms. Unavailability of any kind of formal mechanism to bring standardization of definition of tasks, of wages, and of working relation causes a formless area. However, there are informally defined and adopted principles functioning in the field. Furthermore, because of fictive kinship relation and emotional component in the work, risk of exploitation is high. And despite inequality between mothers and child minders, both of the actors have their own negotiation power.