‘Quality Time’ in Nanny Families: Local Care Loops and New Inequalities in Sweden

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Abstract

Political initiatives such as tax deductions for domestic services including nannies have, together with a growing au pair market, paved the way for new possibilities of organizing child care and parenting in Sweden. This affects everyday ‘local care loops’ for the upper-middle-class families purchasing the services, as the logistics of solving the work-family dilemma change with the possibility of hiring cheap female—and often migrant—care workers (Näre & Isaksen 2019). In this chapter, we analyse how this affects the doing of family in ‘nanny families’. Taking our point of departure in a qualitative study with nannies and au pairs (n = 26), parents (n = 29), and children receiving care (n = 19) (Eldén and Anving 2019), we show how everyday care is experienced and understood from the perspective of different actors involved in the practice, with a special focus on ideas of ‘quality time’. We argue that the new possibilities of organizing care and time in families reproduce inequalities: the new local care loops enable the possibility for some—well-off—parents to realize ideals of ‘good and stress-free parenting’, with quality time with their children, while at the same time not giving up on the idea of gender equality.

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Eldén, S., & Anving, T. (2022). ‘Quality Time’ in Nanny Families: Local Care Loops and New Inequalities in Sweden. In Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life (pp. 85–107). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92889-6_5

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