ABSTRACT
As we showed in Chapter Two, the nanny constitutes one of the two most important categories of waged domestic labour in contemporary Britain, and the category of waged domestic labour for which demand increased most significantly through the 1980s. In this chapter, and in the spirit of the second part of this volume, we switch from accounting for this to examining nanny employment as it occurs within individual dual-career middle-class households. The chapter is divided into three main sections. In the first we outline and illustrate the basic characteristics and forms of nanny employment, looking specifically at the tasks, activities and typical days of nannies at work in Britain in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Moving on from this, we focus on the two major contradictions of contemporary nanny employment; namely, the construction of the nanny as, at one and the same time, a childcare professional and a mother substitute, and the construction of the social relations of nanny employment in terms of both waged labour and false kinship. Finally, we concentrate on accounting for the form taken by these social relations.
