ABSTRACT
In this chapter we account for the resurgence in demand for waged domestic labour generally in Britain through the 1980s amongst the new middle classes. The focus-for reasons relating to the profusion of categories of waged domestic labour revealed in Chapter Two-is not on waged domestic labour as a general category, but on two particular categories of waged domestic labour. The demand encountered included over 100 categories of waged domestic labour. In such circumstances it is theoretically inappropriate to think of waged domestic labour as an homogeneous occupational category, as well as inaccurate to account for trends in its utilisation in a general sense. Yet, as we have seen, the resurgence in demand for waged domestic labour in Britain in the 1980s and the major categories of demand through the same period were primarily bound up with the middle classes. Given this, an analysis of the resurgence in waged domestic labour in Britain through the 1980s must focus on those categories for which demand was particularly buoyant as well as the source of this demand. In this chapter, therefore, we concentrate on the two forms of waged domestic labour most closely associated with the new middle classes throughout the 1980s, namely the cleaner and the nanny, and for which demand was particularly high, specifically in the late 1980s.
