Maids no more: The transformation of domestic work -- Maid in the USA by Mary Romero

A review essay on Maid in the USA, by Mary Romero (New York: Routledge, 1992), 208 pp., $15.95 (paper).

In the first month of his administration, President Clinton confronted a whole array of foreign and domestic issues. Turning his attention to those national concerns which had been at the forefront of his presidential campaign, Clinton began to guide his administration on a path which was intended to reverse the negative effects of twelve years of Republican policies. When Clinton nominated Zoe Baird for Attorney General, he could not have foreseen the extent of public reaction. As the nation learned more details of the nominee's violation of immigration laws--the so-called Zoe Baird problem--opponents mobilized their efforts to block her nomination. The American public's opposition to what Anna Quindlan called, in her New York Times column, "the sins of Zoe Baird," increased dramatically within a very short period of time.(1)

Various constituencies responded to the mounting opposition with a diversity of arguments. Many, for example, believed that a double standard was being used for women under consideration by the Clinton administration for Cabinet appointments. Professional women interpreted "Nannygate" as a validation of Susan Faludi's analysis of a backlash against women, specifically feminists, for "neglecting" their motherly duties to their children while they pursued their own careers.(2) Kathleen Brown, state treasurer of California, pointed out that male politicians were not customarily questioned about their decisions regarding their child care arrangements.(3) Similarly, New York Times correspondent Catherine Manegold raised a key question which women across the United States were asking: "Would a potential cabinet appointee who was also a father have stumbled across the same minefield?"(4)

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, working-class women interpreted the Zoe Baird issue differently. As a result of their increasing frustration over deteriorating economic circumstances, working-class women and men expressed anger over a rich couple's circumvention of the law. Working-class parents, who found themselves in a similar bind regarding child care, were resentful that the Bairds, with a joint income of well over $100,000, had broken the law by hiring an undocumented nanny. Stories of families who were financially strapped for child care money but did not break immigration laws appeared in the news media. Felicity Barringer captured these sentiments when she stated that "the anger across the country...was] one of class resentment over what seemed like a double standard that favored the rich."(5)

Despite the extensive media coverage of the "Zoe" episode, one major dimension lacked in-depth analysis. The "Peruvian couple" whose employment triggered the controversy in the first place was practically invisible. Their working conditions, type of work, the amount of wages and benefits, their relationship with their employers--all these factors were overshadowed, if not ignored, by other issues. News coverage focused on the legal and ethical issues regarding the employment practices of Zoe Baird, blurring the picture of the "child care provider," a term viewed by many as a euphemism for domestic worker. It is this invisible world of domestic workers in the United States that is the focus of Maid in the USA, by Mary Romero.(6)

Romero's qualitative study of Chicana/Mexicana American women domestic workers unravels the contradictions inherent in the Baird Case: the hiring of women of color by middle-and upper-class white women. Through the use of extensive oral life histories of twenty-five domestic workers living in Colorado, Romero records the stories of women workers whose lives have been relegated to the margins of both society and scholarly research.

Maid in the USA provides a theoretical lens through which the reader can not only view but, more importantly, interpret the life circumstances of women like Baird's "nanny." In her book Romero forcefully argues that "domestic service accentuates the contradictions of race and class in feminism, with privileged women of one class using the labor of other women to escape aspects of sexism."(7) As women of color and immigrant women, who are overwhelmingly from Third World countries, continue to be overrepresented in domestic service, the social hierarchies of gender and race are reinforced and reproduced in the labor market. Romero adopts a social-structural and Marxist analysis of domestic work in an advanced capitalist society. Class and racial privileges allow a growing number of women in American society to "escape" the drudgery of domestic work--work which is "never done"--by hiring other women as their domestic workers.

Maid in the USA is structured around an analysis of the working conditions of private household workers and the social constraints created by these conditions. Romero provides a thorough socio-historical and theoretical analysis of the historical development and transformations over time of unpaid domestic work by women within the context of family relations. Readers will benefit from Romero's critical and insightful review of major studies of womens' oppression within the domestic sphere, the dynamics of gender relationships between marital partners, and the development of a patriarchal ideology which supports the subordinate status of women within both the domestic and public spheres.