Publication details
Péčí o děti proti nudě a osamělosti: české chůvy vietnamských dětí aktivně stárnoucí
| Title in English | Through Childcare against Boredom and Loneliness: Czech Nannies of Vietnamese Children Aging Actively |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Sociální studia |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Sociology, demography |
| Keywords | caregiving active ageing kinning doing gender |
| Attached files | |
| Description | Many Vietnamese families in the Czech Republic hire Czech nannies to look after their children. Usually they are young retirees who find themselves at a new life stage, passing from a productive to an “unproductive” age. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with Czech nannies in Vietnamese families, this article looks into how Czech nannies understand paid caregiving work as an inherent part of their retirement. I trace their understanding of the meaning of care in the context of their biographies. The study finds that this caregiving work is inherently connected with retirement and makes it easier for women to retire and adapt to their new life situation. In addition, caregiving work becomes part of the identity of these women, allowing them to do gender and to do grandmotherhood. For the interviewed women, caregiving becomes the main recourse of doing gender and the core activity structuring their gendered biographies. As an activity enacted in the family realm, caregiving leads to kinning: the subjectivisation from nanny to grandmother and from care child to grandchild. As such, caregiving work shapes new kinds of familial ties and enables the women’s active participation in intergenerational relations. All-in-all, the paper offers insight into women’s strategies of dealing with retirement and negotiating their new identities against the background of culturally-defined standards and societal expectations. |