'Baby Sitter': The Transformation of Domestic Care Work in Indonesia

Abstract

The baby sitter is a new caring occupation in urban Indonesia, and a transformation of an older form of home-based labour performed by domestic workers. The baby sitter is a quasi-professional worker, providing a new and different model of care from that previously provided by kinship-based individuals or unregulated domestic workers. The baby sitter is also a live-in child carer in for middle-class and affluent families in Indonesia. The occupation borrows the Western term 'babysitter' to invoke an idea of modern child care methods. The appearance of the baby sitter in uniform is a distinctive mark of the current market-based care regime. The new occupation has been developed by private agencies that recruit, train and contract young, educated, rural women who aspire to be a baby sitter. The agencies have developed services for training and certifying the baby sitter by drawing upon their pre-existing programmes mandated by the government for overseas workers.

This thesis seeks to understand what the baby sitter means for Indonesian society, specifically, how social relations are shaped by and actively shape the baby sitter role. Based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in Jakarta, Indonesia, I analyse the perspectives of different groups concerned with the baby sitter as an occupation (especially the baby sitter, the parent-employer, and the agency) and bring it into the wider social, economic and historical context. I argue that while the baby sitter displays a transformation of domestic and care work in Indonesia along with rapid social and economic transformation, gender and class inequalities persist. The baby sitter, I suggest, supports rather than challenges the reproduction of these inequalities.

This thesis begins with a discussion of the differences and similarities between the baby sitter and another category of domestic worker locally known as an Mbak (a Javanese term also used to refer to older sister), to describe current child care practices in urban households. It is followed by a discussion of the social and economic context in which the baby sitter as an occupation has emerged. The growing trend for hiring a baby sitter, driven by the urban economy, provides increasing opportunities for rural to urban migrants. The trained and certified baby sitter matches busy middle-class parents' desire for good quality care for their children. The agencies make this professionalisation of the baby sitter possible while perpetuating the hierarchy of class in the society. Show more