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Shadow Mothers shines new light on an aspect of contemporary motherhood often hidden from view: the need for paid childcare by women returning to the workforce, and the complex bonds mothers forge with the "shadow mothers" they hire. Cameron Lynne Macdonald illuminates both sides of an unequal and complicated relationship. Based on in-depth interviews with professional women and childcare providers— immigrant and American-born nannies as well as European au pairs—Shadow Mothers locates the roots of individual skirmishes between mothers and their childcare providers in broader cultural and social tensions. Macdonald argues that these conflicts arise from unrealistic ideals about mothering and inflexible career paths and work schedules, as well as from the devaluation of paid care work

Shadow Mothers shines new light on an aspect of contemporary motherhood often hidden from view: the need for paid childcare by women returning to the workforce, and the complex bonds mothers forge with the "shadow mothers" they hire. Cameron Lynne Macdonald illuminates both sides of an unequal and complicated relationship.

The service society and the changing experience of work / Cameron Lynne Macdonald and Carmen Sirianni -- Rethinking questions of control : lessons from Macdonald's / Robin Leidner -- The politics of service production : route sales work in the potato-chip industry / Steven H. Lopez -- Consumers' reports : management by customers in a changing economy / Linda Fuller and Vicki Smith -- Service with a smile : understanding the consequences of emotional labor / Amy S. Wharton -- From servitude to service work : historical continuities in the racial division of paid reporductive labor / Evelyn Nakano Glenn Family, gender, and business in direct selling organizations / Nicole Woolsey Biggart -- Reproducing gender relations in large law firms : the role of emotional labor in paralegal work / Jennifer L. Pierce -- Invisibility, consciousness of the Other, and ressentiment among Black domestic workers / Judith Rollins -- Shadow mothers, nannies, au pairs, and invisible work / Cameron Lynne Macdonald -- Resisting the symbolism of service among waitresses / Greta Foff Paules -- "The customer is always interesting" : unionized Harvard clericals renegotiate work relationships / Susan C. Eaton -- The prospects for unionism in a service society / Dorothy Sue Cobble

Care work straddles the divide between activities performed out of love and those performed for pay. The tensions created for workers by this divide raise questions concerning connections between recognition and redistribution. Through an analysis of mobilization among childcare workers, we argue that care workers can address redistribution and recognition simultaneously through vocabularies of both skill and virtue. We conclude with a discussion of strategies to overcome the false dichotomy between recognition and redistribution.