According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were
approximately 1.7 million home health aides and personal and home
care aides in the United States as of 2008. These home care aides
are rapidly becoming the backbone of America's system of long-term
care, and their numbers continue to grow. Often referred to as
frontline care providers or direct care workers, home care aides
disproportionately women of color bathe, feed, and offer
companionship to the elderly and disabled in the context of the
home. In The Caring Self, Clare L. Stacey draws on observations of
and interviews with aides working in Ohio and California to explore
the physical and emotional labor associated with the care of
others.
Aides experience material hardships most work for minimum wage,
and the services they provide are denigrated as unskilled labor and
find themselves negotiating social norms and affective rules
associated with both family and work. This has negative
implications for workers who struggle to establish clear limits on
their emotional labor in the intimate space of the home. Aides
often find themselves giving more, staying longer, even paying out
of pocket for patient medications or incidentals; in other words,
they feel emotional obligations expected more often of family
members than of employees. However, there are also positive
outcomes: some aides form meaningful ties to elderly and disabled
patients. This sense of connection allows them to establish a sense
of dignity and social worth in a socially devalued job. The case of
home care allows us to see the ways in which emotional labor can
simultaneously have deleterious and empowering consequences for
workers."
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