Abstract
For several years now, sociologists studying paid domestic care work have been arguing that the servant culture of the nineteenth century has returned. They focus on specific forms of care work: that done as informal or illegal employment, mostly carried out migrants. To an historian, such a reference to the past is most intriguing. This paper looks to the servant culture of the past. It argues that maids can be seen as the first ones offering domestic care services as paid labour. The research is based on examining autobiographies written by maids and journals of servant’s organizations. What was their role regarding long-term care for older disabled people? How did they describe their relations to older disabled employers and relatives of those? By looking on the past the paper sketches the changes regarding professional care at home and finally sheds some light on the more recent emergence of a shadow market where migrants offer their services. In doing so families should be brought into focus as agents of care within the mixed economy of welfare. It is shown that the maids and servants of the past offered possibilities for older disabled and chronically ill persons to keep up their bourgesois style of living despite illness and disability. Such a domestic care service was a privilege which came at some cost for those providing it.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Social and Cultural Perspectives on Aging
KEYWORDS
DOMESTIC CARE, OLD AGE, HISTORY, SERVANTS
