Advertising a Particularly Precarious Occupation: Nanny Ads on Craigslist

ABSTRACT

Domestic work has long been a particularly precarious occupation in that it is subject to certain risks and vulnerabilities that make it a highly insecure, unstable, uncertain form of work that often provides very limited economic and social benefits to those who engage in it. In this article we explore whether employers are willing to advertise the particularly precarious aspects of domestic work in job advertisements for nannies. Based on a content analysis of nanny ads posted on the Craigslist pages for San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, and Chicago, we find that nearly half (45%) of the ads in our population contained an actual and/or potential indicator of one or more particularly precarious aspects of domestic work. While these indicators came in many specific forms, they can be grouped into two general categories: (1) ads that are actually or potentially discriminatory and (2) ads that indicate an employer may not see being a nanny as a “real” job.

Notes

¹As measured by a combination of average daily visitors to this site and page views on this site from U.S. users over the past month.

²That so many nanny ads are posted in the Community section of Craigslist in itself seems indicative of how this kind of work is culturally understood as not being “real” work.

³This information was accessed through the saved version (January 27, 2015) of the Craigslist “posting fees” web page accessed through Wayback Machine (https://archive.org/web/), a digital archive of web pages and other information posted on the Internet. The specific page in question can be found at https://web.archive.org/web/20150127191627/ http://www.craigslist.org/about/help/posting_fees.

⁴In cases where a nanny’s hourly wage, expected daily hours, and/or expected weekly hours were listed as a range in an advertisement (e.g., pay is listed as between $8 and $9 per hour), we used the midpoint of a given range (e.g., if a nanny’s pay was listed as being between $8 and $9 per hour, we would record her pay as being $8.50 per hour).

⁵Since domestic workers are overwhelmingly female, we use female pronouns when referring to nannies in general.

⁶Most of the ads in our sample that expressed a preference for a nanny of a particular age were for workers younger than 40, thereby, fitting our conception of a discriminatory preference. However, a handful of ads did seem to express a preference for older workers (e.g., ads that were seeking a “grandmother” to be a nanny) that, at least in terms of age, are not discriminatory per EEOC regulations. Nevertheless, since all ads that expressed a preference for an older nanny were also framed in terms of a gender preference (i.e., a desire for a “grandmother” and not someone of retirement age), they were all still considered as expressing a discriminatory preference.

⁷Some ads indicated that they would be open to a potential employee bringing his or her children to work. These ads were not considered discriminatory since they did not restrict employment opportunities to only those with or without children.

⁸It should be noted that even if an ad clearly and unequivocally expresses a prohibited preference, this does not necessarily mean that it is illegal. This is because the laws that protect workers from the aforementioned forms of discrimination (e.g., Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, which protects individuals who are 40 years of age or older; and the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which prohibits discrimination in terms of citizenship status) apply only to employers with multiple employees (4 or more, 20 or more, and 15 or more, respectively). Thus, if a household employs only one or two domestic workers, they are not legally prohibited from engaging in these forms of discrimination.

⁹It is worth noting that the maximum amount that an employer can legally credit an employee for room and board is roughly half ($554.04) of what this ad claims.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Craig D. Lair

Craig D. Lair is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Gettysburg College. His interests include social theory, economic sociology, and the sociology of work. His work focuses on issues related to outsourcing broadly defined.

Christopher K. Andrews

Christopher K. Andrews is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Drew University. His areas of interest include the effects of technology on work and employment and how technological innovations shape social interaction and identity.