Mothercoin: The Stories of Immigrant Nannies

Rice University lecturer Muñoz debuts with a powerful study of the relationships between immigrant nannies and their employers, their own families, and the children they care for. The book’s primary subjects are Sara, a young mother who followed her own mother to Houston from El Salvador; Rosa, a Mexican grandmother managing family on both sides of the border; and Pati, a young woman from El Salvador who knows how it feels to be a “left-behind child.” Muñoz analyzes these women’s experiences through the concept of the “mothercoin,” a complex and harmful moral contradiction in which love becomes transactional, whether in the expectation that nannies genuinely care for the children under their charge, or the substitution of money for love when parents leave their children for work in the U.S. Interviews with well-intentioned employers in the U.S. reveal how the lack of value placed on the work of mothering binds American career women as well as their nannies; Muñoz fiercely critiques contemporary feminism for being under-engaged with this issue. Balancing big ideas about the worth of motherhood and the outsourcing of gendered work in the global marketplace with intimate profiles of individual women, Muñoz offers valuable insights on a thorny social issue. Feminists and immigrant rights activists will savor this thought-provoking cultural analysis. (Apr.)