Historically, the beginning of nannies, governesses, and wet nurses as an occupation is largely traced to Western Europe, where women from marginalised communities, such as African Americans, used to work as nannies for upper-middle-class white families. Post-liberalisation, India also saw a boom in the economy, whose impacts were multidimensional, ranging from expanding income to dual-income families, nuclear housing, middle-class emergence, and commodified relations. The concept of nannies thus became an occupation for modern urban families.
Emotional labour, as discussed by Hochschild (1983), emphasises how emotional expression, management, and surveillance are part of the daily capitalist economy. This study attempts to expand on Hochschild’s idea of emotional labour and apply it to the experiences of nannies and their identities, particularly in practising daily emotional labour and understanding how intimacy and exclusionary boundaries reaffirm the idea of emotional untouchability.
Everyday experiences of nannies and their identities.
Gated communities act as surveillance zones where bodies, actions, and especially identities are shaped by urban households. Nannies provide children with emotional space and intimacy, but this intimacy is largely non-reciprocal in nature. The commodified relations between children and nannies are shaped by a temporal understanding of emotional intimacy. Secondly, nannies providing emotional labour are not freely exercising “free choice”; rather, a constructed socialisation is assigned to them to train children. Through this, urban spaces impose a hierarchical structure of upbringing that uses their labour but refrains from labour-induced socialisation, a control mechanism that regulates nannies’ behaviour and discipline (Foucault, 1977).
One of the contrasting dimensions in understanding the nanny’s role in this spatial setting can also be examined through the lens of the concept of social distance given by Simmel (1908). This distance is not merely physical but also emotional, where nannies, despite being part of families, consciously maintain social distance, thereby reasserting the paradox of intimacy and exclusion. Nannies are under constant surveillance and observation, where mechanisms like security guards, entry registers, and CCTV monitoring regulate the movement and presence of domestic workers. Their actions are largely shaped by the aspirations of the urban middle class, which are reflected in their everyday lives while they negotiate their own lived realities. The distinction between nannies’ lives and children’s lives is maintained to construct class-based differences through everyday practices of care.
Hochschild (1983) conceptualises emotional management, which can be observed in the daily experiences of nannies in urban spaces. The emotions of a nanny are not merely “personal experiences” but are part of a socially regulated regime within these gated communities. Everyday practices such as feeding, playing, teaching, love, care, and patience form part of emotional management and can be understood as controlled expressions that suppress anger and frustration. All these managed, controlled, and quantified emotional expressions result in a shift from surface acting to deep acting in everyday interactions.
Secondly, the identities of nannies are negotiated within a larger framework, where identity becomes an act of performance, as conceptualised by Goffman (1959). Their performance varies across contexts: with children, they appear as caregivers, loving and nurturing; in front of parents, they present themselves as obedient, disciplined, and respectful. At the same time, this performance is accompanied by invisible, everyday experiences of frustration and tiredness.
CONCLUSION
This paper interrogates the everyday experiences of nannies in urban India, highlighting how care work, focused on affection, love, and bond-building is not a free expression but is embedded in controlled emotional suppression and deep acting. Gated communities reinforce surveillance over nannies through technologies such as CCTV, structured record-keeping, and the internalisation of structural values. Care work in India demonstrates how structured routines and tasks lead to experiences of alienation among nannies, even as they ensure warmth for the recipients of their service children. The understanding of nannies as “part of the family” is embedded in the structuring of emotional warmth, where closeness does not erase established social hierarchies.
REFERENCES
Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday.
Simmel, G. (1908). Soziologie: Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung [Sociology: Investigations on the Forms of Socialization]. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: Pantheon Books.
Wouters, C. (1989). The sociology of emotions and flight attendants: Hochschild’s Managed Heart. Theory, Culture & Society, 6(1), 95–123
Deeksha, a sociology student, has a unique passion for advocating for human rights and social justice issues. She is not only an avid reader but also a thoughtful and vocal participant in discussions related to these topics. Despite her busy academic schedule, Deeksha also finds time to indulge in her love for dogs. Her diverse interests and commitment to social causes make her a well-rounded and inspiring individual.