Business And Profession:A Study On The Emotional Labor Process Of Baby-Care Domestic Workers Under The Guidance Of Double Rules

In recent years,with the declining birthrate and aging of China society,the shortage of care resources has become increasingly serious.More and more urban families choose to buy baby-care domestic services to alleviate the problem,and the huge demand for care has given birth to the rapid development of the professional group of "baby-care domestic workers".Nurses who have experienced professional training are both caregivers and parenting guidance experts,and their emotional labor is more complicated and tortuous.Carrying out the research on the emotional labor process of baby-rearing domestic workers is not only a response and supplement to the current hot spot of emotional research in sociology,but also a tender outline and depiction of the controversial image of domestic workers.Based on the theory of emotional labor put forward by Hochschild,semi-structured interviews with 16 baby-care domestic workers in Z city and participatory observation of preservice training courses in YW Domestic Services Company,this paper makes an in-depth study on the emotional labor process of baby-care domestic workers from three aspects:the acquisition of emotional rules in pre-service training,emotional grooming through emotional play and control when going to the house,emotional labor consequences after going to the house,and individual emotional adjustment,using the data analysis method of causal analysis and comparative analysis.It is found that,different from the public service practitioners in previous studies,babycare domestic workers need to learn and internalize the dual labor rules of "employer first"and "professional first" in pre-service training,that is,they should not only accept the"customer-centered" business service standard set by domestic companies,but also strive to shape the professional service image of "childcare experts".Faced with the restriction of the double rules of business and specialty and the tension between them,domestic workers for baby-care usually take emotional tool-based surface play,family-like deep play,and maintaining the balance between emotional input and withdrawal,so as to consciously manage their individual emotions in the process of labor,with a view to achieving positive interaction with employers in diversified baby-care labor situations.However,long-term intensive emotional management,coupled with workers’ differentiated control over the process of emotional decoration,often leads to the complex emotional labor results of positive emotions and negative emotions.In this regard,the domestic workers of baby-care do not blindly accept it passively,but exert their own subjective initiative,and adjust and reshape their individual emotions by strengthening the connection,returning to the family and interrupting the relationship,so that the emotional labor process can be maintained and sustained.