Good Work in Canadian Childcare: Complicating the Love/Money Divide

Authors

  • Allison Tom University of British Columbia

Keywords:

Work attitudes, Workplace democracy, Child care workers, Job satisfaction

Abstract

Extended interviews with thirty seven experienced and student childcare providers in Vancouver, British Columbia, provide data for an analysis of the love/money dichotomy often used to understand work in childcare. Providers talked both about the pulls between "money" and "love" and about their desire for other rewards from their work. This article uses ideas of workplace democracy and feminist social justice theories to help articulate how childcare work can be understood and supported as good work.

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...

Author Biography

Allison Tom, University of British Columbia

Allison Tom is associate professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, where she teaches anthropology of education, feminist studies in education and research methods. Her research focuses on the meanings of work in the lives of women and the lives of people with disabilities.

Downloads

Published

2004-10-01

Issue

Vol. 29 No. 1 (2004): Transphobia and Transactivism

Section

Original Research

License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

2. Authors are aware that articles published in Atlantis are indexed and made available through various scholarly and professional search tools, including but not limited to Erudit.

3. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

4. Authors are permitted and encouraged to preprint their work, that is, post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process. This can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Read more on preprints here.