Online Community of Childcare Workers and Their Diverse Workstyles

Abstract

This study focuses on an online community organized by childcare workers and examines the status of diverse workstyles in childcare labor by clarifying participants’ work histories and the experiences behind their workstyle choices. The diverse workstyles practiced by the survey respondents included C-to-C babysitting, contingent childcare, and freelance childcare, all of which are undertaken as sole proprietorships, and there were many cases where workstyles were undertaken as a side job. Behind the emergence of these diverse workstyles, a sense of resistance is found to be a full-time daycare center teacher, which offers negligible wage increases and a heavy workload. In addition, there is a reality that people avoid working in daycare centers, which are hotbeds of human-relationship problems. The diverse workstyles of the survey respondents are both flexible and unstable. Furthermore, the number of childcare workers who practice diverse workstyles remains small compared with the total. In this context, online communities, which are not geographically restricted, provide a space for childcare workers who practice diverse workstyles to interact with each other and share their experiences and knowledge.