On Being a Family Day Care Provider

Between Domesticity and Professionalism

Abstract

This paper explores how the experience and the practice of providing family day care are organized by analyzing the narrative of family day care providers. Their work is made accountable through the logic of domesticity and the logic of professionalism. Although professionalism is often referred to in opposition to domesticity, redefining their own professionalism in terms of the artfulness of realizing the logic of domesticity is useful for avoiding the occupational dilemmas concerning providing family day care and experiencing their work as meaningful for themselves and their clients. Logic through which participants are making realities accountable has to be taken into account in the forthcoming reorganization of family day care system.