This two-stage mixed-method study pulls the literature of domestic outsourcing and intensive parenting together to investigate the role of employing live-in domestic helpers in the time-use patterns of household labor among working parents in Hong Kong. In the first stage, regression models are used to analyze data from a representative household survey of working parents (N = 791). Regression results show that working parents who hire live-in domestic help spent less time in housework. Yet, the reduction in housework time was partially offset by the managing tasks brought about by the use of live-in help. Working parents with live-in helpers also spent significantly more time on childcare than did working parents without such help. To interpret the regression results, the study draws on qualitative data from in-depth interviews (N = 20) to unpack the meaning of hiring help and its relationship with the notion and practices of parenting. The findings highlight that the use of live-in domestic help is a specialization strategy to strive for perfection in parenting for parents who juggle work, childcare and household chores. By outsourcing household chores and more routinized childcare tasks to the helpers, working parents, especially mothers, can focus on emotional bonding and tasks conducive to the development of their children.
BaxterJHewittBWesternM (2009) Who uses paid domestic labor in Australia? Choice and constraint in hiring household help. Feminist Economics15(1): 1–26.
2.
BianchiSMRobinsonJPMilkieMA (2006) Changing Rhythms of American Family Life. New York: Russell Sage.
3.
BittmanMCraigLFolbreN (2004) Packaging care: What happens when parents utilize non-parental child care. In: FolbreNBittmanM (eds) Family Time: The Social Organization of Care. London: Routledge.
4.
BittmanMMathesonGMeagherG (1999) The changing boundary between home and market: Australian trends in outsourcing domestic labour. Work, Employment & Society13(2): 249–273.
5.
Blair-LoyM (2003) Competing Devotions: Career and Family among Women Executives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
6.
ChanAH (2005) Live-in foreign domestic workers and their impact on Hong Kong’s middle class families. Journal of Family and Economic Issues26: 509–528.
7.
CheungAKL (2014) Hiring domestic help and family well-being: A propensity score analysis. Journal of Comparative Family Studies45(4): 475–495.
8.
CheungAKLLuiL (2017) Hiring domestic help in Hong Kong: The role of gender attitude and wives’ income. Journal of Family Issues38(1): 73–99.
9.
CheungAKLParkH (2020) Parental academic involvement in cross-border marriage, native and immigrant families: The roles of family resources and parental expectations. Journal of Family Issues. Epub ahead of print 5 November 2020. DOI: 10.1177/0192513X20968603
10.
ChristopherK (2012) Extensive mothering: Employed mothers’ constructions of the good mother. Gender and Society26(1): 73–96.
11.
ColtraneS (2000) Research on household labor: Modeling and measuring the social embeddedness of routine family work. Journal of Marriage and Family62(4): 1208–1233.
12.
ConstableN (2007) Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Migrant Workers. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
13.
CraigL (2007) How employed mothers in Australia find time for both market work and childcare. Journal of Family and Economic Issues28(1): 69–87.
14.
CraigL (2016) Contemporary Motherhood: The Impact of Children on Adult Time. Abingdon: Routledge.
15.
CraigLBaxterJ (2016) Domestic outsourcing, housework shares and subjective time pressure: Gender differences in the correlates of hiring help. Social Indicators Research125(1): 271–288.
16.
CraigLPeralesFVidalSBaxterJ (2016) Domestic outsourcing, housework time, and subjective time pressure: New insights from longitudinal data. Journal of Marriage and Family78(5): 1224–1236.
17.
CraigLPowellASmythC (2014) Towards intensive parenting? Changes in the composition and determinants of mothers’ and fathers’ time with children 1992–2006. The British Journal of Sociology65(3): 555–579.
18.
DalyKJ (2001) Deconstructing family time: From ideology to lived experience. Journal of Marriage and Family63(2): 283–294.
19.
De RuijterETreasJKCohenPN (2005) Outsourcing the gender factory: Living arrangements and service expenditures on female and male tasks. Social Forces84(1): 305–322.
20.
DewJ (2009) Has the marital time cost of parenting changed over time?Social Forces88(2): 519–541.
21.
DowDM (2016) Integrated motherhood: Beyond hegemonic ideologies of motherhood. Journal of Marriage and Family78(1): 180–196.
22.
FurediF (2001) Paranoid Parenting: Abandon Your Anxieties and Be a Good Parent. London: Allen Lane.
23.
Gonalons-PonsP (2015) Gender and class housework inequalities in the era of outsourcing hiring domestic work in Spain. Social Science Research52: 208–218.
24.
GrovesJMLuiL (2012) The ‘gift’ of help: Domestic helpers and the maintenance of hierarchy in the household division of labour. Sociology46(1): 57–73.
25.
HaysS (1996) The Culture Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
26.
HeGWuX (2019) Foreign domestic helpers hiring and women’s labor supply in Hong Kong. Chinese Sociological Review51(4): 397–420.
27.
Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department (2017) 2016 Population By-Census: Main Report Volume 1. Hong Kong: Hong Kong SAR Government.
28.
HookJ (2004) Reconsidering the division of household labor: Incorporating volunteer work and informal support. Journal of Marriage and Family66(1): 101–117.
29.
KanMY (2008) Measuring housework participation: The gap between ‘stylised’ questionnaire estimates and diary-based estimates. Social Indicators Research86(3): 381–400.
30.
KarstenL (2015) Middle-class childhood and parenting culture in high-rise Hong Kong: On scheduled lives, the school trap and a new urban idyll. Children’s Geographies13(5): 556–570.
31.
KillewaldA (2011) Opting out and buying out: Wives’ earnings and housework time. Journal of Marriage and Family73(2): 459–471.
32.
KillewaldAGoughM (2010) Money isn’t everything: Wives’ earnings and housework time. Social Science Research39(6): 987–1003.
33.
KimEHWCheungAKL (2019) The gendered division of household labor over parenthood transitions: A longitudinal study in South Korea. Population research and Policy review, 38(4): 459–482.
34.
KornrichS (2012) Hiring help for the home: Household services in the twentieth century. Journal of Family History37(2): 197–212.
35.
KornrichSRobertsA (2018) Household income, women’s earnings, and spending on household services, 1980–2010. Journal of Marriage and Family80(1): 150–165.
36.
LoSStoneRNgCW (2003) Work–family conflict and coping strategies adopted by female married professionals in Hong Kong. Women in Management Review18(4): 182–190.
37.
LuiLChoiSY (2015) Not just mom and dad: The role of children in exacerbating gender inequalities in childcare. Journal of Family Issues36(13): 1829–1853.
38.
MacdonaldCL (2011) Shadow Mothers: Nannies, Au Pairs, and the Micropolitics of Mothering. Berkeley: University of California Press.
39.
NomaguchiKM (2009) Change in work–family conflict among employed parents between 1977 and 1997. Journal of Marriage and Family71(1): 15–32.
40.
Perry-JenkinsMGerstelN (2020) Work and family in the second decade of the 21st century. Journal of Marriage and Family82(1): 420–453.
41.
Raz-YurovichL (2014) A transaction cost approach to outsourcing by households. Population and Development Review40(2): 293–309.
42.
SullivanOGershunyJ (2013) Domestic outsourcing and multitasking: How much do they really contribute?Social Science Research42(5): 1311–1324.
43.
TreasJDe RuijterE (2008) Earnings and expenditures on household services in married and cohabiting unions. Journal of Marriage and Family70(3): 796–805.
44.
Van der LippeTFreyVTsvetkovaM (2012) Outsourcing of domestic tasks: A matter of preferences?Journal of Family Issues34(12): 1574–1597.
45.
Van der LippeTTijdensKDe RuijterE (2004) Outsourcing of domestic tasks and time-saving effects. Journal of Family Issues25(2): 216–240.
46.
VincentCBallSJ (2007) ‘Making up’ the middle-class child: Families, activities and class dispositions. Sociology41(6): 1061–1077.
47.
VincentCBraunABallSJ (2008) Childcare, choice and social class: Caring for young children in the UK. Critical Social Policy28(1): 5–26.
48.
WallGArnoldS (2007) How involved in involved fathering? An exploration of the contemporary culture of fatherhood. Gender and Society21(4): 508–527.
49.
WarnerJ (2006) Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety. London: Penguin.
50.
WindebankJ (2007) Outsourcing women’s domestic labor: The Cheque Emploi-Service Universal in France. Journal of European Social Policy17(3): 257–270.
51.
WindebankJ (2010) Barriers to outsourcing domestic chores in dual-earner households. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy30(7/8): 387–398.
52.
WinslowS (2005) Work–family conflict, gender, and parenthood, 1977–1997. Journal of Family Issues26(6): 727–755.
