“WE ALL LOVE CHARLES”

Abstract

Based on four years of participant-observation field research and focused interviews with men and women child care workers, the author analyzes how the marking of men workers and their experiences doing child care work show how deeply feminized the work of child care is. When men choose to do child care work, they become suspect. This suspicion manifests in restriction of men's access to children in child care centers. Restricted access of men workers to children (compared with the access of women workers to children) implies men's desire for access to children is pathological. In these and other ways, the organization of child care and the accountability of persons to sex category systematically push men away from nurturing responsibilities and bind these responsibilities to women workers.