Baby Sitter: An Emerging Caring Occupation in Urban Indonesia

Gita Nasution
Dept of Anthropology, School of Culture, History and Language,
CAP-ANU
Question(s)
• How does baby sitter occupation emerge?
• How baby sitter as an occupation shape and is shaped by social and
economic changes in Indonesia?

2
Social and Economic Factors
• Change of employment (from agriculture to industry and now to
services)
• Rural – urban migration
• There are around 128 million workforce in Indonesia (BPS, 2015)
• Jakarta has around 5,31 million workforce per Feb 2016
• Male workforce: 3,2 million
• Female workforce: 2,1 million
• Service sector absorbs more workforce, women are mostly in it

3
4
How do women navigate?
• Living as a middle class family in the city requires dual income: high
living cost for food, housing and children education (Manning, 1996)
• Now middle class family even require carer and driver for children
which add up the cost
 Why Baby sitter?
Mbak Baby sitter
Familial More professional
Untrained carer Trained carer
Need more training at home Ready to work
Less formal More formal
Flexible Strict regulations
More economical More costly
Less educated More educated/certified
Careless Attention to detail

6
Commonalities
(female employer’s aspirations)
• Care for children
• Experience is key
• Familial relationship and flexibility is preferred from both occupations

‘What is more important from a child carer is their love for children. I do not really
care about training or certificates for baby sitter. Mbak or baby sitter are the same.
Experience is something that matters’. (Ira, 40)
Worker’s aspiration
• Flexibility/freedom at work
• Generous employers
• Other aspiration: family, income, higher education

‘I was trapped to become a baby sitter. I went to a nursing school in my hometown.

We learnt how to care for patients, to put on drips... One a person from an agency
in Jakarta picked us up… me and my friends thought we were going to work in a
clinic… but when we arrived in Jakarta we were retrained in Jakarta to look after
babies. I felt so sad that I was tricked by the agent. I could never work in a clinic
anymore, but I have to keep working, I want to continue my education…’ (Mira, 20)

8
Problems?

• unmatched expectation
• unskilled workers vs demanding employers
• agencies standard vs family standard
• ‘naughty’ employers/workers

9
Agencies as a mediator?
‘We try to help working mothers in Jakarta. They are busy people who do not have
time for their house or attend to their children every time. At the same time we
also help to reduce unemployment in the villages. We provide jobs for rural
people… We also try to protect our workers from bad employers by having a
written contract signed by employers, workers and us. We share a “black list”
among us (agencies). We also have the workers’ “black list” (Susi, 45)

10
Unpacking baby sitter
Who are they?
• Women (gendered work)
• Care work vs domestic work
• Uniformed (class differentiation and hierarchy of domestic work;
professionalism and trust)
• Trained and certified? – baby sitter only exists relative to agencies
Dual role of Agencies

1. Agency as a Supplier (recruit workers through middlemen/sponsor;

use debt bondage for transport; patron client with agency owner)

2. Agency as a Training Institution (prepare modules, employ certified

trainers)
Regulating Baby sitter
• Written work contract issued by the agencies
• RUU PPRT?
• Permenaker no 2/2015 re rights and responsibilities of employers,
workers, and agencies
• Kepmenaker no 194/2014 re Standard work competence for baby
sitter (as part of individual service in a household)
The Complexities
• Agencies dual role: as a recruiting and training institution

• Baby sitter Examination and Certification – who is competent to do

so?

• Baby sitter’s standard competence vs Standardising care?

• Where are men?

Beyond Baby sitter
‘… care is the most difficult task to do among other tasks of domestic
work…’ (Gamburd, 2000)

Baby sitter posts persisting class and gender relations in Indonesia, that
is displayed through many ways in public;

Everybody is transforming (gender equality; rural-urban linkages;

protection of workers though work contracts)
Thank You