Even Six-Figure Salaries Don’t Attract Men to Care Work

Until these jobs are given the respect they deserve, they will continue to turn men off and be paid less than they're worth.

Adam Davidson’s recent New York Times Magazine article “The Best Nanny Money Can Buy” introduced readers to the “bizarre microeconomy” of New York’s highly paid nannies. The first nanny Davidson introduces earns $180,000 a year, plus a Christmas bonus and an apartment on Central Park West.

Davidson’s economy is indeed bizarre. As Bryce Covert pointed out in Forbes recently, the average New York nanny makes $37,076 a year. Childcare providers, home health care aids, and others are paid far too little for the incredibly important work they do. In the U.S., median pay for a childcare worker in 2010 was about $9 an hour.

Care work jobs have historically been paid poorly. Jobs associated with the work women traditionally did as wives and mothers have not been conceptualized as real work and have generally paid far less than traditionally male work. This was partially a result of the way laws were written. Until the 1970s, domestic workers were not included in the Fair Labor Standards Act that mandated a federal minimum wage, among other things. Read more......