中國政府和媒體通常將福利院保育員表述為一群對棄嬰兒無私奉獻的照顧者。與此相反，海外一些媒體和人權組織則指控她們缺乏愛心和道德，是中國兒童福利機構虐待兒童的直接責任人。搖擺在這兩種極端表述之間，中國福利院保育員真實的工作經歷、日常生活與情感卻被忽略了。
基於對中國東南某省份H市福利院六個月的田野調查，本文考察了一群保育員在該福利院中的育兒過程，並視這一過程為亞莉．霍奇斯柴德（ArlieHochschild）所說的「情感勞動」（emotional labor）的一種類型。本文的核心觀點是：如同其他情感勞動者，保育員們一方面控制管理著她們自身的情緒，以便更好地撫養照顧福利院兒童；但另一方面也在勞動過程中再生產著各種情緒，包括對部分孩子的依戀、對犯了錯的孩子的嚴厲、對保育員這份工作的物質利益和情感生活的矛盾心理等等，乃至生產出她們對自身「保育員母親身份」（institute nanny motherhood）的認同。這一保育員情感勞動的個案不僅展示了「保育員媽媽」這一特殊「母親身份」類型的建構過程，發掘其超越學術界既有「母親身份」類型討論在空間和工作性質上的區隔，展示一種「職場裡有薪的育兒工作」的獨特經歷；它同時也試圖拓展霍奇斯柴德「情感勞動」概念的內涵，使之更為動態化，並修正其視情感勞動過程僅為虛假表演的預設，從勞動者自身認同的角度確認職場中情感表達的真實性。

In the domestic media and official reports, Chinese institutenannies are always being portrayed as “loving nanny mothers” whoselflessly devote all their love and care to the institutionalized children.In contrast, some Western media and human rights organizationsdenounce them as demoralized and inhumane caregivers who neglect andabuse institutionalized children. As these two extremist representationsdominate Chinese and Western public discourses, the actual workingexperience, everyday life and emotions of Chinese institute nannies arelargely ignored. What are their relationships with institutionalized childrenreally like? How do these relationships affect their own life experiences?And how do these relationships affect the lives of institutionalizedchildren? This article attempts to answer these questions.
Based on my six-month fieldwork in a child welfare institute insoutheast China, I argue that, like other jobs in the service sector, institutenannies’ emotional labor constrains, but also produces emotions, ofand on the nannies’ bodies. These emotions include their attachment tomany institutionalized children for whom they care, their serious attitudetoward the children who have done wrong, their ambivalence in doingthis job, and even their identification with the distinctive “institute nannymotherhood”. While this empirically-grounded new type of “motherhood”extends the existing academic research on motherhood studies by breakingup the traditionally assumed spatial and occupational differentiations,and illustrating a unique working experience of “mothering as a paid job in the workplace”; the process of institute nannies’ emotional labor addsa dynamic dimension to Arlie Hochschild’s notion of “emotional labor,”and also corrects its bias, which sees the work of emotional labor only asa false performance, by taking the self-identity of workers to justify theauthenticity of their emotional expressions in the workplace.
This ethnographic study first examines the institute nannies’ workingconditions in my field site. It shows that the job of institute nanny ishighly gendered and socially stratified in local society. These femalecaregivers with rural backgrounds suffer from low salary, overloadedwork, delayed overtime payment as well as no public holiday or medicalleave, but they are required by their work unit, the Chinese governmentand the public to devote themselves to childcare work by “mothering thefoundlings as their own children”. Facing such high expectations alongwith poor working conditions, the institute nannies become ambivalent.Refusing to be socialist model workers who have to be self-sacrificing, theycomplain and negotiate with the welfare institute leaders to protect theirown interests, but at the same still gradually develop their attachmentto the institutionalized children for whom they care through intensivechildrearing practices. I provide a detailed description of the physicaland emotional nurturing processes, through which the deep emotionalbond between the nannies and children is built, and furthermore, theself-identity of “institute nanny mother” based on their own definitionis constructed. Still, in the course of nurturing these children, frequentlyintervened in by the welfare institute and the volunteers, and consideringtheir own interests, the nannies often feel contradictory, especiallyregarding the issue of disciplining children. Whether or not to disciplinechildren, when to do it, and what the rationality behind disciplinary actionsis, all become problems they have to deal with. Furthermore, the intimacybetween the nannies and the institutionalized children will eventually becut off by adoptions or other kinds of separations, because the welfareinstitute and the public all assume that a “normal” family will provide thechildren with more love and care, and therefore is a better choice for them.This causes the nannies serious emotional exhaustion. Later sections ofthis ethnographic study offer moving stories about how the nannies dealwith the emotional challenges of working as “institute nanny mothers.”These stories not only demonstrate the contesting experiences of thesechildcare workers, but also reveal the production and running of emotionand identity in a specific institution.