I still don't see any evidence of a causal relation between more successes of feminism and feminists on one hand and increases in nannies and housekeepers on the other hand of the sort that you and Ehrenreich assume.
In terms of the history of the United States, bourgeois and petit-bourgeois women more commonly employed nannies and maids _before_ the rise of first-wave (not to mention second-wave) feminism than today. "The shortage of household workers brought on by industrialization began a general decline in domestic service in the United States. In 1870, fifty percent of employed women were servants and washerwomen. By 1900, domestic service accounted for only one-third of all employed women. Middle-class women referred to the situation as the 'servant problem.' . . . World War I and its aftermath brought a general prosperity, improving working conditions and opening employment opportunities for women. The war also slowed immigration, reducing the pool of women available for domestic service. Between the turn of the century and 1920, the percentage of employed women who worked as domestics had been cut in half to 16 percent. Perhaps because of the depression, the figure increased slightly to 20 percent over the following decade. . . . The major feature of domestic service in the twentieth century has been a continuing labor shortage. [Julie A.] Matthaei [in _An Economic History of Women in America: Women's Work, the Sexual Division of Labor and the Development of Capitalism_, NY: Schocken, 1982] noted that in 1900 there were 95.6 female servants per one thousand families; by 1960 the number had dropped to 33.3. . . . Since the American Revolution, the number of workers hired per household has declined steadily" (endnotes omitted, Mary Romero, _Maid in the U.S.A._, NY: Routledge, 1992, Chapter 3 "Gender and Class in Domestic Work," p. 61, 63, 66, 68).
In terms of international comparisons, you see bourgeois and petit-bourgeois women employing nannies and maids more commonly in nations where feminists have enjoyed _few_ successes than in nations where feminists have had much impacts on expanding women's labor participation and promoting gender equality at work and home, in public and in private. Compare the relative prevalences of maids and nannies (especially foreign-born ones) in Sweden (much feminist successes), the USA (some feminist successes), and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (few feminist successes).
Cf.
* "Kuwait. About two-thirds of the 2.3 million residents of Kuwait are foreigners; the foreigners include 300,000 maids" (at <http://www.migrationint.com.au/news/madrid/aug_2000-24mn.html>).
* "In both Kuwait and Bahrain, foreign female workers are predominantly employed in the (personal) Services sector (on average 88.7% (1957-1985) and 77.2% (1971-91) respectively), mainly as maids in households: in 1991, maids accounted for 81.2% of the foreign female workers in the services sector of Bahrain and in 1993, in Kuwait, it was estimated that 67.8% of female workers were in the 'household sector'[18]. In Kuwait, the share of foreign female workers in the Services sector increased by 0.22% per annum from 89.9% (1957) to 93.7% (1975) after which it declined to 88.8% in 1985. In absolute numbers, it increased 61.68 times (by 93,888 workers) between 1957 and 1985. In Bahrain, their share declined from 82% to 75.2%, though in absolute numbers it increased 13.27 times. Between 1971 and 1991, the share of female non national workers in trading and hotelling increased 19 times by 1,405 workers, from 2.6% to 6.8%. In Kuwait, the proportion of female workers in this sector increased 21.8 times by 3,207 from 1.9% (1965) to 3.6% (1980) and then 3.1% (1985)" (Nadia Sayed Ali,"The Non National Phenomenon In The Gulf States," <http://www.mevic.org/papers/gulf.html>).
In my view, contrary to what you and Ehrenreich allege, "servant culture" goes hand in hand with the absence of a powerful feminist (and socialist/social democratic) movement. -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>