Babysitting Practices and Attitudes in Kazakhstan
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14515/monitoring.2025.4.2807Keywords:
babysitting, fertility, family roles, mothering, childcare, cultural changeAbstract
The topic of this paper concerns delegated mothering in the context of Kazakhstani society, which is highly gender-normative, characterized by an almost unique combination of rather high average income, average level of economic development, high level of female participation in the labor force, and high fertility. This situation motivates mothers in this country to search for various ways of delegating mothering, including using nannies' and babysitters' services.
We aimed to study the barriers and triggers for using this method of delegation in the context of persistent traditional gender norms and ideals. We did this using qualitative methodology: semi-structured interviews with mothers, potential mothers, and babysitters, 29 in total, in two main cities of Kazakhstan, Almaty and Astana. The interviews were then analyzed using qualitative thematic text analysis methodology.
Our main conceptual frame was «care loop», formulated by Sekeráková Búriková in 2019, which presents relationships between a mother and other carers (other family members or paid nannies) for her child as a continuum and not a strictly divided dyadic model, since we found the former to be more relevant in the studied context.
We found that, albeit barriers to using nanny services are high in the context of traditional Kazakhstani society with its strict gender ideals, need is higher and the market segment of care is already quite developed but unregulated by the state, all nannies do not have any specialized official status, including the agencies which help to find them, thus creating numerous vulnerabilities for mothers, children, and hired carers as well. Still, most agents of this area of social interactions do not want stricter regulations due to expecting higher prices in this case and preferring to keep to the perception of the domain of mothering delegation as something with blurred boundaries and not characterized by strictly divided roles.
Acknowledgements. The author expresses gratitude to Nazarbayev University (Astana, Kazakhstan) Sociology students in the years 2023—2024, Ainur Saparova, Ayan Tlepova, Alua Suleimanova, Anel Bakayeva, and Tamila Turkmenova, who helped at the initial stages of research, finding the participants, conducting interviews, and helping with the literature review.
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