Parentalidade soberana em bairros afluentes da América Latina: raça e as geopolíticas dos cuidados de crianças em Ipanema (Brasil) e El Condado (Porto Rico)

Abstract

In this ethnographic study with parents living in the affluent areas of Ipanema, Brazil, and El Condado, Puerto Rico, I examine how urban Latin American elites reformulate their understandings of race and classs in relationship to their parenting practices. In particular I consider how these upper-class parents interpreted their relationship with the poor, dark-skin women hired to care for their children; those women were largely immigrants from the Dominican Republic, in El Condado, and migrants from the Brazilian Northeast, in Ipanema. I demonstrate how the genuinely positive feelings these elite parents harbored toward domestic workers, in fact, sustained power inequalities inherent in the parent-nanny relationship. I introduce the concept of “sovereign parenting,” as a unique characteristic of this parent-nanny relationship in Ipanema and El Condado.