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（Arlie Hochschild）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 institute nannies are always being portrayed as “loving nanny mothers” who selflessly devote all their love and care to the institutionalized children. In contrast, some Western media and human rights organizations denounce them as demoralized and inhumane caregivers who neglect and abuse institutionalized children. As these two extremist representations dominate Chinese and Western public discourses, the actual working experience, everyday life and emotions of Chinese institute nannies are largely ignored. What are their relationships with institutionalized children really like? How do these relationships affect their own life experiences? And how do these relationships affect the lives of institutionalized children? This article attempts to answer these questions. Based on my six-month fieldwork in a child welfare institute in southeast China, I argue that, like other jobs in the service sector, institute nannies’ emotional labor constrains, but also produces emotions, of and on the nannies’ bodies. These emotions include their attachment to many institutionalized children for whom they care, their serious attitude toward the children who have done wrong, their ambivalence in doing this job, and even their identification with the distinctive “institute nanny motherhood”. While this empirically-grounded new type of “motherhood” extends the existing academic research on motherhood studies by breaking up 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 adds a dynamic dimension to Arlie Hochschild’s notion of “emotional labor,” and also corrects its bias, which sees the work of emotional labor only as a false performance, by taking the self-identity of workers to justify the authenticity of their emotional expressions in the workplace. This ethnographic study first examines the institute nannies’ working conditions in my field site. It shows that the job of institute nanny is highly gendered and socially stratified in local society. These female caregivers with rural backgrounds suffer from low salary, overloaded work, delayed overtime payment as well as no public holiday or medical leave, but they are required by their work unit, the Chinese government and the public to devote themselves to childcare work by “mothering the foundlings as their own children”. Facing such high expectations along with poor working conditions, the institute nannies become ambivalent. Refusing to be socialist model workers who have to be self-sacrificing, they complain and negotiate with the welfare institute leaders to protect their own interests, but at the same still gradually develop their attachment to the institutionalized children for whom they care through intensive childrearing practices. I provide a detailed description of the physical and emotional nurturing processes, through which the deep emotional bond between the nannies and children is built, and furthermore, the self-identity of “institute nanny mother” based on their own definition is constructed. Still, in the course of nurturing these children, frequently intervened in by the welfare institute and the volunteers, and considering their own interests, the nannies often feel contradictory, especially regarding the issue of disciplining children. Whether or not to discipline children, when to do it, and what the rationality behind disciplinary actions is, all become problems they have to deal with. Furthermore, the intimacy between the nannies and the institutionalized children will eventually be cut off by adoptions or other kinds of separations, because the welfare institute and the public all assume that a “normal” family will provide the children with more love and care, and therefore is a better choice for them. This causes the nannies serious emotional exhaustion. Later sections of this ethnographic study offer moving stories about how the nannies deal with the emotional challenges of working as “institute nanny mothers.” These stories not only demonstrate the contesting experiences of these childcare workers, but also reveal the production and running of emotion and identity in a specific institution.

中國兒童福利院、保育員、母親身份、情感勞動、育兒體驗

Chinese Orphanage; Institute Nanny; Motherhood; Emotional Labor; Mothering Experience