Power relations and persistent low fertility among domestic workers in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico

Our study offers a power-relations-based explanation for the “paradoxically” low and delayed fertility of live-in domestic workers, a social, ethnic, and economic minority, hitherto neglected in quantitative studies of fertility in Latin America and the Caribbean (LACar). This lack of attention relates to the limited scope of theories explaining fertility differentials and change. We challenge these paradigms by comparing the fertility patterns of two million domestic workers against those of women living in large cities, other urban areas, and rural areas using 12 census samples from Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico (1970-2010), the three largest countries in LACar. Comparing age-specific fertility measures across these groups and over time allows us to study reproduction differentials as embedded in power relations. Our results demonstrate that the very low and delayed fertility of live-in domestic workers emerges from the confluence of socioeconomic disadvantages throughout their life course. We also show that live-in domestic workers contributed to higher fertility among mistresses compared to women who did not employ live-in domestic workers. Together, these results underline the need to re-center research questions towards the social mechanisms, including power relations, underpinning unequal living conditions and their consequences for fertility and family patterns. The increasingly transnational nature of domestic work and the rising trends of socioeconomic inequalities worldwide renders the examination of minorities central for a deep understanding of family change beyond the LACar context.