In the execution of domestic tasks linked to the care and maintenance of middle-class families in Brazil - an activity performed, in most cases, by lower-income women who are not otherwise related to the employers - as well as in the forms of remuneration and relationships that develop between employers and maids, we witness the reproduction of a highly stratified system of gender, class, and color. The maintenance of the hierarchical system revealed by domestic service has been reinforced, in particular, by emotional ambiguities in the relationship between employers - especially women and children - and the domestic workers. By analyzing examples drawn from our ethnographic study in Vitória (Espírito Santo), we will comment on how this ambiguity emerges as a fundamental instrument in the didactics of social distance
Domestic Maids; Middle-class Families; Stratified Reproduction; Didactics of Social Distance