Arlie Russell Hochschild has a new book, The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times, which looks at all the people caught up in the care business.

With women in the office, extended families dispursed, and communities in shambles, the job of care taking of others has been outsourced to professionals for a dollar. Hochschild looks at love coaches, nannies, elder-care managers, surrogate nannies in India. She wonders whether "we are dividing the world into emotional types — order-barking, fast-paced entrepreneurs at the top, and emotionally attuned, human-paced mediators at the bottom?”

Judith Shulevitz has a great review in this week's New York Times book review. I just ordered this book.