In the first section of this essay I discuss alternative ways of interpreting an eighteenth-century anecdote about employment relations. This serves to introduce a series of arguments that advocate altering our conception of labor history (with special reference to American labor history) in ways that center it on the study of household relations. Asserting that law is the primary site upon which authoritative social relations are constituted, I also argue that legal history—in this case the history of domestic relations law—is of fundamental importance to the labor history the essay recommends.

In 1993, Nannygate, one of the many predicaments of the Clinton administration, highlighted a trend that has been many years in the making. Nannygate captured the nation's attention not only because it represented another example of the misuse of economic and political privilege but also because in recent years so many Americans have had first-hand experience employing private household workers.