PPA - E8 - Aupair Nightmares w/ Ileana

Undressing Underground/Platonic Polyamory

We talk to my old friend Ileana about her experience as a Mexican citizen working as an au pair in the United States for two years. It may shock you to learn that being a Mexican woman living in an American family's home while employed as a domestic worker is not great! Ileana discusses the long hours, low pay, the deceptive agencies that facilitate these matchups, and the bizarrely manipulative and boundary pushing actions of these American host families.

It sucks. Great talk. Also, Brandon inquires about incest in polyamory and then I had to cut almost all of Jennifer's response. Someone please let her know that I am in fact editing these to make her look better. Most of the time. It probably does make her look worse sometimes. I'm not the greatest judge of character.

Warm Regards,

Rob

Oh, and here's links Ileana wanted us to share.

This is the activist group she works with, including speaking to members of congress recently (who basically asked her, "Why do you think you deserve to live with dignity?")

https://www.domesticworkers.org/

And a couple of their fact sheets on au pairs:

https://www.domesticworkers.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Au-Pair-Myths-2021-—-New-Jersey-1.pdf

https://www.domesticworkers.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Au-Pair-Fact-Sheet-2021-—-New-Jersey.pdf

She also asked that we share the following articles for further reading.

https://jacobin.com/2020/01/abolish-au-pair-program-domestic-workers-labor-massachusetts

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/au-pair-program-abuse-state-department-214956/

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/the-au-pair-system-is-broken-we-dont-need-to-expand-it.html