“Mothercoin: The Stories of Immigrant Nannies” is not a comforting read — but if you’re an immigrant in America it will be a validating one. Elizabeth Cummins Muñoz has written the book I didn’t know I was waiting for: a rich, unflinching exploration of the women behind America’s well-raised children, cleaned homes, and free time often traded for their own children, their own homes, and their own time.
As a nanny, I’ve been told I’m “like family,” but let’s be honest: family doesn’t come with non-disclosure agreements and unpaid overtime. Plus, immigrant nannies have the constant anxiety that their visa status could unravel their entire life. “Mothercoin” gets that. Muñoz captures the strange intimacy of caregiving — where you’re both indispensable and invisible, essential yet economically marginalized.
“Mothercoin” is built from interviews with immigrant women — many from Latin America and the Caribbean — who care for children in U.S. homes while their own children grow up oceans away. Muñoz doesn’t just tell their stories; she listens. She weaves them into the larger fabric of history, economics, feminism, and immigration policy. It’s sociology with a beating heart — and a biting edge.
What makes “Mothercoin” truly exceptional, though, is its refusal to romanticize the “nanny-as-saint” trope. These women are not martyrs. They are skilled, frequently underpaid workers, and often forced to choose between survival and selfhood. Muñoz lays bare the paradox of care work: the more “priceless” it’s deemed, the less we’re paid for it.
And yes, it’s serious stuff — but Muñoz also has an eye for the absurdities and contradictions of the nanny industry. At one point, she quotes an employer praising her nanny as “part of the family” — while docking her pay for taking her sick day. I laughed. Then I sighed. Then I texted a nanny friend to vent.
As someone inside the nanny world who has many immigrant nanny friends, I appreciated how Muñoz balances critique with care. She doesn’t just expose inequality — she asks what justice would look like in a world built on other women’s labor. “Mothercoin” doesn’t offer tidy solutions, but it gives us something better: visibility, dignity, and the reminder that caregiving is not a side story — it’s the center of everything.
If you’re a caregiver, read this book to feel seen. If you are a working mother or employ a nanny, read this book to understand.
If you think the economy runs on tech or finance, read this book and think again. In order for the U.S. economy to function, working mothers need their children looked after by quality (often immigrant) caregivers.
Because at the end of the day, it’s not bitcoin or Wall Street propping up the world. It’s mothercoin — and we’ve been cashing it in for too little, for too long.
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