A widely held assumption is that domestic work is the antithesis of contemporary women’s self‐empowerment and independence. In Hired daughters, Mary Montgomery eloquently shows that this is not always the case and that many women find themselves navigating between autonomy and dependency through household labour. Based on 15 months of fieldwork among domestics and household heads in the Moroccan capital of Rabat, Montgomery’s rich ethnography gradually unfolds a novel way of looking at the often complex interrelationship between the public and private, religious ethics and economic enterprise, family and non‐family, urban and rural. It provides a valuable contribution to studies of women, kinship and labour in the context of the past and present, traditional and global.

After an overview of Rabat’s history, city planning and architecture, Montgomery introduces the reader to Mui Latifa, a household head in the neighbourhood of l’Ocean. Mui Latifa is one of many household heads who calls her domestic workers ‘daughters’. Following sha’bī, an ideal of generosity, cooperation and reciprocity, Mui Latifa has, over the years, provided shelter, food, clothing and marriage arrangements for several ‘daughters’ in exchange for their domestic services. Montgomery argues that many wealthier Muslim women, like Mui Latifa, have taken in girls, sometimes as young as seven, from familiar but poorer rural families as this is a ‘righteous thing’ to do. While being a ‘daughter’ to women like Mui Latifa provides domestics with long‐term stability and support, Montgomery claims that it also involves obligations. To be a daughter in Morocco means being constantly available to the family. Montgomery succeeds well in showing how the relationship and exchange between domestics and household heads involve shifting hierarchies and negotiation. To illustrate, a household head can demonstrate superiority by cutting off her domestic’s hair at the same time as the domestic can use patience and forgiveness to establish her own moral autonomy. By following domestics on visits back to their home villages in the countryside, Montgomery also argues that their low status in the city gets reversed at home where they provide their families with gifts and money, take on the role of ‘civilising’ their kin in urban domesticity, cuisine and clothing, and challenge the traditional family hierarchy by claiming superiority over their mothers.

Against the context of traditional Moroccan domestic service, Montgomery continues to tell stories of contemporary domestics who have chosen waged employment in unfamiliar households over becoming ‘daughters’ in familiar families. While some household heads still use the idiom of kin to affiliate unknown workers into the family, many workers nowadays seek to distance themselves from their employers. Rejecting being labelled as ‘daughters’, wage‐earning women gain a sense of liberty; they can leave the job at any time, demand to be treated well, claim days off, and spend their leisure time searching for a ‘love match’ in parks and with the help of mobile phones. Drawing on scholars such as Mauss and Polyani, Montgomery argues that these women free themselves from the constraining ideal of long‐term reciprocity between (fictive) kin by giving preference to short‐term transactions between strangers that sometimes are facilitated through a broker or employment agency. Montgomery offers a nuanced account of contemporary domestics’ longing for a more independent life at the same time as they struggle with relationships of inequality and feelings of being unrooted and without support. Domestic workers also remain unprotected by Moroccan law and, recently, their position on the labour market has been challenged by wealthier families’ preferences of hiring Filipina domestics. As Montgomery writes, ‘It is difficult to have the best of (two) worlds’ (p. 115).

The strengths of the book lie in its multi‐layered ethnographic details and discussion of the complex interrelationship between kinship and the market. Unfortunately, the fine ethnographic narrative becomes repeatedly interrupted in parts of the book with larger analytical discussions about kinship, exchange and domestic work across the world – especially in Britain. Rather than adding to the argument, this often disrupts and overshadows the author’s own storyline. The transition from the traditional Moroccan form of domestic service to the new wage‐earning domestic worker could also have been further developed in relation to globalisation and changes in family, gender relations, politics, economy and religious ethics in Moroccan society at large. Aside from these few critical comments, the book is a valuable and welcome contribution for better understanding the often‐overlooked hierarchical and asymmetrical relationships between women of different background, class and age against the context of the opportunities as well as constraints of kin and market relationships.

人们普遍认为，家务劳动是当代女性自我授权和独立的对立面。玛丽·蒙哥马利（Mary Montgomery）在《雇来的女儿》中雄辩地表明，情况并非总是如此，许多妇女发现自己在依靠家庭劳动实现自主和依赖性之间徘徊。基于摩洛哥首都拉巴特的家庭和户主之间长达15个月的实地考察，蒙哥马利丰富的人种志逐渐展现出一种新颖的方式，来研究公私之间，宗教道德与经济企业，家庭与非家庭之间通常复杂的相互关系。 ，城市和农村。它为过去和现在，传统和全球范围内的妇女，亲属关系和劳动研究提供了宝贵的贡献。

在概述了拉巴特的历史，城市规划和建筑后，蒙哥马利向读者介绍了欧莱雅附近的一家之主Mui Latifa。梅·拉蒂法（Mui Latifa）是许多家庭主妇之一，她称她的家庭工人为“女儿”。继SH a'bī作为慷慨，合作与互惠的理想，梅拉蒂法（Mui Latifa）多年来为数名“女儿”提供住所，食物，衣服和婚姻安排，以换取其家庭服务。蒙哥马利认为，许多富裕的穆斯林妇女，例如梅拉蒂法（Mui Latifa），都是从熟悉但较贫穷的农村家庭中招收女孩，有时甚至只有7岁，因为这是“正义的事”。蒙哥马利声称，尽管像拉美法（Mui Latifa）这样的女性“女儿”为家庭提供了长期稳定和支持，但蒙哥马利声称这也涉及义务。在摩洛哥成为女儿意味着不断为家人服务。蒙哥马利成功地展示了家庭与户主之间的关系和交流如何涉及层级结构和谈判的转变。为了显示，一家之主可以通过剪掉家中的头发来表现出优越感，而家中可以利用忍耐和宽恕来建立自己的道德自主权。蒙哥马利还通过追踪家庭成员回到农村的家乡，还认为他们在城市中的低下地位在家里得到了扭转，他们向家人提供礼物和金钱，承担了“文明”他们在城市中的亲戚的角色。居家，饮食和衣着，并声称自己优于母亲，从而挑战了传统的家庭等级制度。

在传统的摩洛哥家庭服务的背景下，蒙哥马利继续讲述当代家庭的故事，他们选择在不熟悉的家庭中从事有偿工作，而不是在熟悉的家庭中成为“女儿”。尽管一些户主仍然使用近亲的成语将不知名的工人加入家庭，但如今许多工人试图与雇主保持距离。受薪妇女拒绝被称为“女儿”，就获得了自由感；他们可以随时离开工作岗位，要求得到很好的待遇，请假，并利用闲暇时间在公园里借助手机寻找“爱情配对”。借鉴了诸如Mauss和Polyani之类的学者，蒙哥马利认为，这些妇女通过偏爱有时通过经纪人或职业介绍所进行的陌生人之间的短期交易，而摆脱了（假想）亲属之间长期互惠的约束理想。蒙哥马利（Montgomery）细致入微地描述了当代家庭渴望拥有更加独立生活的同时，他们正面临着不平等关系以及无根无助的感觉。家政工人也不受摩洛哥法律的保护，最近，他们在劳动力市场上的地位受到较富裕家庭对雇用菲律宾家庭的偏好的挑战。正如蒙哥马利（Montgomery）所写，“很难拥有（两个）世界中最好的一个”（第115页）。

该书的优势在于其人种学的多层细节以及对血缘关系和市场之间复杂的相互关系的讨论。不幸的是，关于民族志的精美叙述在本书的某些部分中被反复打断，其中涉及到有关世界范围内的亲属，交流和家政工作的较大分析性讨论，尤其是在英国。而不是增加论点，这通常会打断并掩盖作者自己的故事情节。与全球化以及整个摩洛哥社会的家庭，性别关系，政治，经济和宗教道德观念的变化有关，从传统的摩洛哥家庭服务形式向新的赚取工资的家庭工人的过渡也可能得到进一步发展。除了这些批评意见之外，