Over the past several years, as the more and more families and nannies are using online services to find jobs, nannies have found that it has been difficult to find a job that pays a living wage. It has been increasingly harder to find positions where families pay above minimum wage and offer benefits. The economy has hit everyone across the board hard over the past several years.
I ran across this blog post from Leslie Kendall Dye, who is a former nanny, who wrote about paying a nanny a living wage. She actually got into a discussion with a fellow mom friend and it did not end very well.
Have you ever been in the place of Leslie? How have you been able to find positions that pay a living wage? What do you think about this blog post? Do you find these views where you live and nanny at?
A friend told me today what she pays her nanny, who has a degree in child development and years of experience. Her nanny is a grown woman and lives in NYC, where it costs about ten dollars for a bottle of coke and the selling of a kidney to buy a monthly Metrocard. I expressed surprise before I had the chance to stifle my reaction. Or perhaps I didn’t try hard enough because I was annoyed, which was decidedly immature and impolite on my part.
But I have been down this road before. Every time mothers start to complain about the cost of childcare in the city I have to make a decision: to get into it or to ignore it. Sometimes I want to shout: “You know I am right here, people? You know that my side job for ten years was caring for the young of others? You know that you are all crazy and ungrateful and selfish, right?” But I don’t. They cannot comprehend. It isn’t worth the argument.
To read the complete article please visit Hungry Little Animal blog post
Do You Mind Paying Your Nanny a Living Wage?
I am going to hop off and read the article but I wanted to post first that I am not a huge fan of babysitting websites. I think across the board, such sites have a poor to no screening process for Nannies and Families (Families should be screened too!) as well as offer little to no support for Nannies and Families. They are essentially an online want-ad for domestic help, driving down the wages of Nannies because younger , single women will settle for these low paid jobs. They also blur the line of the differences between housekeeper, house manager, babysitter, and Nanny…and it hasn’t has a positive effect on the industry as a whole.
I have received a lot of interesting feedback from this post. I want to clarify a couple of things, as this is a large topic and I addressed only one real aspect of it in this post. It is really worthy of a whole book (stay tuned, I am working on it.)
1. I was writing, in this post, about Manhattan, where people who can afford babysitters or full time nannies can afford to pay more than they do, on average. I know very well what it is to be at someone’s house from 9 am until after 1 pm, because they have texted that they want an extra few hours to buy more drinks, more food, etc… They do not like to spend on childcare because although it is the most important thing to spend good money on, it does not translate into an immediately tangible pleasure, such as a nice dinner or a new pair of shoes. People, if they really looked into their hearts, in these cases, would know that the margins they cut in childcare go to other luxuries, not necessities. Again, I speak to my personal experience in Manhattan and to the experiences of hundreds of nannies I have talked to on the playground since becoming a mother.
2. Every city/region is different. I don’t know what the COL is anywhere else. Manhattan is crazy expensive. Nannies commute long distances and work long hours in luxurious surroundings (compared to their far more humble dwellings) they raise other people’s kids while their own are often being raised by grandparents or cousins on other COUNTRIES so they can send money home, they follow exhausting schedules imposed by their employers, they watch money pouring out to insanely expensive private schools and very often work for people who don’t do anything all day. I am not saying this is every employer in Manhattan, many are squeaking by and working hard and many love their nannies and do right by them, but there is a disturbing disconnect too often between the love a nanny is expected to give a child and the love a family gives that nanny.
3. I agree that as a nanny you sometimes have an option and of course a right to make a decision to work for a family that pays less because they cannot pay more because they treat you like family or there are other benefits such as location or hours or the kids are great or all of the above. I get that compromises have to be made because our government does not adequately care for families, who are left in a lurch when they have kids and have to make hard choices about childcare. Again, my article was addressing a particular level of socioeconomic good fortune, and how that seems not to trickle down (to use a loathsome term from Reagan’s playbook) to “the help.”
4. There are many nanny stories to tell from many walks of life, cities, countries and perspectives and I don’t mean to imply that I speak for all nannies.
5. All that said, we have a problem on our hands and it isn’t just a matter of wages. It is a matter of how people perceive the job of a nanny and in general, how humankind treats one another.
Thank you for bringing my particular essay on this topic to others’ attention, together, we can all work to make the world a fairer, happier place for everyone.
Sorry, I meant, after 1 am, not pm!
The blog wad a good read. I do not agree with all of it about what Nannies do. But I bet there are Nannies out there that do all of what you said. I have been lucky enough to work with people who respect what I do with and for there families. I do agree that the websites that list nanny jobs are really babysitting jobs not nanny jobs. And when a family that really needs someone who can step in and take control because they are working, the low ball wage and website that promotes them will come back to bit them in the ass. Not always because all got our start somewhere. For those of us who are professional, acting as a professional is the number one thing that we can do. If we are willing to speak up when asked we can make a difference. Doing this nicely is not always easy. We all are human. Thanks for the dialog. Kenda
I read post before, and now again I read Leslie’s comment and I completely understand and agree. It is so hard to be childcare provider and not to insult anyone when speaking your mind. We can’t comment openly children behavior or issues, we can’t complain about our jobs, we have issues for wanting vacation or sick days, and yet people give themselves right to talk down to us and take even more advantage just because they can.
Ssometimes we need to stand up for ourselves and other nannies who are shy, scared, insecure and in need of support.
People got offended by this post because it is true. And like Leslie said, it isn’t even about wage. There is respect we deserve and sometimes it isn’t even about money, but seeing in eyes of your employer, or when they introduce you to someone, makes all of us feel bad about our career choices and whole situation we are in.