Is Your Nanny “Like Family?”

The New York Times had an interesting piece about Tasha Blaine’s new book Just Like Family: Inside the Life of Nannies, the Parents They Work for, and the Children They Love, which chronicles the personal and work lives of three sitters.

I always think it’s interesting when other parents describe their sitters as “like family,” because that hasn’t been the case for us.  We’ve had two wonderful long-term caregivers in our lives, but I’ve been careful to keep both of these relationships on a business level.  Maybe I’m too guarded about this; by contrast a good friend of mine had the same sitter for over a decade, and her family still maintains a close friendship with their former caregiver.

At core, as much as we would like to think differently, our sitters are not family.  They are paid employees, doing the work because they need resources.  Of course, that doesn’t mean they can’t be loving and important to our children.  But I think that the expectation that our sitters “become like family” is a heavy burden for both parents and caregiver.  

Blaine points out that many sitters feel silenced — they can’t speak out about difficult work issues because they are worried about losing their job, green card, or being asked to leave the country if they are here illegally.  I think that’s true, and it’s a major issue that touches on larger problems of immigration reform, universal healthcare, and ensuring that sitters have basic benefits without crushing parents financially.  

On the other hand, I think parents frequently feel silenced as well.  They want to have close personal relationships with their sitters, and they worry about being judged.  Parents who might benefit greatly from having their caregiver do some light housework, laundry or food shopping, don’t ask because they don’t want to offend.  I know this has been the case for us in the past, and while it might seem trivial and overprivileged, having good household help has been a lifeline for me.

When we hired our sitter to pick up Baby Bee from daycare in the afternoons, we were explicit about our needs.  The job was billed as part-time work, from 2:30-6:30 on weekdays, including light housework, tidying, laundry, and food shopping.  Since she was hired with those additional responsibilities already on the table, it has never been an issue to ask that she do work that’s out of the scope of babysitting.  At the same time, she is warm, caring and terrific with Baby Bee.  

We have made sure to compensate our sitter commensurate for this additional work, offering her an hourly salary at the high end of the spectrum.  And yes, once and for all, you must pay your sitter while you are on vacation unless otherwise arranged.  One thing we haven’t done that I regret is use a contract.  In the future, I think we will do that, although it may seem overly formal.

Is your sitter like family?  What strategies do you use to communicate with your caregiver?

Related links:

• A helpful nanny search checklist from BlueSuitMom.
• Working Mother‘s Childcare 101 has a number of articles on sitters and daycare.
• Resources for paying your nanny legally from NannyTaxes.com.
• DaddyTypes asks whether there’s any justification for not paying a sitter on the books.
• I generally have mixed feelings about I Saw Your Nanny, which encourages people to report nanny infractions publicly, but there are sometimes revealing posts.  A May 23rd item, “Nanny Dilemma” and its related comments, offered interesting insight.  I can’t seem to link directly to the post, but if you scroll down three or four items, it’ on the home page.