nannies unite!

At first I thought the I Saw Your Nanny blog was maybe a good idea. You see a nanny neglecting a child in public and you submit your version of events so that maybe the parents of said child will see and fire said nanny. Fair enough. Sort of a virtual neighborhood watch version of the nanny-cam. Then I read the posts. While there were definitely some examples of neglect and rudeness, more often the reports highlighted nannies on cell phones, nannies not pushing their charges on the swings and nannies shopping with their charges at (gasp) discount stores with (it get's worse) lots of cheap products. After reading a good amount of posts the unionizing blood in me (from the Spazioso side, Teamsters!!) began to go hot.

I babysat my way through middle school and into highschool. I dabbled in nannying when I first moved to New York, and let me tell you, there is nothing harder than taking care of other people's children. The pay sucks, there are no benefits, no job security and usually no limits to what you will be asked to do. Many of the women working as nannies in this country are immigrants, most of them are undocumented immigrants, which inherrently puts them at a disadvantage with their employers.

I was a young, white, college educated nanny and my employer constantly pushed the limits of what she assumed was my very flexible position, still I am sure I was treated better than the other nanny she employed who was an undocumented Trinidadian. Taking care of her 4 year old turned into taking care of her 4 year old and her 9 month old. Doing some cooking turned into doing the laundry, making beds and some light house cleaning. She called me in on my days off, begged me to "just please help me out this once" because "something came up that I absolutely have to do" and I'd go in only to find that both of her children had fevers and were vomiting. "Oh yeah, they've got a touch of the flu, but they'll be fine" she'd say while pulling on her coat, as I stood there looking stunned.

Um, yeah, they'd be fine, but then I'd have a disgusting flu (I even got strep throat for the first time since my age was in single digits) and of course I had no health insurance, no sick days etc. Needless to say, that job didn't last too long. Still, my employer, who was a nice person, just a very bad boss, was very typical and when she hired me (at 12 dollars an hour) she made it clear that she was paying me very well.

Nannies can't win. They are meant to do the job that a mother would do, yet they aren't meant to replace the mother, in other words they have to be good, but not as good as and definitely not better than the mother. And then there are the cultural differences. Let's face it, there is a specific middle-upper class American way of parenting that your Filipina nanny is, at the very least, going to have to adjust to and who knows maybe she never will (time outs for Timmy and reasoning with a belligerent 3 year old are all distinctly American parenting techniques).

Now that I am a mom myself I can say that taking care of your own kids is nowhere near as difficult and murky as taking care of someone else's. Maybe that is because I know I am not perfect and when I make a mistake the only person I am accountable to is my daughter and ultimately, my only goal is to keep my family happy. However, as a nanny, you are not just accountable to the child/children you are accountable to the parents and now, apparently to every innocent seeming bystander with a camara phone and an internet connection.

Now, obviously neglect and abuse is bad and I would hope that anyone who was really concerned for the welfare of a child with an abusive and/or neglectful nanny or caregiver would just step right up and intervene instead of running home to email a detailed report that the parents may or may not see. And I guess that is my point: I think these reports probably do little to improve the quality of care children receive from nannies, they just make the reporter feel better (superior) and fan the flames of probably the most contentious relationship on earth, that of mommy and nanny.