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California bill would require parents to provide more benefits to babysitter.
No more working outside the home or going out to dinner for you, moms! Not unless you’re prepared to give your babysitter an itemized pay stub, offer her breaks every few hours, and help pay for her next holiday trip.
A new bill in the California legislature, AB 889, would require parents to provide workers’ compensation benefits, scheduled rest and meal breaks, and paid vacation time for babysitters and nannies.
The bill’s author, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), argues that AB 889 is needed to protect the rights of domestic workers. In a released statement he explained, “It’s about extending the same basic labor protections that all other California workers already have to the 200,000 domestic workers who provide care to our disabled and elderly.” It is intended to prevent the abuses of the past for those domestic workers who have been underpaid, overworked and poorly treated.
How much are you willing to fork over?
My husband likes to joke that he has very reasonable standards for babysitting: those who take care of our son should be highly-qualified, experienced, preferably holding a medical degree or a Ph.D in child development (we’re not picky), yet for some inexplicable reason, not be otherwise employed.
Especially for those of us who don’t live close to family, hiring a babysitter is a fact of life. But in Los Angeles, as in many other cities, having a sitter is basically like taking the cost of your night out — dinner, drinks, movies — and doubling it. And it’s painful to hand over so much cash to someone who could quite possibly have spent the last 4 hours updating her Facebook status from your couch.
An article in the Los Angeles Times asks the question: Are babysitting prices getting outrageous? I’d say they are, but sometimes you have to get crafty. Continue reading »
Remember the Babysitter's Club?
Remember the Babysitter’s Club? Those perky girls who pooled their collective powers of organization, good manners and 7th grade social skills into a thriving business watching younger kids?
I was obsessed with the Babysitter’s Club as a kid. So obsessed that I still have the signed book my 4th grade teacher brought back for me from a writer’s conference, with Ann M. Martin’s scrawl inside the front cover.
So of course I was thrilled to find this scrappy bit of fanfic revealing what happened to the girls of the Babysitter’s Club in the years since they graduated middle school.
Remember the dad who, after learning his son was doing drugs, punished him by forcing him to wear a large sign reading “I abused & sold drugs” while standing in front of his middle school? Or the parents of a 14-year-old boy who made their son wear a sign declaring himself a shoplifter and a follower after he stole headphones from a department store despite having the money to pay for them?
I’ve always wondered how that worked out for them. Do kids really learn a valuable lesson from this type of punishment? Or does such public humiliation just make them angry and even more rebellious? There’s a dad in Texas who is about to find out. Continue reading »
A good sitter is worth her weight in gold – or in my house, chocolate – but they have a lot in common with sexy straight men who aren’t flying the freak flag: they’re all taken.
No wonder some moms are taking the same steps they took to hook a sperm donor to find their new nanny. They’re going speed dating. Continue reading »
Do you help watch your friends or neighbors kids? If you do, you may want to think again. Well, if you live in West Michigan that is. A woman there is apparently being threatened with fines and the potential of jail time for babysitting her neighbor’s three children. Continue reading »
I feel like Bernie Mac (may he rest in peace) here, but America, it’s time to get a grip.
Parents are opting out on one of the time honored traditions of childhood because they can’t let their little darlings spend an entire night being exposed to . . . well, anything. Continue reading »
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