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Do we show our domestic workers enough respect?
It’s been a big moment for Nanny Power. When Amy Poehler accepted her Time 100 award, she thanked her children’s nannies. In the recent article deconstructing the motives behind Obama’s mother’s trip to Indonesia—widely thought to be a formative experience for the future president—the author implied that access to affordable childcare and domestic help abroad may have been a factor. Royal Wedding buzz noted the prominent presence of William’s former nanny, Tiggy Legge-Bourke. (Some even suggested that William was attracted to Kate because of her resemblance to Tiggy—and that Prince Charles was drawn to Camilla because she looked like his own nanny.) And this week’s T magazine featured a piece about a young woman who’s dedicated herself to the rights of nannies and domestic workers.
To me, the question isn’t so much why nannies are getting so much attention at the moment, but: What took us so long?
What secrets is your babysitter keeping from you?
I’m guilty of virtually never leaving my children with a babysitter. Which is not a good thing for one’s marriage, I assure you. I am just too freaked out to leave my kids with a stranger and there isn’t really any obvious babysitter candidate where we live. Oh yeah, and I’m too lazy to go about hiring someone.
But after reading an article in Yahoo! yesterday, maybe I’m making the right choice. The article details ten things your child care provider won’t tell you. Some of them were obvious, like be sure and thank your nanny, so I dumped those and focused on those you may not have thought about. Continue reading »
When I first started making the rounds of Music Together classes and library playgroups, I’d hear these questions all the time: “Is that your baby?” “How often do you care for her?” “Do you do any evening babysitting?”
People asked because I was young. Ten years younger than any other mom in the room, but about the same age as the nannies who attended these events in the posh suburb we lived in.
For me, this was always a painful moment, but one easily solved. We moved into an urban neighborhood with younger parents, and I got older. Even though I’m still ten years younger than most of the moms on the playground, I don’t look like a kid with a borrowed baby anymore.
For moms whose skin doesn’t match their babies’, the questions never stop. Laden with bias about race and privilege, they rankle deeper and longer. Finding an answer that educates rather than strikes back is a delicate balancing act. Today’s Motherlode explores two mom’s search for the right words.
At The Wall Street Journal’s “The Juggle” blog, writer Jennifer Merritt confesses that her children are in other people’s care for up to 57 hours a week. She writes that she is “hesitant to admit” the figure – perhaps because she fears she’ll be criticized for “letting someone else raise her kids.”
I put that in quotations because it’s a phrase I’ve heard often — usually referring to a mom with a demanding, time-consuming job. I’ve yet to hear a man accused of letting someone else raise his kids, so clearly, there’s still a gender bias when it comes to parenting.
But it’s also clear that Merritt feels guilty abut the fact that she’s away from her kids so much. Merritt says that some of her friends have worked out ways to spend more time with their children by waking up early or forgoing date nights and weekend activities.
“All of the parents I polled said they wished they could figure out how to reduce the amount of child care they use but that work pressures make it difficult,” writes Merritt. Continue reading »
In a fascinating essay on Motherlode called “My Nanny, Myself,” a working mom explores her relationship with her daughter’s nanny. They seem very different: a white lawyer from New York and a Latina mom from El Salvador. But J., the anonymous lawyer who penned this piece, feels they’re not so different after all.
A single mom, she has to leave her baby with a nanny all day so that she can go to her job at a law firm. The nanny herself knows a thing or two about leaving kids for work: she left her son behind in El Salvador when she came to the States to work, and did not see him for 8 years.
To J., these experiences make them more alike than different: just two women who have to be apart from their kids more than they’d like to earn a living.
While there’s a lot of moving, thoughtful introspection here, I’m having a hard time sympathizing with a mom who sees her long days at the office as at all akin to being forced to emigrate to another country without your child in order to find work to feed him.
Domestic Worker's Union
Behind the recently passed bills in both halves of New York’s legislature to extend basic workplace protections to domestic workers lies a union you’ve probably never heard of: Domestic Workers United. Only in New York, and only since 1999, DWU has been working to organize domestic workers and campaign for rights that are standard in other professions and in other countries: sick days, notice or termination pay, overtime, contracts. This week’s New York Magazine profiles members and offers salacious details on a nanny/employer horror story (slapping, punching, 911). It’s not clear how–beyond moral support–a union helps in that kind of situation. What’s more interesting is how the union–and any organization of babysitters or nannies–can offer a welcome clarity to families and caregivers alike.
Continue reading »
New York’s nannies may soon enjoy the labor rights other employees take for granted. Both halves of New York’s legislature have approved a bill to extend basic workplace protections to domestic workers. The governor is expected to sign a reconciled version of the bill soon.
This measure will affect about 200,000 workers in the New York metro area. That’s a lot of people getting new labor rights. Will it impact someone in your home?
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