Eloise had a British nanny

 IN RESPONSE TO the previous posts on nannies,  which can be found  here and here, a working nanny writes in to share her observations. By the way, Eloise, the famous character who roamed the halls of the Plaza Hotel, was able to have a perfectly decent life with her “rawther” British nanny, who never kept Eloise from her very necessary adventures.

Mrs. Cote writes:

As someone who is currently a professional nanny, I just wanted to thank you for pointing out that there are those of us who take our work seriously. You are right to point the low paid, usually foreign women are not actually nannies. At best they can be called babysitters. They should be called dangerous since they are completely unsupervised and are actually allowed to take their charges out of the home. A true governess would work with school age children while a nanny/nurse would care for babies and very young children.

Some nannies, like myself, teach. I consider myself a nanny/governess but in the US there is no way to get officially qualified as such except perhaps to become teacher certified but then that does not cover the basic childcare knowledge (safety, first-aid, nutrition, etc.). The International Nanny Association is working on developing nanny training and qualification but as is obvious from the observations in the park many parents don’t even look for such things. They don’t even look for someone with whom they or their child can communicate.

In this day and age none could be a surrogate mother mainly because life and attitudes have totally changed in this regard, both from the perspective of the nanny, who expects to live her own life, and the family who keeps a nanny until they can ship their children off to a rigorous private school with the longest day possible plus numerous activities. The sense of loss by both nanny and child when this happens is tremendous. It is an acute reminder that these children are not ours and our main job is to prepare them for the hard, demanding days ahead of them as best we can. Subconsciously or not many parents consider these children as investments and expect them to succeed in every area. They are expected to be attractive, athletic, well spoken versions of their parents and internally this results in a child who feels they have to earn their parents affection. Actual nannies try to counsel these parents back to reality and create a better, more supportive environment for the child. There is a lot of diplomacy involved.

That said at every interview I have been on since I started doing this professionally I have told parents that it is my firm belief that even a qualified nanny/governess is a distant second best choice over a mother at home and that I will not work for absentee parents. That has never stopped people from offering me a job. I am married and have let them know I will not continue to work once, God willing, I have my own children.

Thank you for doing such a great job as a blogger and moderator!

Laura writes:

Thank you for these excellent observations. You seem to have understood. There will always be nannies. They are necessary for some. There are even a few rare children who are better off with nannies than with their own mothers. But many mothers who are well off choose “nannies” who seem like prison guards. There is almost something deliberately self-destructive about it. As you say, “they don’t even look for someone with whom they or their child can communicate.” 

Every mother would love a Jane Eyre or Maria von Trapp to step into her life and lighten the load once and a while. As Sheila noted, it is a good job for young women who love children and are expecting to have their own families someday. But a nanny or governess who has a real sense of vocation and who can stick it out for years is hard to find and expensive. And, many mothers who can afford them refrain from hiring the best because they don’t want to be displaced in a child’s affections or want to spend their money on other things. 

Your point about children being passed on to the round-the-clock activities of private schools is sad. They must look back with real longing to the tender moments in the park with their nannies.

Mrs. Cote continues:

I had a chuckle over your choice of intro and picture because the little girl I care for now loves for me to read her “Eloise” with a rawther hammy affect.

You are right to call the actions of parents who choose severely under qualified people to care for their children self-destructive. I have most often seen this happen with people who really have no business trying to hire a “nanny.” Qualified nannies are a very big expense and really only practical when both parents have a profession (doctors, lawyers, C.P.A.’s) or some other very high paying job. However, many other women choose to continue their “career” and live in urban areas where nannies are so common they feel they deserve one too. Since they can’t even afford the fees of a real nanny agency they run an add in the paper for a nanny and end up with people who are not even legal and pay them cash. Now they can chat with their friends about their nanny woes too. It is really bragging in the form of complaint. If these women were honest with themselves they would realize they and their children would be much better off if they quit calling some foolish job a career and stayed home. By the time they have paid for the babysitter, the fancy and clothes they need for their job, and having to eat out or have take-out nightly they are costing their husbands tens of thousands on a career to feed their ego.

The consequences for their foolish choice can be severe. I know of one family who has had a nanny for the past 4 years who is just now learning English. I asked her what her previous experience was and her answer was none. She had never even changed a diaper before she started working for them. Their oldest, a four year old boy, is very delayed in his speech. While I can’t say the nanny caused this it certainly didn’t help that a child with possible cognitive delays spent most of his waking minutes with someone who didn’t, couldn’t talk to him.

It is not all bad, or I wouldn’t still be nanny after over 12 years. I learned early on to be very picky in choosing where I would work. I have worked for some very loving and functional families. I currently work for a family on a part time basis. Since my focus is on my own home and husband I can’t do more than that. I just happen to live now in the DC area where it seems everyone has a “nanny” and the pushy parents you wrote about abound.

James P. writes:

Laura wrote:

“When walking through the tonier section of Central Park West in Manhattan a few months ago, I couldn’t help noticing the nannies. They were everywhere, mostly black and Hispanic women, pushing strollers or leading young children by the hand. What was most striking, other than the racial differences between them and their white charges, was the look on their faces. They wore expressions of deadly boredom, of almost zombie-like indifference. Here in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the world, the children were handed over to zombies during the day.”

After she got divorced, my mom hired a succession of nannies to care for me and my sister when we were children back in the 70s. Our nannies were all young white English-speaking American women. Recently, my neighbors interviewed nannies – and we, too, live in a very wealthy neighborhood – and they told me that every single prospective nanny they interviewed was a non-white recent immigrant. Mostly they came from Africa or Latin America, and some of them could hardly speak English at all. I am puzzled that being a nanny is something that apparently American girls just don’t do any more. I am even more puzzled that people would put their children in the care of a barely educated, barely literate immigrant.

Laura writes:

American women do still work as nannies, as Sheila and Mrs. Cote mentioned. The former bestseller The Nanny Diaries was written by young Americans.  But I suspect immigrant women work for less. Also, it is not considered an impressive career for a college-educated girl nor does it offer many opportunities for a single woman to meet men.  

As for why people put their children in the hands of barely-educated immigrants, leaving aside the money issue, perhaps people convince themselves that these women possess maternal warmth, a more authentic maternal soul. In some cases, this is most certainly true. But, I think our cultural assumptions about mothering are also an enormous factor here. Its considered mindless work. Children, at least until they are fully articulate, just need to be fed, changed and taken for walks.

The desire to communicate is powerful in babies and young children. This is when language is developed and when they test adults to see who they are. Do adults possess authority? Do they have real enthusiasm? Are they to be trusted? Their impressions of the adult world are cemented in the early years. This is not mindless work at all.

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