Nanny Power
February 8, 2010
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.
Every week I go to a farmers market filled with mothers and their children. I have never seen the same zombie look. The vast majority of them seem preoccupied and engaged with their children. Sometimes they are irritable and tired, but rarely this all-consuming boredom.
Only a powerful ideology could convince women that handing their children over to unsupervised strangers, often women from an entirely different racial and cultural heritage, is good or even a necessary evil. This article in last week’s New York Times examines the difficulties professional women have communicating with their nannies. These mothers sometimes resort to passive-aggressive communication because they cannot express themselves directly. Consultants have even sprung up to help get their demands across, as if somehow the inherent difficulties of the nanny-mother relationship can be removed.
It’s sheer silliness to expect this relationship to be one of easy openness. The modern nanny, as opposed to her traditional counterpart, is left alone with children. She has the ultimate power. A mother can never be sure, except with a nanny whom she has known for many years, that a hired employee will not take out her dissatisfaction on a child. Nannies, as much as mothers, are capable of passive aggression.
When a mother is not in sight a nanny tends to feel free to at the very least express her boredom with her charges. Of course there are miracle nannies, wonderful women who truly love the children they watch. I have known a few. But the idea that these women are common is pure feminist fantasy. Nannies are more often just paid employees punching a clock.
— Comments —
Lisa writes:
A family member once gave me a glowing report of the wonderful Hispanic woman she’d found to take care of her two very young preschool children so she could continue her “ministry” at the office where she worked. My family member then said she dropped the children off at the nanny’s house each day. I said, “Well, why doesn’t she just come to your house so the children can be at home?” The woman did not bat an eye when she then told me in a horrified, you-are-so-naive tone of voice, “Oh! I could never do that! She might steal things from the house, you know.”
Laura writes:
That’s hilarious. She trusts the woman with her children, but not with her jewelry.
