Jessika Auerbach - And Nanny Makes Three: Mothers and Nannies Tell the Truth About Work, Love, Money, and Each Other

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Contents

AUTHORS NOTE

A LL OF THE NAMES have been changed. Internet Web sites may have changed or disappeared between when this book was written and when it is read. Further, the fact that an organization or Web site is referred to as a citation and/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information the organization or Web site may provide or recommendations it may make.

To Jonathan

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I CANNOT DECIDE WHETHER writing this book was mostly sheer pleasure, above all a cathartic and deeply humbling learning experience, or principally an opportunity to probe, ask questions, and have profoundly personal, moving, and eye-opening conversations with countless wonderful and fascinating women. It was, I believe, in equal measure all of the above, and for this I owe thanks to many people: First and foremost my husband, Jonathan, who has been my unflagging supporter and coconspirator at every turn, and without whom my life would be empty, sad, and dull. My long-suffering children, who have patiently endured my many absences as I went away to explore my relationship with the women who have helped me look after them. My agent, Theresa Park, who has never allowed me to believe that this book would be anything less than brilliant. My editor, Sheila Curry Oakes, who has always understood what I was getting at even when I myself temporarily lost the plot, and whose patience and skill enabled her to extract coherence and meaning where there was none. All the nannies, au pairs, and babysitters who have ever worked for me, forsimplydoing what you do so I could do this. Shirley, for your extraordinary intelligence, tact, and wit, as well as your ability to make me not only a more organized person but also a better mother. And finally, all the women who so generously, honestly, openly, and unreservedly shared your thoughts and feelings about this pivotal relationship that we all share. This book could not have been written without any of you.

ONE

one mother of a relationship

T HE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN any working mother and the caretaker of her child involves some of the most intense, important, conflicted, and complicated interactions a woman is ever likely to have. Once a mother returns to workfull-time, part-time, anytime and anywhereits the one relationship that almost more than any other will keep her awake at night, make her furious, desperate, grateful, and guilty.

For a mother who both loves her children and needs her job, its also often a relationship she wishes she would never have to have. Yet from the moment it begins, it becomes hopelessly and forever entangled with her view of herself, her love of her family, and her need to support them. In this way it becomes instantly and inextricably folded into the dialogue every mother carries on within herself, and with her partner, her colleagues, and her friends: If playground, cocktail-party, and book-group conversation is anything to go by, the topic of nannies, what they do to us and what we do to them, is right up there with talk about love, sex, and school waiting lists.

Many employers are blissfully unaware of this relationship, and contrary to what they might wish for, a new mother never returns to her job alone. She comes back changed in some fundamental way, having had to rearrange her priorities and her life, though hopefully not in a way that will affect her performance on the job. She brings a little of the homefront to the officenot only her child, but also the woman who does her other job with the kids at home, at school, or in day care. That other woman is her companion every day, and she has citizenship in her computer, briefcase, and cell phone, not to mention her head and heart.

Ironically, often the women acting as de facto mommy substitutes to the children of other working women have children of their own to love and raise. Nannies by any other name, they are also the childrens caretakers and their mothers alter egos, stand-ins, and understudies, replacements, enablers, employees, confidantes, friends, and rivals, sometimes hapless victims and not infrequently long-suffering heroines.

Those caretakers rarely have an opportunity to openly offer their perspective on this pivotal relationship, and how it affects them emotionally, socially, and economically. My research for this book makes abundantly clear that the majority of live-in or -out, full- or part-time nannies have no official training or special education in early childhood development. More often than not their training is the sum of their experience, and their qualifications amount to little more than highly subjective references from previous employers. As a result, the status of professional will forever elude them, but the irony goes deeper than that: For the minority of nannies in the United States who actually do have professional training as well as legal working status, life is often a constant and frustrating battle to prove they are not just babysitters.

After all, why would any young woman in her right mind actually choose to waste a decent education by going one-on-one with another womans children, in a home thats not her own, and in a situation where no matter how good she is at her job shell always be relegated to playing second fiddle? Professionally trained nannies may be in great demand among parents who can afford to hire them, but those who actually see this job as a career and stick with it for more than a few years before starting their own families, or branching out into more lucrative jobs in other areas of the child-care business, are still far and few between. As a result it is simply an accepted part of life in our supposedly color-blind and egalitarian society that most nannies do their work without benefits in exchange for cash and while under the radar from both the INS (now known as the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Bureau) and the IRS.

Because there is no nanny union, they are, at best, considered domestic workers engaged in unskilled labor. As such the prevailing attitude continues to be that anyone can be a nanny really, simply by virtue of being female. Rarely are they recognized as the essential and extremely hardworking nurturers of societys working capital and most valuable future asset. In this new millennium women might be more liberated than ever, but mothers who work as well as the caretakers of their children continue to be deprived of anything resembling true equality, both financially, socially, and in terms of their professional statusthe argument so powerfully made by Ann Crittenden in The Price of Motherhood.

One would have to be a true curmudgeon to disagree with the old chestnut that the children are our future, but that is also where the national consensus ends. Babies? Always adorable. Motherhood? Wholesome as apple pie. Nannies? A necessary evil, but pleaselets not talk about them. In fact, for purposes of immigration, labor practices, human rights, and our view of ourselves as good mothers, its better for all concerned to simply pretend that nannies dont exist. But they exist, thank God, and we should all thank our lucky stars that they do. How else could mothers blaze trails up the traditionally male corporate ladder? Not to mention toil away in midlevel white-collar positions or menial blue-collar jobs, contributing the crucial funds their families need to get by.