On Nannies.

New York mommies can be a strange breed (at least strange ie different or out of the norm of what I know in the South). Where Southern counterparts may spend their child-rearing days quitting their jobs to mommy full time 'til their nests someday empty, New York mommies often return to work full-time immediately, weeks after bringing new life into the world, and employing full-time help to do a great bulk of the child-rearing in their absence. We've all heard of the Nanny Diaries, the pseudo-autobiographical tale of a Nanny who looks after a wealthy family's children. What I didn't fully realize was how widespread this Nanny culture was in the city, not only in Manhattan but in other upwardly mobile burroughs like Brooklyn.

In certain neighborhoods you can walk down the street and nearly every stroller you pass is being pushed by a nanny. A southern transplant I know here who recently had a baby told me she has women coming up to her at least once a week offering their full-time nanny services, and asking her, "Why don't you have a nanny?" (her baby is 8 weeks old). Her husband's coworkers want to know why they don't have help and were astonished when he took time off after the baby was born. Not only are nannies a normal thing here, but they feel the same way about people not having nannies as many southerners probably feel about having them! Some have explained that these New York mommies really feel that going back to work full-time is the best thing for their child, because in the long term it offers them more opportunities and benefits monetarily.

On the one hand I can see the logic of that argument but I have to tell you, having daily contact with a variety of nannies around the city, I find some of the trends in the hiring of these nanny populations to be very curious. Now, some elite families are adamant about their child being bi or tri-lingual, so you see a lot of hispanic, chinese, and caribbean style nannies (although I'm not sure what language the caribbean nannies are imparting on their children--some variety of patois, perhaps?) This is all good and well, but having spent six or so years working on behavior and language with language-delayed and autistic children (the same principles apply for typically developing children) I have to wonder what other skills these children may be missing out on. For example, the other day I was watching a child, and a nanny was standing nearby me. The child I was watching took a swing at the nanny's kid and grazed him upside the head. The child began to cry and the nanny (who had been chatting on her cell phone, a popular pastime of nanny's while children are off playing with very minimal supervision) came and scooped up her kid and said, "the next time a kid hits you, you hit them right back!" Great advice, lady! Granted this child was very young and not yet talking in complete sentences. Still, it took everything I had not to go up to this nanny and ask her what in the $%^& she thought she was doing.

You can go round and round about it: if you're going to hire someone to essentially raise your young child and be one of the main examples the child has for how to behave and speak, and if you are really in a position to pay someone to help you full-time, why not hire someone with a college education or higher degree? I mean if you're going to spend the money on something wouldn't you want it to be your child? I may be making generalizations here but it would seem an educated person is more likely to have read or be willing to read up on parenting strategies (which is a lot of what nannying is) and know the importance of one-on-one playtime, and less likely to tell your kid, "when a kid hits you, hit them back" while talking on their cell phone. But all this hiring out of childcare to other parties who seem minimally interested in your child's development (which would be at the top of my list when and if I was ever in the position to hire such a person) begs the question: if no one has the time or inclination, then why are you having children at all?! Does anyone have any insight into this? Is it to carry on the Van der blah blah family name or because you don't fully realize how critical the first few years of life are to development or what?

On a somewhat unrelated sidenote, I applied to a handful of Nanny agencies when I first got to the city. Now I'm not saying I'm the cat's meow or anything, but I can take care of some children. Although, I'm not fluent in Spanish. And to this day I have yet to receive a reply from any of the agencies I submitted to. Am I overqualified or do I lack the right qualifications? I guess it depends on where you live.