I’m gearing up to teach again in the fall. I’ve gotten desk copies of books, handed in my book order form, and filled out the W2s. Next week I have to get my parking pass and faculty ID. I also have to hire people to watch my kid and to pick up some of the slack with the housecleaning.
Let’s get this straight. I have to hire two people, so that I can do one job that will probably not cover the expenses of hiring those two people. Makes sense, right? So, the housecleaner probably won’t happen, but the babysitter is a must.
I’ve got to get this all set up now, so that Ian doesn’t have any problems in September. Daycare is out of the question, because Ian can’t deal with too many people in tight spaces. We tried at-home daycare last week, but it was a disaster. He cried for two hours, and the woman made me take him home. On Friday, I put up signs at ShopRite and Starbucks for a babysitter in my home. I have someone coming for an interview at 1:30. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
I am not thrilled with returning to the babysitter/nanny lifestyle. In the past, I had a couple different women watch the kids when I was adjuncting. It was only for a handful of hours, but the whole arrangement made me very uncomfortable. It’s not like an office job, where you are delegating some paperwork and where there are very public and well known rules to moderate behavior. There’s all the fuzzy questions. Do you feed the babysitter lunch? Do you pay her during holidays? Is she allowed to yell at your kid? What if she asks for money? How do you fire someone? What if you haven’t left for work yet, and the baby poops? Who changes the diaper?
I suppose some people are more used to these servant arrangements. Belle said that her family had long employed staff, so having a maid wasn’t such a foreign experience.
My family is Northern, urban, immigrant. We have never hired servants. In fact, my family was often serving rich people as cashiers, garment specialists, and waiters. They had nothing but contempt for the objects of their labors. My grandfather, the Maitre D at the Waldorf, would tell stories about the cheap, the stupid, and the picky. He hated them, but served them with a smile. After he returned to the kitchen, the staff would spit on the steaks. They would pick up chicken that had fallen to the ground and re-plate it. How odd that his granddaughter would now be the one giving orders.
In June’s Atlantic Monthly, Flanagan comes back to the nannies. In the article, she explains to the critics how she came to employ a nanny and her own history with being a sitter. She discusses a new nanny tell all book, You’ll Never Nanny in This Town Again : The True Adventures of a Hollywood Nanny
Flanagan said the servant problem, formerly only a rich person problem, has now become a middle-class problem, too. After she became pregnant with twins, everyone advised her to get help.
At the time, I was living in a cramped duplex apartment beside a construction site, here in Los Angeles, lacking many of the accoutrements — dishwasher, dining room, off-street parking — that normally signify middle-class life. Until fairly recently in America, this would not have been considered an ideal time to begin employing servants. But the vast and apparently untrammeled arrival of immigrants to this country—combined with our yawning need for child care and the stubborn human tendency toward laziness—has allowed a massive new servant culture to spring up in less than two decades. It is a culture in which people with no experience of having staff in their homes are becoming the employers of small retinues of servants—the nanny, the once-a-week housecleaner, the cheap “mow, blow, and go” gardener with his truckload of day workers. It is also a culture in which the servants oftentimes have no previous experience of a life in service (many were factory or agricultural workers in their native countries; many are educated). They are, moreover, cowed not only by their employer’s power over them but also by the fact that they are quite often in this country illegally and thus loath to make waves. It is a system that lends itself to extraordinary acts of generosity: I have known women who have immediately taken a deep interest in the lives and families of their nannies, finding jobs for husbands, straightening out bewildering immigration problems, sending children to their own pediatricians—and paying the bill—when a troubling symptom turns up. And, too, it is a system rife with the possibility of exploitation and virtual human bondage: all over this city there are upper-middle-class households in which a back bedroom is occupied by a female illegal immigrant who is terrified of being deported, who is paid almost nothing, and who is on duty twenty-four hours a day.
In the course of the article, Flanagan gives certain rules to guiding a successful nanny/family relationship. Don’t hire them too young. They shouldn’t eat separately from the family. They should get paid during holidays. Belle was also full of advice last week.
Ultimately, Flanagan is pessimistic about whether the nanny thing can ever work out, even if one has the best of manners.
In hiring a nanny, they’re asking—if you’ll forgive the pun—a relative stranger to love (and tolerate, and indulge, and tend to) their children as the children’s own mother or father would, for money. In short, they’re trying to purchase what ultimately can’t be bought. Furthermore, this love train is expected to travel only select routes. For instance, how many parents—while asking an employee to love them and their children like family—can promise the employee that they will be there for her in her old age, just as they would be for actual family members?
These are tricky waters that I’m wading into. I would much rather do everything myself, but the laws governing space and time prevent that from happening. Yes, physics is conspiring against me. So, the interviews begin today.
Apt. 11d 
In my observation, there are two models of how household help works; the model that seems to be assumed in much of the online debate is not the one I know and like.
The difference is whether household help has the same status as the employer or not. For example, in my home community, it is very common for young women (late teens–early twenties) to work as “maids”–general household help–for very low pay. But that help is reciprocal; my mother had help when she had lots of small children, and now my sisters help other mothers with lots of small children. This model seems to me to be much less worrisome.
LikeLike
Laura, why not try checking with the local colleges? I’ve always found college students to be great babysitters.
There’s probably some sort of social class thing going on there as well. I was a college student who babysat (actually, I babysat while in grad school, come to think of it), and I like the idea of having a mini-me watching my kids.
LikeLike
You already have your fall book order in?!
I hereby pronounce you, Super Professor.
LikeLike
My 1:30 appointment was with a student getting her MA in education. There are far less issues with exploitation and all with student babysitters. The problem is that they aren’t reliable. My 1:30 never showed up. Ughhh!
LikeLike
Is it bad that I’m looking forward to reading what you write about this whole process?
See, I know it’s sort of schadenfreude-y of me. But your blog has provided such a steady supply of mommy-wars links to read while pumping, and I wonder if your entries will move from being nuanced to really, really nuanced.
(Do give the students a chance — everyone I know here is so grateful that it’s a college town. Although I suspect that they’re more reliable when they’re actually one’s own students — exploiting the faculty/student power structure in a different sense than we usually worry about…)
LikeLike
Emma Jane, I’ve never used my own students as babysitters! I guess that’s always felt kind of wrong to me, but I don’t know why.
Yeah, reliability can be an issue. 😦
LikeLike
While I was setting up my first classroom, my 1-year-old daughter went to a “mothers’s-day-out” situation and cried for two hours until I was called to pick her up – sounds a bit like your situation. When I came in to get her she was sitting on a care giver’s lap with a pacifier in her mouth wailing. It was horrible. A week later, when I started teaching, she walked into her permanent child care which was on-campus and she was fine. She was more than fine, she felt at home. The difference: low ratios AND small classes, teachers getting down on her level, and a quiet, family-like atmosphere. Daycare can work, as long as it isn’t set up like a business – this is hard to find – but it’s out there. Plus, since she was on campus, I checked on her during the day so she knew I was always around (and so did the teachers!) – I like the checks and balances a childcare setting provides.
LikeLike
I’ve always found home daycares to be more, not less, chaotic than the so-called “institutional” ones. I don’t know if you’ve looked into it, but you might be able to get early intervention in your town to provide a one-on-one aid in a daycare setting (in the interests of preparing him for school) if that’s what Ian’s disablity requires. You would probably have to fight hard for it.
LikeLike
Another mommy treating teaching as a hobby so that she can say she works at cocktail parties?
Thanks for contributing to the adjunctification of the academy.
LikeLike
How about another Ph.D. who has to work as an adjunct, because there are no other meaningful part time jobs in the academy, which she needs in order to eventually move into full time work in another year.
Thanks for the condescension and the demeaning attitude towards parents, dude.
LikeLike
Why is it not exploitive to pay a well-educated woman to care for your children for little play while not paying women who have fewer skills and really need the money the same money? Is it less exploitive because you see them as equals, even though you are paying them low-wages? is it better to exploit your equals than people who aren’t equals?
LikeLike
Do you feed the babysitter lunch?
Yes, unless you find it acceptable for her to lock your kid in a closet while she goes for chow.
Do you pay her during holidays?
This is negotiable. It’s more likely if she’s a local, not at all if she goes home during the holidays.
Is she allowed to yell at your kid?
Hell yes. The kid will need it at some point or another. On the other hand, if she does it constantly, she doesn’t have the temperament to take care of your kid.
What if she asks for money?
I must be missing something here. You’re not going to get a free babysitter.
How do you fire someone?
Just do it. I abhor confrontation, but sometimes you need to do it.
What if you haven’t left for work yet, and the baby poops? Who changes the diaper?
You didn’t notice it before you left.
Seriously, one more crappy diaper won’t make any differnce in your life or the babysitter’s. Change it if you want and you have the time. This is as small an issue as you’ll ever meet in your life.
LikeLike
Carter (with the Yale email address), way to shift blame onto adjuncts (especially female ones with kids) instead of the college administrators who hire adjuncts overwhelmingly rather than give someone benefits and job security.
LikeLike
At times, families in our town have advertised, or spread word of mouth, when their schedules changed, and their nannies needed more work. If you found a family with a schedule which complements yours, you could share a nanny? One downside is that the other family will end up knowing all sorts of things about your family, and vice versa.
Hiring one of your students opens up all sorts of exploitation issues. You should feel free to grade the student fairly, and not fear retribution.
LikeLike
Laura, I can relate to some of your family history stuff. My family is quite modest in both sides, and my mother still can’t accept the fact that we have a housekeeper come every two weeks. To her this is somehow sinful and horrible, and it just reminds her of some of the classist stuff she dealt with growing up. (Frankly I think Ehrenreich is cut from this same cloth; if you read Nickel and Dimed closely you find that she simply feels it’s immoral to have someone else clean up after you.)
Blue-collar culture in this country views power with distrust. IMHO it’s a simplistic view: the boss is always an ass. Well, no. Look closely and you’ll see that not only is the boss not always an ass, but that such an attitude actively prevents the holder from ever becoming the boss. And if it’s like that for blue-collar folks it’s at least twice as bad for women.
It is not a mortal sin for a woman to assign tasks to someone else, no matter what our culture is telling you. I would argue that you should channel your angst about the situation into focusing on being a good boss. Don’t apologize for it! Just do it well — don’t be an ass. And maybe you can serve as a role model for a young college student who some day hopes to be the boss, too.
LikeLike
We had more child care need than you do – we both work full time, and have except for 3-month periods after our kids were born, when my wife stayed home. For each kid, until they were old enough for day care (which we thought was 2 1/2 or 3) we hired a woman to care for our kid, and shared her services with another family. Our kids remain close to the kids with whom they were cared for – our oldest is now 9 and still has one of his closest friendships with that boy. We remain close to the woman who cared for our two younger kids, and we never see the woman who cared for our oldest.
We had a written contract for at-will employment, gave most of the Federal holidays (the big ones, NOT Columbus Day, Martin King Day, Memorial Day) and a week of vacation and a week of sick leave. We said at the beginning that we would give the same percent increase every January that the Feds gave Federal employees, which moved the ‘raise’ question out of the area we had to struggle about, and result was we paid about fifteen per cent more than the average in the neighborhood. We also we paid the health care premium for our caregiver and for her daughter, which made us kind of bullet-proof for the folks who thought our care-giver was swell and wouldn’t she like to move on to their kid…(yes! nanny stealers! they are out there!) We paid Social Security employer share and deducted state and local taxes and employee side Social and sent them to the government every quarter.
The contract was very useful for everybody – we all had something we had agreed on, and we could refer to it.
I recommend the essay on her (and her kids’) relationship with the caregiver Paloma in Flanagan’s To Hell With All That, beautifully written (like all of her essays) and has a lot of the fraught aspects of your kids’ time with others captured nicely. AND she reinforces what I believe strongly, that employers should be paying Social Security, so that makes me like it.
Now our youngest is in day care, and what we need is help getting kids to school in the morning and an adult presence in the living room to keep riots from happening while I am cooking dinner and my wife is not yet home, and in addition help moving kids around on weekends to their various activities and games, so we have an au pair from one of the agencies approved by the State Department. Mixed feelings about this: how well this works will depend a great deal on the young woman you get, and you interview while she is in her home country. Can be a lot of fun, but you can also end up sharing your home with a moody 20-year-old with issues. If you make a good connection with your au pair, it can be very nice, they live with you so there is flexibility in when they help. If you don’t have an extra bedroom, though, this does not work, and I think it is not as good an option for someone who has a toddler and needs full time care, though there are a lot of people who use it for that. We hear from our au pair that there are some families in which the power relationship is abused by the family, demanding more than they should.
LikeLike
dave s — I love that you have a contract with your nanny. I think that this should be a common occurrence for full time nannies. Did you use a template from some place or did you and your wife make it from scratch?
What I meant by the “What if they ask you for money?” question is what if they ask to borrow money in addition to their pay.
My problem with the two babysitters is that they crossed the line. Both of them were extremely needy, though in different ways. The first one was impoverished and, I suspect, a recovering drug addict. She was a smart, lovely woman when I met her, but her kids continued to have problems. After I came home, she would hang out for an hour to tell me about the other moms in the neighborhood and the on going issues with her kids. Then her friends started calling me. Then she just stopped showing up. The woman didn’t have a phone, so I spent hours driving around Northern Manhattan looking for her. Never heard from her again.
The other one, Angela, was 18. She was the child bride of a 40 year old anthropology grad student who found her while doing his research in Peru. She needed a mother figure and I already had two little babies.
What’s the difference between hiring a student and hiring an adult? Yes, being a nanny is honest work that provides much needed income for people who have few opportunities. But it is also not an area for growth. The guy who did my floors, Jose, started off sanding floors for nothing. He saved up money and hired his family. Now, he has the best floor finishing company around here. There are no opportunities like that in nannying. Nannying is fine as a temporary measure, so I don’t have to worry about students who have future plans.
LikeLike
The other option is to find someone who has retired from another occupation. I had two nannies that I hired through a company that I paid that then pays them. This meant that they received social security and I even could declare it as child expenses through my taxes (the company had a IRS number). It was VERY expensive, though, but I could use it three days/wk and not in the summers, which is what I wanted, which obviously saves serious money. On the other hand, the nannies got only a cut of the money you paid.
I had two steady nannies from them. The first one really needed full time work, and was always stressed about money. We were barely making it at the time and I didn’t have any extra to give her. She had two children still at home and I worried about her–but what could I do? We were already borrowing money from in-laws to pay her. She left to work somewhere else–I don’t think she had much choice. She only working for us for 4 months. The thing I remember about her was that she replaced all the batteries in toys. That was the last time THAT was done in our house.
The second one was a retired cook, someone who had a pension from working at a hospital for many years and a husband with his own pension, medical insurance, no children at home, a nicer car than us, trips to the Carribean, etc. She was wonderful to work with. She eventually decided she didn’t want the regular work, but she still babysits for us sometimes. I didn’t have to worry about her, which made my life considerably easier at a difficult time, and she was seriously competent, as well as loving.
LikeLike
I never had a babysitter, always a licensed daycare. The daycare never called in sick, never borrowed money, didn’t hit my kid. It was structured so my kid knew what to expect everyday, and free enough to have time for exploration, energetic play, or just sitting around.
I always looked for daycare that had been certified by AAEYC. Getting that certification is a rigorous process, and few childcare outfits can do it.
I also found homecare centers to have enourmous potential for neglect. How about safety issues like fire? Is there caregiver really going to know what do if the kid is choking?
And all kids cry at daycare the first day. It comes with the territory. They also cry when they want candy and you won’t let them have it. A crying kid is not the end ofthe world.
The key is to know your child is in a safe and child-appropriate place with qualified, caring adults. You’ll pay dearly for this service if it’s a good one–and it’s worth every penny.
LikeLike
Jenny D,
Yes, kids do cry (hopefully briefly) when left with a stranger, but if one knows that they cry for hours, what kind of parenting is that? Isn’t that a bit callous? If you were the child, how would you feel about it? I think that if it weren’t our societal convention to tolerate crying kids in non-parental care, it would qualify as neglect, and both parent and caregiver would be investigated. (As I’ve written before, I saw this happen several times at my daughter’s old preschool, and it infuriated me. I learned a lot by lurking outside for the first several weeks.)
LikeLike
Amy–
Neglect? Investigations? One of my daughters has been known to cry for the better part of an hour because I won’t get her a treat at the grocery store. What if she did the same thing at preschool one day because she was mad at me for not letting her bring in a toy (which has happened)? Is that neglect?
One thing I don’t think mothers sufficiently take into account is differences between children. One child’s long crying bout may be par for the course, another’s may be extremely unusual and a sign of impending illness. And the state should take over the role of making judgments about which is which?
And what would you do with women who have to work and have no other day care options? Would you criminalize their situation?
LikeLike
I’ve had several successful childcare options. The first was similar to what SamChevre was talking about–a type of mom co-operative. The kids, now in their 20s, are still friends. The second came about because I needed weekend help, and hired a young woman who was finishing her BA. I didn’t have a contract like DaveS describes, but we did have a pretty detailed agreement. This was wildly successful, and the young woman is still a friend of the family. The third came about when my youngest (a girl) was in grammar school — I needed someone for afterschool care. Through the young woman, I found a young man, a friend of hers, who was teaching preschool in the morning. He picked my daughter up from school, did whatever shlepping was required and/or played with her (I’d never thought to teach her basketball skills!) and started and/or cooked dinner. It evolved into a neighborhood thing — he looked after a couple of other kids, taught some skateboarding and carpentry. He moved on to a full-time job eventually, but we still see him — he and his wife just had their first child.
IIRC, you have sons. A “manny” might suit your family well.
When I was growing up, there was an episode where my parents were travelling a great deal. Far and away the babysitter we liked the most was a woman who was retired–my memory is vague as to her career, but as it was the 1950s she might have been a teacher or a secretary. She was strict but fair. And when my littlest sister cried from missing my parents, she was kind.
The nanny tell-alls of this generation have been about employers who are narcissistic and entitled. After all, those sorts of stories tell, not the ones about normal families where there’s little conflict.
I think Flanagan has the wrong model, if she is thinking of a nanny as a second mother. I think a better model is thinking of a nanny as you would a teacher. You don’t expect love from a teacher, you expect respect and expertise.
LikeLike
Flanagan’s depiction of the nanny relationship just seems off to me. She continues to write about nannies as if the norm is for nannies to compete with parents for a limited supply of the child’s love and affection and respect. It seems to me that the best nannies become additional loving caregivers, expanding the child’s ability for love and affection and respect. Parents are not as easily displaced as Flanagan seems to believe.
I knew many people who employed nannies, because it’s increasingly the norm (as Flanagan hinted) for parents of multiple babies to hire them. Almost all the nannies were hired via agencies, and via agencies reputable enough not to be fudging the illegals issue. I’d be curious to find out how many illegal immigrant nannies there are, in absolute numbers and as a percentage of nannies. There was an NYT article about casual daylaborers for private families making up 40% of the illegal workforce right now, but it’s not clear to me (I just genuinely don’t know) how many of those are nannies. Housekeepers, yard workers, I’ve seen the evidence. But nannies in our communities are usually legal immigrants (although yes, often immigrants).
Because Flanagan conflates her “nannies replace mommies in children’s hearts” anxieties with “middle-class women exploit illegal immigrant women to further their careers” arguments, I’d like to see how many of the often poorly-served nannies truly are illegal. Does Flanagan provide numbers?
LikeLike
Another angle that I don’t think comes up much in these conversations, because of the way that the middle-class family situation of the 1950s functions as an unreferenced norm. Who did a lot of the routine work of child care in pre-1950s households in the US, say, in the 1920s? Or let’s go back to the 19th Century, when household labor in rural or farming communities was unrelenting, back-breaking, and absolutely key to a family’s productive (e.g., marketable) output?
Not the mother: other children. Or in some urban contexts, the neighbors, e.g., it was pooled labor.
I just find the sense that middle-class women are supposed to be the supreme and solitary caregivers for a nuclear family so weird, not in the sense that it’s bad, exactly, but that it comes from a very brief moment in the history of the family and domesticity. We put so much weight on that moment, and without much historical consciousness of its peculiarity in the broader span of things (not to mention the ways we mystify and misrepresent that moment even in its own terms).
LikeLike
Timothy,
Isn’t it the conventional wisdom that before the advent of the washing machine, the vacuum cleaner, convenience food, etc. any household that could afford it did have hired help?
LikeLike
Lisa SG,
In the case I’m thinking of, the little boy was sobbing for 2-3 hours, often crawling into his stroller and falling asleep after he’d completely exhausted himself. Yes, I do think it was neglectful and callous, on the part of both teacher and parents. It was also extremely disruptive and upsetting to the other children.
I’m not enthused about excessive state interference in family life any more than you are, but I think that you are forgetting to what extent they are already entangled. On the lower edge of the comfortable middle class, there can be quite a lot of anxiety about “them”–as in “if X happens, they will take your kids away.” (Child Protective Services was a real bogeyman when I was growing up.) One of the privileges of being solidly middle class/upper middle class is that you don’t even imagine that an inquisitive social worker might be in your future. That sort of things happens to other people, not “us.”
LikeLike
That, too, Amy: even moderate means meant, “Hire domestic servants” prior to 1920 or so.
In a way, the other odd thing about the 1950s was that the mechanization of domestic work allowed a brief moment before productivity of various kinds tried to “recapture” the time made available by technology and put domestic labor in a bind again. And again, we sometimes seem to mistake that for a permanent condition in the past from which we are now sliding into some other circumstance.
LikeLike
In my experience, I’ve had many fine college student sitters (mainly for just playing with the kids for a few hours, rather than having full responsibility for physical care). They’re smart, energetic, and do a better job for not having to take care of the kids all day, all week, all year long. For my oldest child, it’s like having a playdate, without the pain of dealing with another three-year-old. A couple of the students are real superstars and can take care of both kids by themselves. However, on any given day, I have a 30% chance of a cancellation, usually about an hour beforehand.
I’ve only had one sitter who meets the traditional nanny profile. She really needs the work and is 100% reliable. Unfortunately, my oldest doesn’t like her, and since the sitter needs the work so badly, she’s a bit cowed by the oldest, who says things like “I don’t like L.”
At the park, I’ve seen a lot of nannies who seemed to be doing a fine job with infants, and who obviously adore them.
LikeLike
Timothy,
I wonder what role immigration policy plays in all of this. This is not at all an area where I have any expertise, but didn’t US immigration get curtailed roughly around the same time that routine household help started to disappear? Up north, the Irish maid was a standard fixture in many households. By the 1950s, many of her granddaughters presided over middle class homes of their own, with all the modern conveniences.
One issue that I’m not sure that has gotten enough play in the current immigration debate is the unsustainability of the current order. After living all their lives in the US, the children of today’s nannies, house cleaners, and gardeners will not happily follow in their parents’ footsteps and will probably either move up (into the middle class) or move down (into crime).
LikeLike
“One issue that I’m not sure that has gotten enough play in the current immigration debate is the unsustainability of the current order. After living all their lives in the US, the children of today’s nannies, house cleaners, and gardeners will not happily follow in their parents’ footsteps and will probably either move up (into the middle class) or move down (into crime).”
That assumes immigration will stop completely and we will not have a continuing supply of new workers. If dad comes on a guestworker visa, he could possibly bring a wife who will be a low-wage worker acting as a nanny.
LikeLike
What concerns me Tim is not that we’re returning to some more natural form of parenting that existed pre-1950s, but that this increase in servants is the result of growing social inequality within our own culture and within the world. Did the 1950s mark an age of greater social equality than we have now? I’m concerned that we’re returning to the old age of servants without the knowledge of the unwritten rules to moderate behavior.
The nanny situation isn’t unique to childcare. There are many of the same murky waters in grad school. The grad student/advisor relationship, which also behind closed doors, is very similar.
LikeLike
Michael,
Your hypothetical guest worker couple will then (if they are of childbearing age) have a child on US soil who will automatically be an American citizen, and the parents and other children will eventually become American citizens also. And then we have to deal with my question again–do we really think that those kids and their descendants are going to want to work as nannies, housecleaners, and gardeners?
The bottom line is that the guest worker system only “works” in a country without birthright citizenship. I for one don’t want to live in that sort of country.
LikeLike
“And then we have to deal with my question again–do we really think that those kids and their descendants are going to want to work as nannies, housecleaners, and gardeners?”
They will if middle-class and wealthy people would pay them better wages and benefits. Work is undesireable only when it is unrewarded. There are plenty of people would view being nannies, or housecleaners, or gardners as a career or a business opportunity if they weren’t living in the shadows of the law and weren’t being paid poor wages and benefits by their employers.
LikeLike
“Did the 1950s mark an age of greater social equality than we have now?”
Of course not. People exploited immigrants and African Americans when they worked as domestics in the 1950s too. The difference is that the domestic class had no other options and it never occurred to their employers that they were exploiting people.
LikeLike
— way to shift blame onto adjuncts (especially female ones with kids) instead of the college administrators who hire adjuncts overwhelmingly rather than give someone benefits and job security.
Yeah, because Laura’s problems finding appropriate day care would magically go away if she were a full time professor.
Look, I don’t get it: it’s a business arrangement. You’re hiring an employee. If you get overwhelmed by figuring out the employee relationship, you need not to hire employees. OF COURSE you have a contract–just as your employer has with you.
re: 2 hours of crying: I don’t know. Is that excessive for your child? Would adjustment take a week? Children are different. Is your son particularly sensitive, or are you? Was this a specific in home day care that was awful for him, or have you tried others? Have you seen the difference between various care givers in terms of empathy?
I know I took far longer than 2 hours to adjust. I was paralyzed by fear for weeks. Personally, I needed at home care from my family. But two hours is enough for you to know what works and what doesn’t?
I have to ask, if you can’t solve this problem when you’re an adjunct, how are you going to solve this problem when you get a full time position?
Your post makes it sound like this is about you and your trouble with nannies/hired help. But this is about your son. Do what works for him.
LikeLike
Greifer,
I believe Laura has mentioned before that her younger son gets overwhelmed by noisy, crowded conditions. Did I get that right, Laura?
LikeLike
My son has become clingy recently. He has special needs and I’m his chief translator. He’s even cried when I left him with my husband over the weekend. Kids go through phases with the crying. My sister was just telling me that her five year daughter is crying before school every day, and she has to peel her off and run. I don’t have a problem with a little crying. My kid goes to school fine and would have been fine after a short time at the other situation. I just didn’t think that the woman was patient enough with him and didn’t want to push it.
My kids will be in school full time next year, and they’ll be another year older. Maybe I’m being stupid, but I’m expecting things to be much easier.
LikeLike
yes, nosy, crowded places sometimes bother him. It’s not an always thing, but his school advised me to keep him in a small setting for the time being, until he outgrows this stage.
LikeLike
When we first transitioned my son to daycare (he was only nine months old) one of us went in for the day with the idea that we’d be there for the whole day if needed. Once he started feeling comfortable, getting into something, we would “go to the bathroom” for a few minutes and then come right back. We gradually increased the time. My son transitioned quickly then, and again when he was in another setting at 3 yrs. old. When we moved him from daycare to school, he cried every morning for about a month. He wanted his old friends.
On the “servants” issue, if you look at old house plans, from before the depression, even very modest three-bedroom houses often have maids rooms near the kitchen. My grandmother worked as a maid, and later in a hat factory. I think that it’s good, honest work and shouldn’t be anything to be ashamed of, either as employee or as employer so long as people are paid properly and treated with respect.
LikeLike