00:00:00.000Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Under the Influence. I am your host, Jo Piazza, and I'm very excited
00:00:12.840to be here with you today for an episode that I think is one of our best yet. There is so
00:00:18.660much going on in this episode, and you're going to come away with thoughts, with a lot
00:00:25.300of thoughts. First, I do want to thank everyone that has pre-ordered The Sicilian Inheritance.
00:00:32.160You guys, I mean, oh my gosh, this is nuts. I've gotten so many receipts sent to me. So many of
00:00:37.860you DM'd me and emailed me to show me your receipt for my new novel, The Sicilian Inheritance,
00:00:44.580because I offered a subscription, a lifetime subscription to our newsletter over the influence.
00:00:50.420And I thought maybe three people would take me up on it, but hundreds of you, hundreds of you are doing it. And I'm just, I'm blown away. I'm still, the offer is still there. If you want a forever subscription to our newsletter coven, Over the Influence, just DM me or email me a screenshot of your receipt for my novel, The Sicilian Inheritance, and you're in. You're in forever, forever and ever, as long as I keep doing this.
00:01:19.340Which, which I will. I mean, I'll do it until the internet dies. So yes, I just wanted to say a
00:01:25.520huge, huge, huge thank you for that. On today's episode, we're talking to Jen Viechner from The
00:01:31.960Cut. Jen doesn't normally cover motherhood and parenting. She covers business and Wall Street1.00
00:01:38.380and power. And when she pitched this story, it first seemed like a parenting story. But frankly,
00:01:45.140this is a story about business and it is a story about power because it is a story about the people
00:01:51.520that we are paying to watch our children and the power dynamics between employers and employees
00:01:58.280in that situation. Now, a lot of you have probably been in the situation that we're going to talk
00:02:04.860about today. You've been in one of these mom groups on social media where you've seen a nanny
00:02:09.620called out. A nanny shamed for their behavior, right? They always start something like this,0.98
00:02:16.040like, hey, I don't want to overstep or anything, but does anyone know who so-and-so's mom is
00:02:26.140because I saw this nanny glued to her phone or I saw this nanny yell at this kid and I just want
00:02:34.680to be helpful. I just want to let the mom know. These posts often include a photo of the nanny
00:02:42.180that has been taken without their permission, without them knowing. And the ramifications
00:02:47.280are real and they're fierce. I know women that have been fired over these posts. And I also0.98
00:02:53.600know mothers who have fired their caregivers over these posts. The nanny wars on social media have
00:02:59.320so many dangerous real-life implications that we have to be talking about them. And Jen Viechner
00:03:05.180did an incredible job in her story on The Cut, covering this like the business story that it
00:03:10.920truly is. I'm so excited to have you here because I loved the story that you just wrote. Loved it.
00:03:43.660The story is inside the chaos that often ensues after a parent posts about a bad nanny on Facebook.
00:03:53.660I mean, this happened to me, which we'll get into. You don't normally do a ton of mom stuff. You cover business and Wall Street and crypto. How did you come to this story?
00:04:07.980Yeah. So it's funny. It's only my it's only my second parenting story that I've done at New York Mag. And that's right. I cover I cover money, power, wealth, finance, crypto.
00:04:19.480and I just got really obsessed with you know this thing that was happening in the moms groups and I
00:04:27.720was like you know what I do as you know as a business reporter is I do a lot of employer
00:04:33.060employee stories you know kind of employee grievances and sort of the power imbalance
00:04:38.320kind of dynamics and I was like no no this is not a parenting story this is an employee story about
00:04:45.560you know what's happening between moms and their caregivers um you know nannies um and and sort of
00:04:53.280this strain that seems that seems to be kind of happening especially since the pandemic um and
00:04:58.940there's like a few different reasons for that but i sort of started to notice that there um you know
00:05:04.460first of all the labor movement among um nannies has been huge since 2020 like when many of them
00:05:09.940were out of work. You know, the Domestic Workers Alliance got a huge influx of nannies who started
00:05:15.660to stand up for themselves and their rights. And, you know, just more awareness for saying like,
00:05:21.260hey, you know, you know, like we might not get paid a lot, but we do have rights
00:05:24.800and we deserve to be treated fairly. So there's that happening. And then I'm starting to see a
00:05:32.100little bit of pushback from moms and parents who are saying, wait a minute, you know, this is not
00:05:36.740the status quo. And, um, you know, this is, this is a change that we're dealing with. So there's
00:05:41.260that dynamic happening. And then the thing that really, um, that really intrigued me was I started
00:05:47.000to see some posts in mom's groups about, um, so you've seen them, you've seen these posts where,
00:05:51.920um, yeah, you know, I want to, I want to, I want to stop you for a second because I love that
00:05:58.200you're seeing this as a business story and as a power story and a labor story. I say this all the
00:06:03.500time too many major media organizations of which I think I've worked at all of them at this point
00:06:10.240like literally all of them you know consider parenting and motherhood a soft topic and I
00:06:17.480have to say that motherhood touches every single issue that all of these hard topics are covering
00:06:24.680we it touches politics it touches business it touches power but anytime you say that it involves
00:06:30.540as a parent, especially a mother, it gets poo-pooed a lot by top editors. This is a labor
00:06:37.480story. And caregivers are the reason that parents can work. Oh, 100%. And I was trying to get stats1.00
00:06:46.220on this in terms of how many parents actually rely on nannies, at least in New York City. And
00:06:50.820it's really, really hard to get stats. But I can tell you, like, you know, I live in lower
00:06:54.760Manhattan. And in my neighborhood, I actually send my child to daycare. And I was absolutely
00:06:59.960in the minority of people I know. Like it was like, you know, I feel like at least 80 percent
00:07:04.480of other parents have nannies and some of them have, you know, do daycare, but they still need
00:07:08.740a nanny because they can't make the pickups or daycare ends at 3 p.m. And so I just think that
00:07:15.800it's this the nanny economy in particular. There's so much of so much of the overall economy,
00:07:22.460but particularly New York City economy just relies on on nannies to actually function because there's1.00
00:07:29.040so many moms and parents who otherwise would not be able to go to work. Yeah, exactly. I'm curious1.00
00:07:34.880what would happen if all of the nannies just stopped working for a day. Just New York, okay?
00:07:40.320Just New York, just the alleged power structure of the universe. But what if the nanny said,
00:07:46.420we're all going on strike? What would they do? Everyone's calling out sick. Yeah, I mean,
00:07:52.860it would be like akin to, you know, COVID with like school shutting down. I have to think like
00:07:57.140everyone with young children would, you know, not be getting anything done.
00:08:01.440Well, exactly. And, you know, that's that's not even to say that a lot of caregivers are
00:08:05.800some of the most vulnerable people. There are a lot of illegal immigrant caregivers out there
00:08:13.520and a lot of people being paid under the table. And again, this is all this economy exists in0.96
00:08:21.080its weird, hazy gray area because it's an economy that mostly supports mothers.0.93
00:08:27.140That's right. Yes. I mean, like, who is the manager of the nanny? Like, it's pretty much always the mom. Like, yeah, maybe the dad helps and stuff like that. But it's generally the mom who runs the search, you know, the mom who's managing the schedule. I think, you know, moms are more likely to work from home. So if they're interacting with the nanny on a daily basis, it's often the mom. It's not every case. But from what I observe and, you know, like the people that I talked to in the story who were having to, you know, feel these inquiries and and to make decisions, it was always moms.0.97
00:08:56.120So it's like that labor of the management of a nanny, which, by the way, is what I felt when I was making these decisions for myself about child care is I something I like I can't handle those management responsibilities.0.65
00:09:07.740Like I'm not a manager. I don't manage people. I'm a reporter. And I was like, I don't I don't see that being like something in my in my wheelhouse.
00:09:16.000Like let's do daycare because it is so much work. It's so much work. And it genuinely is people management.
00:09:23.400it's human resources management it's a constant negotiation are are you happy like do you do you
00:09:31.340feel taken care of what else can we be doing to make sure you're taken care of so that you can
00:09:36.660take care of our children and yeah it's a power story like this is there's so much there's so
00:09:43.620much else here we're gonna have to have you on again to dig deeper into it because I do want to
00:09:48.780get to the kind of juicy stuff that was in your story that was sent to me 25 times, which is about
00:09:56.840other moms surveilling nannies. And I hate the word nanny, actually. I hate the word nanny as
00:10:03.680much as I hate the word mommy blogger because it feels condescending. And it's like a title
00:10:11.980we give to someone that we are dismissive of i do i try to use caregiver when when i can i wish
00:10:19.360that there were even a better word for it but there's not there's not yeah i had to get over
00:10:25.060that a little bit as well because it does it i think but i but then i wonder you know is that
00:10:28.820something that i've internalized just because of that power dynamic where we assume that it's
00:10:32.640condescending um but the nannies i spoke to call themselves nannies and you know have proudly been
00:10:37.400career nannies and so i sort of got over it because i was like i don't actually i think you
00:10:41.800know for people who do this as a career like it's something they're proud of um and sure you can
00:10:45.220call them a caregiver but um i you know i think like nanny is the term and the only the only reason
00:10:51.300that maybe it seems condescending to us is because we are familiar with that power dynamic exactly
00:10:56.260exactly yes and i most nannies i know also call themselves a nanny and are very happy with that
00:11:01.640so it is the term that that people normally use talk to me about this story this story in particular
00:11:09.100And I don't think that this is necessarily limited to fancy places like New York.
00:11:17.820This is happening all over the country.
00:11:19.820This, you know, what you call in the SEO title of this story, the Bad Nanny Wars.0.57
00:11:28.160Yeah, well, that's what, you know, when I started to kind of uncover was sort of this us versus them dynamic where it seemed like, you know,
00:11:39.100In a healthy nanny-parent relationship, you'd think, okay, everybody's, you know, in it to take good care of a child.
00:11:48.360Like, you know, that is sort of the common interest.
00:11:53.320But when I started to hear from both parents and nannies was that they really felt like it was, you know, they had to take sides and that, you know, they didn't really feel common ground with each other.
00:12:05.060And that they, you know, for nannies, they were constantly on the defense. And for moms and parents, they were constantly worried about, you know, was their nanny taking good care of their child when they weren't there? You know, there's the whole surveillance issue, which comes, it really comes down to trust. And do you trust your caregiver? Do you trust your nanny to take good care of your child? Because if you don't trust them, then everything kind of frays from that.
00:12:30.060that. So it was interesting the way the first the first sort of kind of vector that I had into the
00:12:37.300story was I started to hear that moms were getting these reports from people saying, like, you know,
00:12:41.980I saw your nanny on the phone a lot, you know, or I was concerned about your nanny. And the advice
00:12:46.480they were getting in moms groups was you should hire a private investigator to follow them.0.98
00:12:53.920And these moms groups are usually on social media. In fact, they're on Facebook, weirdly,
00:12:58.640which is something none of us actually use anymore except for things like mom groups.
00:13:03.280Yeah. And I mean, I'm in some that don't that are off that are off social media and they're
00:13:07.080completely moderated and it's a little bit of a different vibe. But still, I was seeing, you know,
00:13:11.920like on these listservs, you know, people giving this advice fairly regularly. And I was like,
00:13:17.360do people really do this? And why would you do that? Why would you hire essentially
00:13:20.960a babysitter to go babysit your babysitter when you're already paying for child care?
00:13:26.600So you're paying double or, you know, not quite double, but you're paying more money on top of that.
00:13:33.360And why would you do that? Because if you clearly don't trust the person to begin with, then like it's probably not a good situation to be in.
00:13:40.920But what it came back to is because people actually don't want to fire their nannies, like especially they love their nannies.
00:13:46.580And it can be a really traumatic experience to get this feedback and saying like, you know, it doesn't.
00:13:50.840but I trust this person, you know, or I think I trust this person. Um, and I don't, I don't know,
00:13:56.640I don't know who to believe. Like, should I, you know, this caregiver that's been doing a good job
00:14:00.220force people who are giving me this bad feedback. Um, and rather than, you know, just fire the
00:14:06.700person outright, they want to be sure, um, you know, they, they, they want to be sure. And so
00:14:11.000it's, it's this like weird dynamic, you know, sort of a catch 22 where it's like, you know,
00:14:17.140like clearly at that point where you have to hire a private investigator, the trust is already
00:14:20.720gone but at the same time um you you still trust that you're trying to preserve the trust in the
00:14:28.580relationship because it is such a traumatic thing to have to break with a caregiver that you really
00:14:32.180love so that was it's so it's so hard it is it is and i but again to reiterate the idea of hiring
00:14:40.620a private investigator to investigate your nanny it it does it does seem crazy to me and
00:14:49.340And the intro to your story, I think that's what really hooked a lot of people.
00:14:54.460I had some people send it to me saying, I haven't read this whole thing yet, but the first paragraph, woof, woof, is about a mom of two who found out in a Facebook neighborhood's mom's group that her nanny had been glued to her phone, had ignored her child, and that her child was missing for 15 minutes.
00:15:16.000yeah yeah so the child was missing at the library um and she'd first heard the story from her nanny
00:15:24.820and the nanny said haha you know a weird thing happened at the library today like uh you know
00:15:29.880uh the the boy we'll call him caleb um had had had escaped and had you know you know disappeared for
00:15:36.700a few minutes he ran behind the stroller kids do escape they escape my kids have escaped from me
00:15:41.200my four-year-old ran away from my husband and was lost for 10 minutes at dry tortugas national park
00:15:47.760yeah totally happens the ocean yeah the ocean i also have a two-year-old runner um who luckily
00:15:55.140i haven't lost for um that long but i mean she recently ran straight through airport customs
00:16:00.860and was like apprehended by the customs agent because i couldn't get to her so like this
00:16:05.940totally happens um but it you know was a one and a half year old and a nanny at the library
00:16:11.300And I imagine, and it sounds like everyone around the situation was really scared.
00:16:56.880Um, and they sort of, you know, start harassing, harassing the nanny, calling her an idiot.0.98
00:17:01.440Um, and then it all comes to a head when, um, you know, they're taking pictures of the0.97
00:17:05.560boy and yelling out to him on the street.
00:17:07.360It all comes to a head when they say, you know, hey, Caleb, are you a good boy? And the other the other nanny's friend says, oh, Caleb wouldn't be a good boy if you poured holy water on him.
00:17:18.380Which, wow. Yeah. So, you know, at that point, there's just so much animosity against the family.
00:17:27.700but it's actually you know taking a toll on the child itself so um it starts to become it's like
00:17:34.920okay you know there's this one thing like the mom's versus nanny's kind of uncomfortable dynamic
00:17:40.560but that's when it sort of just started to seem like a potential a little bit dangerous to me
00:17:44.600where um the nanny the new nanny was actually afraid of what you know these old nanny's friends
00:17:50.820might do to her or to the child and so she felt you know like she was in a very precarious situation
00:17:57.040And I think I would have felt the same way.
00:17:59.640Yeah, no, I mean, I definitely would have felt the same way.
00:18:03.060We are going to take a quick break here.
00:18:05.760When we get back, I want to dive more into this story and, you know, what exactly happens
00:18:13.880when you are pitting moms against nannies and when social media surveillance is in the
00:18:21.100And we'll also get to the crazy ass thing that happened to my caregiver on the playground.0.97
00:18:27.040Lately, I have been totally swamped, totally buried in it. I've got this podcast. I'm0.92
00:18:41.020relaunching Committed. I've got the Too Much Money podcast. And I'm trying to sell the
00:18:46.760hell out of the Sicilian inheritance. I'm busy. I'm busier than I've been in a very0.97
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00:19:09.320stand is deciding what my kids are going to have for dinner, deciding what my whole family is going
00:19:14.840to have for dinner. My husband, my three kids who all eat different things, a lot of times my mom
00:19:20.220and our caregiver, all of these people in my house, I have decision fatigue and I don't like
00:19:25.760to go to the grocery store. And Green Chef solves both of those problems. Green Chef gives me healthy
00:19:31.060options for meals for dinner and it sends me everything I need to make them so that I do not
00:19:35.740have to go to the grocery store. Again, which I hate. I went there the other night. The line was
00:19:40.560like around the entire store. Like this is, it was, it was madness. It was absolutely, there was a
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00:21:24.560while I'm doing all of the things. And now, back to the nanny wars.1.00
00:21:34.280we're back with the nanny wars which of course i mean clearly should be a tv show someone needs
00:21:40.920to option this story from you i hope that all of the agents are listening right now and they're
00:21:45.500going to call you up when this episode is over you you did a lot of reporting on what happens
00:21:51.180after what we're now calling a bad nanny post on on social media and if you've never seen one of
00:21:58.300these posts, and I'm sure that you have seen them. It's usually a photo or physical description
00:22:04.620of the child, and the face of the child is obscured because these mothers have boundaries.
00:22:12.120But the nanny's face is not obscured. And then the person that is posting gives a summary of
00:22:19.020the offending behavior or just says, as you say, forebodingly, please contact me immediately.
00:22:26.160yeah exactly and so but then you never hear the other side of it and you know me being like a
00:22:33.840little bit of a you know drama sucker or hound or whatever you want to call it totally i'm always
00:22:40.260so curious like what like what really happened you know did you know was this the you know the
00:22:46.880end of a job for a nanny or how did the mom feel did they even find the mom um you know that this
00:22:53.200happened to and it sounds like a lot of the time it you know they don't find they don't find the
00:22:57.900person somebody posts but they don't they don't find the person or they do um and many times the
00:23:04.280moms don't care because either they love their nanny um or they feel like the person didn't
00:23:09.040really see what they thought they saw um in one case you know somebody reported a nanny for being
00:23:15.580on the phone and having this sort of long dramatic phone call at the playground turns out you know
00:23:19.760she was on the phone with her boss, the mom, who, like, had something, you know, was talking about
00:23:24.220how she had to take the third child to the ER. And so the nanny was upset about that. So you don't
00:23:29.160really know what's happening, I think, unless you really witness something where a child is really
00:23:35.040in danger. And it doesn't happen very often. Like, you know, for all the bad nanny posts,
00:23:39.380I was, you know, telling my editor, like, most nannies are really good. And this really, you
00:23:45.060know, there really are very few concerning incidents. You know, I think actually one of
00:23:50.100the moms groups I'm in, I talked to the moderator and she was saying she's really only, you know,
00:23:54.780seen two truly dangerous incidents. But she also made the point, if you witness something
00:24:00.240actually dangerous, don't post it on the moms group. Call the police, you know, like why would
00:24:05.240you? Call the police. Yeah. Call the police. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The moms group is not the place
00:24:10.080to be posting this. And a lot of times I wonder if the women who are posting this, and I think
00:24:17.860about this a lot with social media, you know, if you, like, what is your reason for posting this?
00:24:23.580Do you, are you looking for attention? Do you feel your own shame and guilt about maybe,
00:24:30.560maybe not doing something outside of the home? And, you know, are you jealous of someone
00:24:37.580with a caregiver. And that's not always the case. But I do think it's interesting to think
00:24:41.640about the motivations. And I think about that because this did actually happen to me. And it
00:24:47.720was bananas. I was pregnant with my third baby. I was up in New York, working, doing some podcast,
00:24:58.300one or the other. And I started getting a zillion text messages from numbers that I didn't know,
00:25:05.520from moms who were like tangential moms in my life, school moms that got my number
00:25:11.760from the directory, saying that someone had posted in a mom's Facebook group that I wasn't a part of
00:25:19.280saying, hey, does anyone know Charlie and B's mom? Because their nanny is awful. Their nanny1.00
00:25:28.340does not take care of the kids. She ignores them on the playground. They're always dirty. They're
00:25:34.460never wearing shoes. They're constantly hungry and asking other people for food. The little one
00:25:41.640is climbing too high on the jungle gym, and no one's watching her. And I just froze. I mean,
00:25:51.360my stomach just turned over. I felt like I was about to vomit because at that point,
00:25:56.620our caregiver had been with us for years. I mean, we're very, very close. We're essentially
00:26:05.360family. We're helping her get through nursing school. And I was like, what am I? Is she living0.56
00:26:12.260a double life? What is happening? I couldn't work. I came home. I messaged her. I was like,0.53
00:26:18.760please take this down. You have my children's names on this. This is very, very strange. And
00:26:26.620First off, I do have to say, my kids are always dirty.0.99
00:26:29.040They're, like, frickin' filthy, and that is my fault.0.97
00:26:30.980They also both went through a phase where they would take their shoes off the second they got to the playground because you can't climb in shoes.0.95
00:26:37.340Toes do not grip as well when you're wearing shoes.
00:29:22.140So like this, I mean, but this is such a strange power dynamic.
00:29:25.140I loved what you said earlier about how we're also managers, because I didn't know how to talk about this with our caregiver.
00:29:32.380I felt so uncomfortable and just didn't know what to do or who to believe.
00:29:39.700And the fact that this was playing out very publicly on social media, too, in a mom's group.
00:29:44.540filled with people I don't know. I mean, I felt so publicly exposed in such a gross
00:29:52.700way. Did you hear that from any of the women that you interviewed, both the caregivers
00:29:59.600and the moms? Because taking care of kids is such a vulnerable thing.0.88
00:30:07.040So over and over and over I heard this. I mean, what you touch on is so important because I think
00:30:12.280You know, what what people might think they're doing is that they're doing the mom a favor by reporting behavior by the caregiver that they would want to be aware of.
00:30:21.920But what they don't realize is that not only is it often an attack on the nanny, it's an attack on the parent, too, because the parents take this very personally.
00:30:29.880It's a critique of their judgment of, you know, you know, how they send how they dress their kids in the morning, how they choose their caregiver, how they manage their caregiver.
00:30:38.940So I think, you know, what people feel is that it's, you know, it's an internalization of, you know, like their caregiver's behavior also reflects their own parenting.
00:30:52.660And so it feels like a criticism of, you know, a judgment on the parents as well as the nanny.
00:31:00.820And, you know, it's such a hard situation to deal with because, as you mentioned, you know, who do you believe?
00:31:06.060Do you believe, you know, the other moms at the playground, you know, who maybe have children your same age or clearly were in the same place?
00:31:13.280Or do you believe the nanny that you've been working with?
00:31:17.200And it's, you know, and and I do think, you know, sometimes you've never it's interesting when you talk about the motivations of the person who reported it, because I've heard so many different things.
00:31:30.360And in some cases, it might just be a new mom who, you know, has a baby and who hasn't had the experience of parenting a toddler who, you know, takes their clothes off at the playground, who takes their shoes.
00:31:42.460Totally. Totally. Yes. Yes. Because, I mean, I was I was definitely and I'm going to be really honest here, too.0.70
00:31:49.660I remember being a new mom in San Francisco, and we didn't have a nanny in San Francisco because, you know, San Francisco is such an expensive place to live that, one, we couldn't afford full-time help.
00:32:04.780Nick and I were trading off caregiving, and we had some babysitters.
00:32:09.880But also, there's a severe shortage of caregivers because there's not affordable places to live close to San Francisco.
00:32:18.200I mean, it was, and I will tell you that daycare was six figures a year out there.
00:32:26.120Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was gonzo. I mean, there is a reason that we left
00:32:32.060Philadelphia. Still expensive, but not San Francisco. I remember taking Charlie to the
00:32:39.200playground and sometimes I would see a nanny on her phone and I'm like, oh my gosh, you know,
00:32:44.080why isn't she paying attention to the children? That's first kid, right? By the time you've got0.90
00:32:47.940a third kid i'm like where did it go it's it'll probably come back yeah it's here so it's around
00:32:55.280here somewhere there's not that many places it could get to but you never know the motivations
00:33:01.840and once something is on social media you never know who's seeing it it's just it's out there
00:33:09.000and that sucks for everybody oh yeah what was it like reading the comment section because i think
00:33:15.060And, you know, some of the worst part is, you know, it's just what happens in the comments when literally, I mean, there's moms saying, you know, fire her, get a new nanny.0.89
00:33:23.340They're, you know, and then it's, you know, you read that as a mom and you're like, OK, so if I want to keep my nanny, like all these other women are going to judge me.
00:35:48.780So, you know, sometimes I feel like that gets a little bit forgotten in, you know, some of this kind of, you know, vitriolic, like, debates about, you know, whether the nannies did, you know, something wrong or not.
00:36:01.740And, you know, we're bashing the, you know, calling the mom who reports the nanny racist.
00:36:05.640Like, you know, there is an element of that, but there is just it's just toxic on both sides.
00:36:11.780It's it's it's just toxic on on both sides.
00:36:16.480We are going to take one more quick break.
00:36:18.760And when we get back where I want to I want to talk a little bit about you come at this from a business perspective, from a power perspective and from the nanny's perspectives.0.90
00:36:30.540how do you think that they're being disrespected? So we'll get into that in a minute.
00:36:46.100We are back, and you normally cover Wall Street and power. I want to talk a little bit about the
00:36:53.020power dynamic between moms and nannies and also nanny rights. Nannies don't have any rights really1.00
00:37:01.900in this country. Like I said, most of them are being paid under the table if we're all being1.00
00:37:07.840honest about the caregiving economy. But you are seeing a lot more nannies who are standing up for
00:37:16.060themselves and for their rights. Can you talk to me about that? Yeah, for sure. And what I think
00:37:21.300And what a lot of nannies don't even know is actually they do have rights because it was about, I think it's now 14 years ago, the Domestic Workers Alliance had this bill passed called the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights that gives workers rights, whether or not they're undocumented, whether or not they're on the books or not, they do have rights.0.74
00:37:39.520However, given the fact that a lot of them are immigrants to this country and may not have been educated here, may not have been here very long, they don't know that.0.68
00:37:49.300And I do think it's the norm, at least in New York, to pay off the books under the table in cash. You know, people are literally paying, you know, going to the bank, getting, you know, cash each week to pay their nanny. There's no, you know, record. There's no taxes. There's no Social Security whatsoever.1.00
00:38:06.160So in those situations, you know, they're there, you know, it's sort of like up to, you know, up to the parents, the nanny to come to an agreement of, you know, am I going to give you a vacation?
00:38:27.160um so there you're sort of um it's not i was so fascinated by this because it's not your typical
00:38:34.640you know in office job where it's like okay you know um if you do if you do well you know the
00:38:41.240company does well and maybe you get a bonus or maybe your stock goes up um you know it's not
00:38:45.480like you have your own stock in this toddler that you're caring for in the family yeah exactly
00:38:50.420exactly yeah yeah there's not upward mobility you're not you know if if the kid um learns some
00:38:56.160new words or learns to read, you're not, you know, getting paid more. You know, and even a lot of
00:39:00.820nannies say like, you know, their hours, they're only supposed to work till six or seven. But if
00:39:04.860the parent gets home 15 minutes late, well, they don't, they can't leave until the parent gets
00:39:08.840home. And so they don't have full control over their hours. You know, a lot of parents do this
00:39:13.860thing where, you know, if the, oh, can you work late one night? Well, then you can go home early
00:39:17.680another night or, you know, we're going to swap your days off. You know, they might not even get
00:39:22.560holidays off. So nannies don't have, you know, they sort of feel like they're at the mercy of
00:39:29.120parents. It's at will employment. So they can be fired anytime. And there's always that fear that,
00:39:38.200you know, somebody else will say something or the parent will change their mind. And, you know,
00:39:42.880one day they'll come to work and they'll be fired. Or, you know, one day, you know, the parent will
00:39:47.420just text them a lot of parents fire over text over phone call and you know the nannies say like
00:39:53.080and i never got to you know say goodbye to the kids um so you know there's the the nannies really1.00
00:39:59.720don't have a lot of power in these relationships um but and especially when they see in the mom's0.99
00:40:05.520groups that their picture can be posted without their permission and a stranger can accuse them
00:40:11.000of something without talking to them without knowing the whole situation um and you know
00:40:16.020often it's not true like i talked to a nanny who was accused of not paying a bus fare when she said
00:40:21.420like look i was with a stroller on the bus with the kid like i just couldn't make it to the front
00:40:26.220of the bus right away and i told the driver that i'd pay on my way out and i did meanwhile you know
00:40:31.340a parent saw this and accused her of not paying the bus fare and she was fired that is also
00:40:36.020completely completely gonzo because i too i'm just admitting all of the terrible things i do here
00:40:41.060i too have struggled with a stroller and promised to pay the bus fare but sometimes i forget
00:40:46.980sometimes i forget because there's kids biting totally at the time right but and so just imagine
00:40:53.480imagine being shamed and reported and losing your job for that yeah totally um and think about you
00:41:02.140know like even just to get a stroller on a bus with a child in it like i was trying to think of
00:41:06.540myself doing that like i wouldn't want to do that by myself sometimes they make you fold the stroller
00:41:10.260So you have to, like, juggle the child in your hand while you, like, fold your stroller and lift it up.
00:41:14.920I mean, there's just a lot of this work that doesn't, people just don't appreciate that nannies do all the time.
00:41:22.060And so it feels like, you know, to have somebody accuse you of something that's, A, potentially not true, or B, like, you know, just post your picture on the Internet.
00:41:33.500Like, this is, you know, a Facebook, it's a forum of potential future employers.0.64
00:41:37.320And now you're branded as a bad nanny forever.
00:41:40.260Yes. And that's such an interesting way of looking at it. Because as you said, there is no upward mobility for a nanny. You're always going to be aged out of this job and aged out when the child ages out. Because when the child goes to school, you're going to have to start your job all over again from scratch every single time.
00:42:06.040And so your name and your reputation, especially in smaller communities, is your brand.
00:42:12.540And so the second that someone posts your picture, you're losing that ability to get your next job.
00:42:28.620Moms, you know, especially if you're finding somebody through a mom's group, as a lot of people do, they don't go through the agencies.
00:42:34.040please, you know, you need, you know, a good reference from somebody else. And I talked to
00:42:40.380moms who'd even fired their nannies who, you know, felt torn about that. And I think most
00:42:46.980in most cases when the nanny was fired, they didn't ask for a reference, but they really felt
00:42:50.520like, oh, gosh, like, you know, I know she made a mistake. I feel bad that it happened this way.
00:42:55.240I don't want to ruin her life. But on the other hand, like, I don't want her watching my kid.
00:42:59.360And so there was a lot of guilt that these moms felt, you know, about the damage to the nanny's career.
00:43:07.760And it's, you know, it's sort of like, you know, some nannies, like, hopefully they had a good reference from a prior family or something like that.
00:43:15.080Or they, you know, had to change careers, you know, and in some cases, like, you know, it's possible if a caregiver really did something dangerous, like maybe they were in the wrong career.
00:43:24.080Maybe it is like the time to switch, but I think in a lot of cases, they really did want to keep, you know, caregiving and being a nanny.
00:43:31.600And it does make it hard for them to work in that industry.
00:43:36.120Yeah. And not I mean, not even hard, but but impossible.
00:43:39.260And, you know, when we talk about the switching of careers, that's not easy for anyone.
00:43:44.460I think about it all the time. I'm like, what will I do? What should I do next?
00:43:52.060I have no skills beyond what I am doing right now.
00:43:56.120And so I cannot imagine the fear of knowing,
00:44:00.540all right, I'm not going to be able to get another job
00:44:02.020doing what I've been doing for 20 or 30 years.
00:44:04.160And a lot of these nannies are career nannies.
00:44:07.100They've been doing this for so long.0.92
00:44:10.480Yeah, or they're doing it because they can't do anything else.
00:44:12.840Like this is, you know, maybe they took care of younger siblings
00:44:14.800or, you know, something, this is the experience they had.
00:44:17.180They don't have, you know, a college education or other skills. They came to this country and they're living in New York City, which is insanely expensive. And, you know, what other job can they get that's paying, you know, potentially 25 an hour? Maybe, you know, if they're lucky more than that. A lot of nannies are getting paid less than that and working, you know, 60 hour weeks.
00:44:38.120So it's a really hard job that, you know, either people are doing it because, you know, they love it and they are career nannies and this is what they're doing or they're doing it because they don't have a lot of other options.
00:44:50.500We continue to devalue caregiving, whether it is the mother doing it or whether it is a caregiver doing it.
00:44:56.920And I just hope that more stories like yours do show that this is something we need to talk more about.
00:45:07.000This is a story about money. This is a story about power. It's not a mommy story. It's a story about something that really needs to be talked more about. And I just appreciate you so much, so much for doing it.
00:45:19.360oh thank you so much um no it's a really interesting topic to me like i'm hoping that i
00:45:23.900will be able to continue um covering it too because i think there's so many more angles to
00:45:29.080it and one i just want to mention like one one thing that fascinated me that i think is a question
00:45:33.620like worth raising and exploring was that i heard from so many nannies saying you know like how you
00:45:39.280know look at these moms like they're um like they don't treat us they don't treat us well they're so1.00
00:45:45.040condescending. They accuse us unfairly of things. But having a nanny is a luxury. Like they have to1.00
00:45:51.040realize that if you're going to have a nanny, this is a luxury and they need to, you know, pay for it
00:45:56.460and, you know, and treat us appropriately. And I do think, you know, nannies are entitled to
00:46:03.100fair treatment. But the fact that having a nanny is a luxury, I think a lot of parents would disagree
00:46:08.640with that. And I don't know if that I don't I think that in and of itself says a lot about
00:46:13.660what's wrong with our child care system, because it should not be a luxury to have a caregiver.
00:46:18.280I mean, daycare is also really expensive, very hard to get into and doesn't have the hours that
00:46:23.160a lot of parents need. So what are you supposed to do? And, you know, a lot of people say, well,
00:46:27.740just take care of your own kids. And that is not fair either, because, you know, women need to have1.00
00:46:33.660their careers and there should be a way, you know, to have affordable, reasonable, you know,0.99
00:46:40.060functional childcare, um, that women, so, you know, women can work. Uh, so just the idea of,1.00
00:46:46.160you know, any kind of childcare being a luxury was really, um, I don't know, it made, it made
00:46:52.080me think, it made me kind of, you know, scratch my head and say, okay, something, something is
00:46:56.580wrong here. Something, something is wrong here. Yeah. And, you know, it, it is interesting that
00:47:01.620that is a lot of nanny's opinions too. They're saying, oh, well, it's a luxury for you to be
00:47:06.600able to have this. It would not be considered a luxury if, you know, men were the ones who
00:47:11.660typically stayed home with children historically. It would just be considered a necessity,
00:47:19.300which it is. And you're so right about daycare too. And I'm going through it right now. There
00:47:25.140is a wonderful little, they call it a preschool, but I'm like, they go there at 18 months. It's
00:47:29.540freaking daycare in a church down the street from us. It's so close to my house and all I want is0.91
00:47:35.480for life to be easy but b my second child was on the wait list for three years and never got in
00:47:42.580so when she didn't get in and then rolled over into actual school i was like well i'm pregnant
00:47:47.700again can you just roll this fetus onto your wait list and she finally got got in for september of
00:47:56.280this year and they only have have child care available until noon oh my gosh not even a full1.00
00:48:06.880day and so how are you a woman who who works either inside the home or outside the home and
00:48:14.680manages that without then extra help too it's insane it is insane how difficult child care
00:48:22.420is to manage in this country and it's part of a broken system it genuinely is totally totally um
00:48:30.220yeah and like it yeah it sucks that also you know this this relationship between parents and nannies
00:48:37.120is also breaking down too because i do think it's so important um you know but i think it's such an
00:48:43.860it's such an important job but also and i mean not even really parents but mothers and nannies
00:48:49.180because it is so rarely the dad that is the one-on-one direct manager of a caregiver i know
00:48:55.880nick is not he's not and he's i have a i have a husband who does a lot of things i praise him all0.99
00:49:01.060the time we have a relatively equal marriage at this point because i have cracked a fucking whip0.85
00:49:07.380to make that happen uh but at the same time he just like he he does is unable is unable to properly0.93
00:49:16.720communicate with our caregiver, who, like I said at this point, has been a member of our family.
00:49:23.060But he just does not have the right language to figure out how to make this relationship work.
00:49:31.060And so it's me. It's me. And that is a burden on the mother and a management burden. It's a
00:49:40.500management burden. And I don't love being a manager. There is a reason that I am no longer
00:50:13.740Although I recently found out he's just putting them all in the dishwasher, you know, whether or not, but anyway, you just have to let it go.
00:50:23.100You have to let that. He's coping. Yeah. Nick also does. He does all the dishes and he also takes all the laundry downstairs and puts it in the washing machine.
00:50:32.400And then I put it away, which I also hate, but he doesn't put it in the right place.
00:50:35.860So, yeah, exactly. So and that's the thing is even, you know, the management you're thinking about, OK, you know, like is is, you know, like is my caregiver coming in late today?
00:50:46.960Or, you know, with daycare, it's like, did they tell me to bring in a special item today or do I need to bring an extra sign?
00:50:53.520It's all the thinking and like, oh, I need to get more diapers or, you know, all the thinking and the planning that I just find takes up so much space in my brain.
00:51:03.060But it doesn't take up space in my husband's brain.0.68
00:51:04.980no no it does not no it does not women and men are built differently and i'm not saying one is
00:51:09.600better than the other but women are better at multitasking which is what parenthood requires
00:51:13.720and i will go to my grave saying that i will i will indeed that is why it's not that we have0.70
00:51:20.500like a mothering gene or we're just like naturally mothers because i definitely wasn't i'm still
00:51:26.420figuring it out but we are just better at doing many things at once and holding more things in
00:51:30.760our brain even though it breaks us and and we cry in the dark yeah yeah yeah yeah and you've talked
00:51:37.200before too like i was just thinking about this too about like how people have you know fundamentally
00:51:43.240like moms and and and parents have fundamentally different philosophies and you know read things
00:51:48.380different and i think um that's so true about caregivers as well like and how you manage your
00:51:55.440caregiver like somebody told me somebody who has a nanny was was was I was having a conversation
00:52:00.700with her and we were talking to I think somebody who was pregnant or thinking about having kids
00:52:05.280and they were like well like why do you choose daycare versus a nanny and the other parent was
00:52:09.660like well daycare is a lifestyle you drop your child off and then you just have your day and I'm
00:52:14.400like okay that's correct like I hadn't thought I would like that but it is a lifestyle and having
00:52:19.080a nanny is a lifestyle but I also think you know those those differences in philosophy and thinking
00:52:25.040come through when people are talking about their nannies or criticizing somebody else's nanny
00:52:30.120um and to go back over the story the story was like i loved the woman who was like i am not a
00:52:34.820gentle parent and the people who accused my nanny may have been gentle parents and i do not agree
00:52:39.700with any sort of gentle parenting philosophy because i don't think it works and i think you
00:52:44.100know children need more discipline than that and i was like yes okay like you know like this is an
00:52:49.280honest thing to say um and the the judgment might come from a place that is not your place um you
00:52:57.080know not where you're coming from and so um i just think you know kind of these like there's like
00:53:03.900you just need to find what works for you um you know and and you know treat like hopefully you
00:53:09.900know treat your character fairly and nicely and you know be a reasonable human person in the world
00:53:16.220a reasonable human person in the world. Yeah. I love what the woman said about gentle parenting
00:53:21.100because I too am not a gentle parent any longer. I've tried everything out over the past seven
00:53:29.060years. Okay. You know who is unreasonable? A two-year-old. A two-year-old. They are completely
00:53:34.880irrational beings. And I'm not going Ruby Frankie on my kids over here, but I'm also trying to
00:53:41.740instill some discipline and structure in this house. Otherwise, it is going to be chaos. And
00:53:47.440I genuinely believe that then I will raise entitled assholes, frankly, who think that0.99
00:53:52.000everyone has to talk to them about their feelings all the time in the world. And that's not going0.98
00:53:56.180to be the case. It's just not. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes I find, you know, I just have,
00:54:01.720I just have to say no, because it's, you know, like, you know, I've told you five times that
00:54:07.180we're not having lollipops for breakfast and that, you know, you can eat breakfast, you have five
00:54:10.760other options but like it's a hard no sorry like it's a hard it's a hard no it's interesting that
00:54:15.760you bring that up because like i said in this facebook post that shamed my caregiver she
00:54:22.180she had said that my my my caregiver had uh and i i always i i want to use her name but i i now
00:54:30.140don't use her name mostly because i don't really want people to follow her on social media like
00:54:34.680weirdo pedophiles who could then follow her and follow my kids and these are the things that we
00:54:40.340have to think about um so i'm not trying to be all like weird about it but i don't i genuinely0.95
00:54:46.240don't want to just put her name out there it's not my business to but uh you know that this person
00:54:51.880had said that she had hit my child and when we went through the incident um she was like no like0.59
00:54:58.820i did push her arm away because she was grabbing for my phone and wanted to watch youtube and
00:55:06.340And there's there's like we have to do those things, right?
00:55:09.200Like I'm constantly pushing my kids away from me when they're grabbing for the phone or this morning, all three of them piled on while I had a cup of hot coffee.
00:55:17.620And but that can look like a shove if you don't know the child and you don't know the caregiver.
00:55:23.120I think at the end of the day, we have so many takeaways from this episode.
00:55:27.020But really, it's that you never know what is going on in someone's household.
00:55:30.220You never know how someone parents and a superficial glance, unless you see a child harmed, harmed, is that maybe you should mind your own business, especially when it comes to reporting on social media.
00:55:46.220I think that is the takeaway because, I mean, yeah, we're all on our phones.
00:55:50.940Like, you know, I want to see you want to see someone on their phones.
00:55:53.520Check out a dad on a freaking playground or check out breakfast.0.51