The Myth of the College Educated Nanny

[Anonymous]

I agree with the others - you have to branch out from agencies to find a college educated nanny.

Care.com can be a real crap-shoot but the key is to place a very specific ad and then also go through nanny profiles in your area. That’s how we found our college-educated nanny and we love her.

[Anonymous]

Look older, OP. Our college educated nanny is also on her second career. She’s been an amazing nanny and has been with us for nearly six years.

[Anonymous]

DH and I have college degrees - why wouldn’t we want the woman spending 45 hours to have one?

And there are lots of college educated nannies out there. It’s not a myth. Women are majoring in early childhood development or education and finding the pay in our preschools too low to survive. They are moving on to nannying.

Our nanny is young but extremely reliable and dedicated to our kids. And yes, at the risk of getting flamed, it did matter in their intellectual development.

[Anonymous]

My two year old builds legos with “cantilevers” and says “this not precarious”. He uses words like taciturn and trodden. He says he has no “impulse control”.

Yeah, it’s been great having his first teacher (nanny) be a college graduate and otherwise brilliant woman. She is both experienced as well as educated and loves the stuffing out of my kids. And like an earlier PP, she is constantly in a quest to learn more and more.

Also potty trained DS at 22 months easily and he’s a really sweet, kind kid.

[Anonymous]

Don’t get hung up on “I don’t wanna change caregivers every 1/2 years ...”

You are relying solely on one person for childcare. The variables of what might happen are so many - one month is you find out you hate having a nanny, or this nanny, or the nanny decides to move away to be with family/boyfriend or she gets sick and can’t work for a while. In fact any of these could happen after 1 day, 1 week, 1 Year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have been looking for a college educated nanny for an infant and have reached out to a couple of reputable, expensive agencies. I specifically asked about a college educated nanny and was told that regardless of how much we were paying (we are open to up to $40/hr, even $45 for the perfect person), it is extremely unlikely that we will find a long term college educated nanny. The agencies said that they could easily find one that would work for one or maybe two years tops, but that it would almost never extend beyond that because college educated nannies have so many other options and most nanny as a short term stint before moving in to something else (masters, teaching etc). They stressed that it’s not in their interest to tell me this since they would collect their 15% fee as long as nanny stays for 1 year, but that they wanted to be upfront re: expectations.

So now I’m stuck. I considered SAH, but DCUM convinced me that the college educated nanny path was the best way to go. I don’t want to change my child’s caregiver every 1-2 years. How is everyone else finding their long term educated nanny and how long did they stay with you? Are these really as available as this site makes it out to be or are they unicorns?

Care.com and you search the profiles yourself. Your agency is wrong. Our educated nanny has been with us for seven years. Ditch the agencies - they are telling you that only because they still peddle “domestics”.

[Anonymous]

I've employed two nannies and the last one is brilliant! No college but did go to nanny school (it's a thing in her country). She's a fantastic artist. Loves to read. Is creative and active and my kids both ask to have her babysit as much as possible. No tv. She never turns it on. Loves a good schedule and makes healthy food. I think those things matter...potty trained #2 at 24 months was great too.

[Anonymous]

Could also check out Ari's babysitters club

https://www.arisbabysittersclub.com/

[Anonymous]

DH and I thought the way you do initially, and we weren't comfortable with any of the nannies we interviewed. Then we interviewed someone who wanted to be a nanny (no experience), was a high school grad, and had experience as a camp counselor. We interviewed that person, and they were the first one both our dog and DD liked. They were willing to do exactly what we wanted, and had ideas for finding activities in our city and ideas on organizing, so we offered $15 an hour plus benefits and started working together. Now it's nine years later, we have the same nanny, our kids are bilingual, and when our youngest went to school full time we kept the nanny full time and they started going to college part time. This meant when the pandemic hit and everyone was scrambling to do zoom school while working from home, we had no childcare problems, because we were already paying our nanny full time to work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You don’t have to have a college degree to be educated or know how to work with kids.

+1 As others have mentioned, especially for a baby it doesn't matter much. We chose a nanny without a degree who stayed with us for 7 years (and a second kid) til we moved. Having her as a consistent long-term presence in my kids' lives was better than any college degree. I have a college degree, it's not absolutely essential than my nanny has one.

[Anonymous]

Totally unnecessary. But I can see how someone who only has young children (babies/toddlers) would insist on this because they a) honestly believe it and b) don't know any better.

Let us know when you look back and laugh at this in 10 years.

As an aside, I quit working when my first was born to take care of her full time because I was adamant about her care. By baby #2, we had FT nanny and I WAHM'd. Baby #3 was left to her own devices, raised partially feral, and basically chased the other two her whole life. Independent, resilient, resourceful baby #3 was the most advanced at the youngest age - yet she got the least amount of personalized care and attention from us.

Go figure, right?

[Anonymous]

I employed a college educated nanny and am the author of the “Nanny resentful” post below. Beware!

[Anonymous]

Interesting. DCUM moms give all kinds of sh*t to women who go to college and then decide to stay home - "you're wasting your education and limiting yourself!!!" - but then want other people to do the same thing by being college educated nannies.

You can't win with you people.

[Anonymous]

I am college educated and worked in a daycare when we moved to MD. I needed a job and money and fast and was hired within a week. I did quit six months into it....Parents loved me and I sure did a ton of enrichment, making realistic tactile displays, and loads of things... I was appalled when I was told that a general director in for a visit overheard me tell a two-year-old who just smashed a truck on another kid's head that "it is not nice, we don't do that." I was not yelling and I was down at his eye level and not nasty at all, in fact, I said in firmly but kindly.
Apparently, it is not ok anymore to tell a kid that hitting another kid is not nice.
No thanks, snowflake parents and childcare!

[Anonymous]

I’m also so confused at your insistence this is long term. Your needs will change OP, as will your help. A nanny with out a college degree could be there for a decade or a year. College degree or not, I would look much more medium term in regards to childcare. That’s just reality.