Reply to Au Pair just asked for more money

Forum Index » Childcare other than Daycare and Preschool

Reply to "Au Pair just asked for more money"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, as a fellow host mom the dynamics have changed a lot and many au pairs - now scarce and in demand - are understandably leveraging the new dynamic.

That said, I think if you can afford to pay her more, do so, make her show you she is stepping it up. I think the PP at 5:55 is spot on, but I would phrase it more positively. [/quote]

I am not sure how much of the dynamic is there to leverage because their choices are rematch or go home.  [/quote]

The dynamic has completely shifted right now.  Tons of families are desperate for child care.  We interviewed this fall looking for an au pair.  We told one candidate that we had a dedicated au pair car for her to use.  She asked me if it was a luxury car because another family was offering to let her have her own brand new Lexus SUV.  Other families were offering one free round trip domestic ticket anywhere in the US per month on top of the stipend.  I heard of families offering stipends as high as $500/wk.

For us, we let our prior au pair move to a different family for her second year (i.e., we didnt make her a counteroffer) because we were more conservative re COVID-19 than she is.  Her current host family lets her do whatever, so she just flew across the country to a hot spot to be a tourist with a group of other au pairs over Thanksgiving weekend.  One of those friends has now tested positive.  I don't think she's isolating or quarantining.  Should be interesting.

For us, we weren't okay with zero COVID restrictions so we were offering a higher stipend ($350/wk) and doing many things to try to salvage the cultural exchange aspect for our au pair.  I spent a lot of effort coming up with safe ways to let our au pair feel like she was getting a full experience.

Our out of country match ended up not being able to come for now because of the Trump ban, so we ended up going a different direction for child care.  Our out of country match is now unemployed and under quarantine with her family in her home country. She wishes she was here even with COVID because she'd have a job and be working on her English, rather than twiddling her thumbs for a year at home.  She appreciates her life is shut down because of COVID, but all in all, would rather be an au pair.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics