Anonymous wrote:Why isn’t the 3 year old in preschool?

I have an 8 yo in virtual school and it’s a lot of work and frustrating for me, the parent. And there are a lot of breaks. Kid needs breakfast and lunch and then the day is over at 2, so there’s still half a day left to fill.

This AP took the job expecting your preschooler to be in some kind of basic preschool program, and your 2nd grader to be in school all day. That’s not the job she has now. The terms materially changed.

This. I was sympathetic to OP but you can’t really say your 3 year old is on an iPad all day. They don’t have the attention span for it. They are still taking naps, meals plus two snacks, and they can’t focus on anything beyond 30-45 min at a time even if it’s their favorite cartoon. A 8 year old still need some supervision. Nanny was expecting to help kids get ready for school, have free time, then pick them up and care for them some. Now she probably is doing much more childcare of the 3 year old than expected. It was immature of the au pair to ask for more money without saying why or what she would do in return to earn it, and if she doesn’t play with your kid as much as you’d like, well you have to keep on reminding and redirecting her. If she doesn’t improve, you should rematch based on what she is providing. You can’t expect the maturity of a 35 year old with these young au pairs. They are not used to thinking from the employer’s perspective. But you also have to realize she is stuck at home, not doing all these traveling, exploring restaurants, hanging out with people, other activities that she would have if not for covid. She’s probably disappointed and demoralized through no fault of your own. Help her get motivated. Au pairs need a lot of guidance, which is a main downside in terms of a choice of childcare provider IMHO. I considered daycare nanny nanny share and au pairs.

Some countries requires as few as 18 hours per week of their APs. The US requires the highest number of hours of all countries. Fits with our workaholic reputation. No wonder foreign APs may be dismayed!
https://www.aupairworld.com/en/wiki/working-hours

AuPairWorld recommends that au pairs be given the day off on public holidays such as Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, NYD, and MLK Day. This is in addition to their vacation days. Unless of course both parents must work on a national holiday.

Fundamentally, you’re not feudal lords to have the power to decide what of your charity your au pairs should be favored with, while denying the basic minimums.

Anonymous wrote:We host and have a new aupair coming this week from Mexico. We don’t pay over the stipend. We’ve never hosted an impoverished aupair. Most of our aupairs come from well off families. If our aupair wasn’t engaging with our kids, she wouldn’t be our aupair long.

Please review what you said — it’s because you have the upper hand. It doesn’t matter what type of family they come from — they all deserve a fair treatment and cultural exchange. Sadly, there is abuse. A couple in the UK starved and murdered their French ap. That is an extreme but redolent of a power imbalance that allowed it to happen, even to a French middle class girl in the EU. So I wouldn’t underestimate the one-sided power balance of this relationship.

I do feel for the families who describe treating their aps well and being in it for the spirit of the program when they say they couldn’t afford the MA pricing. Perhaps a middle ground could be found with fewer hours, so enforce MA rules, but families and aps can negotiate fewer hours, more education, all in the spirit of cultural exchange. Agencies in MA had to return/pay part of families’ fees too.

Even while empathizing with well meaning families, it is hard to accept as legitimate the building in of a portion of family vacation expenses as less discretionary spending (instead of taking ap on 4 vacations, it sounds like going on 2 would allow fair pay). It would be similar to serving caviar or truffles because you like it, having the au pair partake because it’s fun and a different cultural experience, but then charging $30 instead of DoL mandated $2.25 per diner deduction.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With no new au pairs coming into the country, they have the upper hand right now.

New aupairs are arriving now. Ours arrived a week ago. Glad we didn’t fall for the “aupairs have the upper hand” crap. For like 2 months there was a swing in demand. Next time people should hire a babysitting and bridge the gap instead of throwing money at a young aupair who doesn’t even play with the children she watches.

OP, don’t pay more. Let her ask for more money and explain she needs to tell you how much and why. $200-$250 a week is normal for aupairs in this area. If she can’t figure out more of a reason to why she deserves a raise than “my friends in my WhatsApp group told me to push you into more stipend.” Than she doesn’t deserve it.

Keep your money and hire a professional nanny or cheap babysitter. Both would be better.

Really? I thought it was a cultural exchange you were in it for, or no?

We host and have a new aupair coming this week from Mexico. We don’t pay over the stipend. We’ve never hosted an impoverished aupair. Most of our aupairs come from well off families. If our aupair wasn’t engaging with our kids, she wouldn’t be our aupair long.

Anonymous wrote:With no new au pairs coming into the country, they have the upper hand right now.

New aupairs are arriving now. Ours arrived a week ago. Glad we didn’t fall for the “aupairs have the upper hand” crap. For like 2 months there was a swing in demand. Next time people should hire a babysitting and bridge the gap instead of throwing money at a young aupair who doesn’t even play with the children she watches.

OP, don’t pay more. Let her ask for more money and explain she needs to tell you how much and why. $200-$250 a week is normal for aupairs in this area. If she can’t figure out more of a reason to why she deserves a raise than “my friends in my WhatsApp group told me to push you into more stipend.” Than she doesn’t deserve it.

Keep your money and hire a professional nanny or cheap babysitter. Both would be better.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We need some more details:
What is current pay?
How much more is she asking for?
What does she say her reason is for asking for more?

Current pay is $200/week. I think the au pair agency requires a $195/week.

She didn't specify how much more - just that she wanted more. I told her I would think about it. I think she's asking because she thinks we are well off and can afford it.

I was initially confused by this request because she's only been with us for 3 months. She's average at best.

My first thought was that I could use this to leverage getting her to do some things - such as play or interact with the kids (this rarely happens), do their laundry, and keep the kitchen and family room tidy. Right now, none of those things happen.

She is perfectly entitled to negotiate her salary. That was the entire point of the class action lawsuit. The fact that she did it AFTER she got here, and given the other things in your post, you picked a bad one.

But again, if APs are working anything close to 45 hours, they are perfectly within their right (and it is reasonable) to expect more than $200. I know many families that are paying double that for 45 hours a week.

To the anti-au pair crusaders: can you at least admit there is a wide variety of experiences? The ones cited in litigation working 60-75 hours a week are absolutely shameful and exploitative. I think you have probably even seen on this thread there are a lot of complex racial/socioeconomic factors at play both in the part of the host families and the au pairs.

On one hand, you might have au pairs coming from developing nations who see this as an opportunity to make money and may match into a host family where she is expected to work 45 hours a week doing all childcare for two or more kids, never gets any “extras” etc. Other au pairs coming from Western Europe tend to see this as a fun gap year experience and their aim is not to make money but is to spend it all on travel, partying and seeing as much of the US as possible. For them, this is “fun money” because they aren’t worried about saving it. The latter is where my au pairs falls.

On the host family spectrum - there are military / single parents and families with like 5+ children who may see this as cheap childcare. Some may lean hard into the cultural aspect as well, or may not. Sometimes you see nickel and diming as some are obviously more budget conscious. On the other hand, you have the host families for who this is a cool cultural exchange experience, who love the flexibility, who may or may not use their au pairs for less than 45 hours a week, and pay a bunch of extra monetary bonuses / vacation perks.

Mine hangs out with a toddler all day who takes a long nap - during that two hours she generally facetimes her family, is on her phone, etc. sometimes I will send her activity ideas for toddler and she’ll make crafts. She facetimes her family with my toddler too and they are always playing around with Snapchat filters which the toddler finds hilarious. I think it’s sweet that her family knows my kids and I do not care that my toddler gets this type of “screen time.” She will often take my toddler to a park or go for a walk and grab coffee with her friend who works a split shift so is free during the day. She doesn’t work weekends, ever. When grandparents used to come visit in the before times she would get bonus time off. I am not micromanaging her day to day with my toddler and they adore each other. I would bet that people paying $25-$30 for a nanny would expect a whole lot more than this and want their nanny to never touch their phone when the baby is around.

Her friends come over and hang out with the kids before and after dinner on the weekends on occasion. It is so crazy absurd for people to be acting like this is modern day slavery. Not all of her friends have great situations but they have all managed to save enough money to travel pretty extensively. She’s been to probably 20+ states in the year or so she has been here, because they travel like college kids - road tripping with 8 people in shared hotel rooms. I look fondly back on those days in my early 20s. This is not a career for them.

Anonymous wrote:PP above for $40K why not hire a nanny?

Because we want language immersion in a language not common among the nanny pool; we also want a woman in her 20s that will get down on the floor with toddler and drive to various activities even during COVID (our AP takes toddler to state parks for hikes, petting zoos, outdoor story times, etc.). Our friends who have full-time nannies in DC pay around 60k. We cannot afford that. Also, their nannies are older and do not drive. In the two nanny shares we had previously -the nannies also refused to drive. It's actually not that easy to find a hands-on nanny who drives, particularly if you want a language which is not Spanish.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is literally NEVER true. Definitionally, the program does not pull from impoverished countries. Middle income at absolute poorest. My au pairs have come from Western Europe. At least one came from a family richer than us (owned a vineyard).

Many APs are from Columbia, Thailand, China, SA...even young women from western Europe are not from wealthy families, otherwise why would they allow their children to do this....c'mon this was addressed very early in the thread...your child may take a gap year, but not to become a domestic servant in Europe...

And these are not “impoverished countries.” As I said, middle income at absolute poorest. I can’t even imagine a worldly person claiming with a straight face that South African au pairs are being plucked out of poverty.

And yes my children may well become au pairs in Europe as a gap year. Many of my friends in college had been au pairs.

I was an au pair in europe and I’m from a wealthy family. I did it to have the experience of living abroad but not being tied to school, I became more fluent in a foreign language and I had a wonderful experience. I also nannied during college and graduate school because I love kids. Now I have 3 children and have hosted au pairs to help my kids become bilingual as well as have a wonderful experience with “big sisters” who they adore. We don’t consider our au pairs servants, they are cherished friends and become members of our family. They don’t do any housework I don’t do myself. All of our au pairs have been from middle or umc, professional families. They were all either in the middle of or finished with college and returned to get additional degrees. One is now a journalist, another an interpreter for a multinational company, and the others are in school and will end up with advanced degrees.

We pay our amazing au pair who engages our kids and follows our ever-changing covid house rules without complaint, $250/week. She also has a ton of time off, her own floor of our house, lots of perks and enjoys hanging out with our family when she’s not working (ie watching a movie or cooking together). We’ve hosted 6 au pairs and they’ve all had a wonderful experience but this year is obviously harder with covid.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is literally NEVER true. Definitionally, the program does not pull from impoverished countries. Middle income at absolute poorest. My au pairs have come from Western Europe. At least one came from a family richer than us (owned a vineyard).

Many APs are from Columbia, Thailand, China, SA...even young women from western Europe are not from wealthy families, otherwise why would they allow their children to do this....c'mon this was addressed very early in the thread...your child may take a gap year, but not to become a domestic servant in Europe...

And these are not “impoverished countries.” As I said, middle income at absolute poorest. I can’t even imagine a worldly person claiming with a straight face that South African au pairs are being plucked out of poverty.

And yes my children may well become au pairs in Europe as a gap year. Many of my friends in college had been au pairs.

Yup, my cousin went to Germany to be an au pair and to perfect German. The cousin's parents are college professors and they have a summer house. Not exactly working class....

Anonymous wrote:PP above for $40K why not hire a nanny?

I’m not PP but that’s not what reliable DC area nannies cost, including all benefits, bonuses, etc.