Is the work of a nanny valuable or not?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I honestly do not care if my nanny is a "professional nanny." Reading up on childhood development? Gosh, if you're interested, but don't strain yourself. Breaking out some paints, letting my kids have at it, then clean it up, or schlepping them to a museum and making sure they come back in one piece, honestly, that's all I really expect. I feel like nannies on this board keep trying to elevate the professionalism of the job without really grasping that most parents are thrilled with you just being a fun, pleasant, semi-playmate.

If you want the dignity and salary of a true professional job, go to professional school like I did.

Hah, if you think that is true I would love to see you, or any parent for that matter, teach a child to poop on the potty. If you haven't studied and read up on this stuff you will be SOL.

And yet there are millions, if not hundreds of millions of adults who have managed to be taught this highly-complex behavior by parents who haven't taken a class or read a book....

Perhaps if some of those parents got some sort of instruction we wouldn't be desperately looking for diapers, excuse me "training pants" in larger and larger sizes.

10.32 again. I debated about saying this, but I think I'm going to. Get off your high horse. Potty training books recommend tons of things that I would never do (bribing with food or new toys, making things take longer as punishment). I potty train the way that my mother, grandmother, great-grandmother potty trained their kids, with one small variation. My mother and grandmothers sewed ruffles on the seat of little girl's underwear and appliques on the hip of little boy's underwear. As long as the child stayed dry, they could wear the underwear during the day, but if they wet their pants, they were in a diaper for the rest of the day and could try again the next day. For messes, they were in a diaper until the next time the child had to go. When I potty train, I use character underwear and the child gets to put the dry underwear in the clothes hamper and put on a new pair each time they go; if they wet or mess their pants, they wear a diaper until the next time they go in the pot. I don't do bribery, it's just a way to teach children to want to change their underwear (and it gradually is scaled back once they are fully potty trained), and it's not a punishment to wear the diaper, it's just a way to make sure that we don't have to clean up a huge mess again.

I said "some sort of instruction," not "books." If accurate reading comprehension puts me on a high horse, I'll stay up here, thanks.

[Anonymous]

Yes since all children are the same and able to successfully potty train at the same time, if any are still not trained by the time they need larger sizes of training pants, it's because their parents didn't seek "some sort of instruction."

[Anonymous]

A little bit of history...

The nurse is a character who comes from the dawn of time. In the third millennium BC in Sumer, the wife of Shulgi, the master of the town of Ur, murmured to her child a lullaby: "The nurse with a joyful heart will sing songs to her; The nurse with a joyful heart will give her her milk. " About 1330 BC, in Egypt, King Tut had a tomb built in honor of his nurse. The royal nurses, recruited from the harems of the officers of the Pharaohs, were treated with great respect; The same is true in China, India, Japan and the Middle East.
The classical tragedies echo it: the nurse holds a famous second role. Confident of the hero (a baby who grew up), she is always there to advise him in the crucial moments of his existence. Homer tells us that Ulysses, prince of Ithaca, was nursed by maidservants.
In Islamic law, kinship by milk (being brother or sister of milk) is recognized in the same way as that of blood or marriage.
The story of the nurse is above all that of the commerce of breast milk, in the absence of infantile preparation. In Rome, the services of a nurse were bought on the market in a place called lactaria. Since the Middle Ages, the elites have nurses at home, which allows the ladies of the nobility to fall pregnant faster (since they do not breastfeed). Later, the practice spreads in more modest environments, to enable women to work.

[Anonymous]

To the woman saying 'Go to school, get a professional job', don't you realise that without your capable nanny, you would not have your job at all?
I would like to see you professionals work with a bunch of children (who are not your own) 11 hours a day and then come back and say how unskilled and unworthy the work we do is.
If I felt my MB thought like you, I would leave on the spot.

[Anonymous]

So...what's your point? What are you trying to achieve in the end? What do you want?

You need to also recognize that while you want protections and benefits (presumably from the law) you should be pushing for more child care subsidies to help parents pay for care. There's no way most parents can pay a nanny $60,000 or whatever you think they should be paid. That's an entire salary of before tax income. So push all you want for nanny protection, but you will get a LOT farther pushing for federal child care subsidies (where you get a lot more parents on board.)

This! I want to pay as much as i can, but i cant afford 60k per year. If no one wants what i can offer, then i am not forcing anyone to take it, ill find another solution, but paying more is not an option for everyone.

[Anonymous]

4/12/2016 thread.

time to get a life people!

[Anonymous]

I love being a nanny. I stay at home with my baby now but I can't wait to take care of another baby once he starts school. Babies make me so happy! OP stop worrying so much. Do what makes you happy.

[Anonymous]

Of course the work of a nanny is very valuable. So is a teacher, adult caregiver, social worker, etc.

However, like any job in America, the price (salary) comes down to supply and demand. Because there are more good, quality, caring nannies than there are families who need one/can afford one, it keeps the price low. People don't pay $30/hour when there is an abundant supply of quality nannies at $20/hour. That's how the free market works.

Salaries only rise when there is a shortage of well- trained workers in a field, like STEM (science, tech, engineering, math). There are not enough highly trained workers in these fields, therefore employers have to keep increasing salaries to be able to hire workers.

[Anonymous]

When little children aren't well-cared for, the consequences are much more expensive than a good nanny would have cost.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

So...what's your point? What are you trying to achieve in the end? What do you want?

You need to also recognize that while you want protections and benefits (presumably from the law) you should be pushing for more child care subsidies to help parents pay for care. There's no way most parents can pay a nanny $60,000 or whatever you think they should be paid. That's an entire salary of before tax income. So push all you want for nanny protection, but you will get a LOT farther pushing for federal child care subsidies (where you get a lot more parents on board.)

This! I want to pay as much as i can, but i cant afford 60k per year. If no one wants what i can offer, then i am not forcing anyone to take it, ill find another solution, but paying more is not an option for everyone.

I find it interesting that most nannies on this site say they get $25 or more per hour. At 48 hours per week, that would make $62,400 per year without OT and $67,600 with OT.

If nannies really make as much as they say on this site, then this thread on paying a nanny $60k per year would not be an issue. Unless nannies are saying that $60k+ is not enough. Incidentally, our office posted an analyst position and I was surprised to see that even with a MA or Ph.D the pay started at $45k.

So do nannies really make $67,600 or do they make considerably less? And if they make $67,600, why do they say they are so underpaid? The analysts in my office make less, but don't have this attitude. Maybe it's because nannies work all day where they can see how well off someone else is. I know a nanny who made $70k after taxes (so about $95k before), but she thought she was poor. But office workers at my job don't consider themselves poor at $50k.

And there wasn't anything I could do to make the nanny happy short of paying her $95k per year (she accepted the job for less, but asked for more money after a couple months). That would have been impossible for us. But to her, she couldn't understand why we seemed to be well off but wouldn't share the (perceived) wealth with her.

[Anonymous]

The below is my post. The part about wanting to pay $60k is from another person (a kind one).

I find it interesting that most nannies on this site say they get $25 or more per hour. At 48 hours per week, that would make $62,400 per year without OT and $67,600 with OT.

If nannies really make as much as they say on this site, then this thread on paying a nanny $60k per year would not be an issue. Unless nannies are saying that $60k+ is not enough. Incidentally, our office posted an analyst position and I was surprised to see that even with a MA or Ph.D the pay started at $45k.

So do nannies really make $67,600 or do they make considerably less? And if they make $67,600, why do they say they are so underpaid? The analysts in my office make less, but don't have this attitude. Maybe it's because nannies work all day where they can see how well off someone else is. I know a nanny who made $70k after taxes (so about $95k before), but she thought she was poor. But office workers at my job don't consider themselves poor at $50k.

And there wasn't anything I could do to make the nanny happy short of paying her $95k per year (she accepted the job for less, but asked for more money after a couple months). That would have been impossible for us. But to her, she couldn't understand why we seemed to be well off but wouldn't share the (perceived) wealth with her.

[Anonymous]

Traditionally feminine jobs are undervalued and underpaid.

War on women.