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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Wow, I am an MB w/ a long-term nanny so I may not understand the whole au pair world, but it seems rather silly and petty to me that a parent would begrudge someone extra time off if they were around to stay w/ their children.  I actually like being able to send my nanny home early b/c it means I can spend more time w/ my children.  With two working parents any time we can spend with our children we do.  I wouldn't spend any energy sending passive aggressive messages to my au pair and just do what works/is right for my family.[/quote]

Maybe you didn't mean it like I took it but your post kind of illustrates why I feel guilty for using 45 hours and resent that.  Of note, I have 3 kids under 6 (6, 4 and 3 to be exact).  I work fulltime, so does my husband and we have no free help in the area (grandparents etc.).  
When I have a federal holiday, I have our AP work because it is finally a day where I can relax, take care of somethings etc.  Otherwise, it is ALWAYS me (and husband) taking care of the kids: mornings, evenings, weekends.  I am not a machine and would soo much like a break sometimes.  But you make me feel guilty because I sound like I don't want to spend extra time with my kids when I spent all of my none-working hours with them (excluding sleep).[/quote]

Ugh, don't feel guilty about this all.  No need to be a martyr and spend every single free minute with the kids until you're so in need of me time you explode.  It's one of the reasons we have au pairs actually.  We only use 25 hours a week for pick up and drop off for school.  So every Tuesday night, we also have her give the kids dinner and put them to bed so that we can have a date night (or simply run errands!).  It's wonderful for us and our marriage and I don't for a second feel guilty that I'm not spending one night with them out of the week.

Now you may get some pushback on this from an immature au pair.  Our au pair has a friend that complained to me that her host parents still asked her to work even though they were furloughed during the government shutdown.  I gently reminded her that she was still being paid to work even though the parents had no income (didn't know Feds would be paid back until the end of it) and that as long as they were sticking generally to the schedule she was told when they matched, it shouldn't matter to her what they did.   I asked her to think about a time she's seen her host parents truly taking time for themselves and/or working on the house or whatever they needed to get done - she admitted that they had gotten a lot done around the house and she had never seen them so relaxed.[/quote]

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