38-42 hours. But one of our kids has extra needs so this is to alleviate burnout. For some reason most of the Au Pairs in our area are working less than 45. 40 is about the average. However I start to get mildly resentful on the hours when I calculate all of the costs involved real and otherwise. I hate when people presume AP are underpaid.

About 20-25h/w during the school year. She basically just drives the kids to and from school and then to their activities.

During the school breaks when we don't travel, it's 45h/w. But those weeks are rare and she typically gets about 7 weeks off each year.

Why is a SAHM so upfront to identify herself as such, is it really necessary information

During the summer, we use 40. I can think of only two instances where we used the full 45 and it was just a crazy time. During the school year, we use 25-30 max. Often closer to 20.

We have been using au pairs for nearly five years now, and have had at least one non-school-age child that whole time, so our au pairs have always been asked to work the full 45 hours every week. And even on weeks when the AP might have, e.g., Monday off because it is a federal holiday so HD and I are not at work, we might still end up using the full 45 hours because we'll take that opportunity to schedule a date night. (I don't see this as "eeking out" the full 45 hours in a vindictive way, as some posters have implied. It is simply us taking advantage of a rare opportunity to go out, knowing that our three children, including an infant, are well-cared-for by someone who we and they already know, and who knows them and how to take care of them.)

We have never had au pairs complain about their hours. We have been through re-match for other reasons, but not because the au pairs were resentful about working the full 45 hours. Most of the families we know who have au pairs also have young children who aren't in school and two parents who work, and they also use all 45 hours most weeks. Most of our au pairs' friends seem to have this schedule as well, and the ones who work less hours frequently have to work evenings and weekends - and our au pairs do not. So I think they tend to realize that there are trade-offs with these "easier" schedules. (We have actually noticed worse in some cases - that our au pairs' friends sometimes work MORE than 45 hours, often without extra compensation. It is troubling that there are many families who break the rules this way, but because our au pairs always seem to have friends who are working with such families, our au pairs also tend to view the 45-hour schedule as something that could be worse. And in any case, I think they like having nearly all weekends and evenings free.)

As other posters have pointed out, if you are clear about your schedule during the matching process, and how hard the job is going to be (as well as screening for the other qualities and experiences such as full time work in other types of jobs, etc.), and that there are other families out there who will have less hours, easier jobs, better perks, etc. - there shouldn't be resentment. We were terrible about asking the right questions and screening during our first two AP interviewing periods. We've since improved. Of course, there are still always bad matches, and candidates who are good at saying the right answer just because they really want to get into the program. But hopefully if you work hard at the interview process, and are very clear about your hours requirements, any kind of resentment about hours should be eliminated.

Anonymous wrote:You need to comprehend what you read because the PP said if it goes over and AP babysit, she pays what she pays babysitter. This is illegal.

I'm the PP who wrote this, so I'll clear it up. We do not go over the hours. If there are extra, we will ask them to babysit. I give them some extra money for doing it since they don't usually anticipate the change in schedule because it happens so rarely. I just figure I would have paid a babysitter anyway, and I appreciate their flexibility. Do I give them cash? Yep, but if pressed, I'd construe it as a "bonus," which I sometimes give for other reasons as well. We've worked with two different agencies and neither local rep had a problem with it as it is well within the guidelines.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In terms of hours -- our APs almost always work 40-45 every week. I think you can control for this during the matching process by doing two things:

1) I emphasize -- over and over again -- how "hard" our job is. I find this quickly weeds out potential APs who don't want to work this hard.
2) I look for maturity in my candidates. By age, experience, and other factors.

I think APs who get upset over their work hours (or compare them to their friends') either 1) weren't warned ahead of time about what they would be, or 2) are simply immature girls who don't have a healthy dose of "job reality" yet.

This has worked very well for my family.

I'm the PP whose first AP did get upset about her hours when she learned her friends were working many fewer, and I completely agree with this post. In that case, it was nearly 10 years ago, and back then I had never met anyone else who had an AP and had no board like this or listserv like aupairmom to ask questions, so I had no idea about talking to an AP in advance about hours. We had listed our schedule (45 hours) on our application and just trusted that CCAP would "match" us accordingly (back then they did the matching - and you got serious grief if you challenged their match; we did challenge the first but went with the second, and that turned out to be a mistake). We talked to the AP once before we matched, and I know we didn't talk about anything substantive. It's amazing the match lasted as long as it did (four months) and that it was as good as it was at the start, before she became friends with others working much lighter schedules.

Anyway, in the wake of that experience, we have done exactly what PP says she does: We stress how hard our job is, we stress how much we need the AP's help, we ensure that APs know they can find a match with easier children, fewer hours, bigger house, fancier car, and more luxurious vacations. You know what? We have had mostly great APs since then, and those who haven't been 100% great have not had issues with our hours; in fact, most say our job in reality is MUCH easier than we had advertised. All have been very happy with us.

Unlike PP, we don't necessarily pick older APs (we did when our children were young, but switched to 19-21 yr olds when our children were school-aged), but we do screen for motivation, for how much an AP *wants* to do a good job in everything she does, and for how seriously she has taken whatever jobs she has done. An AP who works every summer selling strawberries from 6am-10am (an actual job one of our best APs had held during her HS years) is likely to be a better candidate for us than someone who has babysat 100 times for 100 different families but hasn't ever had to work a job day in and day out, getting up early and doing something monotonous and tiring, but still showed responsibility and tenacity to get the job done.

We also use 43-45 of our hours, always during the week (so our au pairs never work evenings or weekends), for preschool age twins. First, as PP pointed out, I screen candidates to find ones that have worked 10 hour days somewhere, doing something. Anything. Waitressing (or strawberry selling) for all I care. But something that they didn't necessarily enjoy all the time but got back up every day and went back in because that's what you do in the real world.

But we find over the course of the au pair year that our au pairs come to appreciate us over time. We don't live in a fancy house (something we disclose in advance by sending pictures of it). They don't get their own suite. They do get invited on vacations with us, they do get off from work on time every time (something that remarkably doesn't seem to happen in all host families), and we make sure that because our preschoolers require a lot of hands on care, we don't give them "chores" to do (outside of sweeping/wiping up spills and occasionally putting clean kids' laundry away once it's folded by us. And maybe running the vacuum if one of our girls manages to spill 2 lbs of uncooked rice on the floor. Again.)

I'm not saying this is the case with every "good looking" situation, but we've had au pair "refugees" spending weekends and evenings at our house because of host parent fighting, host parents turning on au pairs for seemingly no reason (when we know the au pair is a good kid in a bad situation), host kid tension, and other situations that just weren't comfortable for their au pair. We make it known to our au pair that if any of their friends wind up in situations where they don't feel safe at their house, they are to come to ours. We'll help them figure out what to do. Once our au pairs start hearing about how "less than perfect" some of those really "good looking from the outside" situations are, they start appreciating us even more than before.

So if your au pair seems like they may become jealous of someone else's schedule - just give it some time. They may come to appreciate you after all.

Anonymous wrote:In terms of hours -- our APs almost always work 40-45 every week. I think you can control for this during the matching process by doing two things:

1) I emphasize -- over and over again -- how "hard" our job is. I find this quickly weeds out potential APs who don't want to work this hard.
2) I look for maturity in my candidates. By age, experience, and other factors.

I think APs who get upset over their work hours (or compare them to their friends') either 1) weren't warned ahead of time about what they would be, or 2) are simply immature girls who don't have a healthy dose of "job reality" yet.

This has worked very well for my family.

I'm the PP whose first AP did get upset about her hours when she learned her friends were working many fewer, and I completely agree with this post. In that case, it was nearly 10 years ago, and back then I had never met anyone else who had an AP and had no board like this or listserv like aupairmom to ask questions, so I had no idea about talking to an AP in advance about hours. We had listed our schedule (45 hours) on our application and just trusted that CCAP would "match" us accordingly (back then they did the matching - and you got serious grief if you challenged their match; we did challenge the first but went with the second, and that turned out to be a mistake). We talked to the AP once before we matched, and I know we didn't talk about anything substantive. It's amazing the match lasted as long as it did (four months) and that it was as good as it was at the start, before she became friends with others working much lighter schedules.

Anyway, in the wake of that experience, we have done exactly what PP says she does: We stress how hard our job is, we stress how much we need the AP's help, we ensure that APs know they can find a match with easier children, fewer hours, bigger house, fancier car, and more luxurious vacations. You know what? We have had mostly great APs since then, and those who haven't been 100% great have not had issues with our hours; in fact, most say our job in reality is MUCH easier than we had advertised. All have been very happy with us.

Unlike PP, we don't necessarily pick older APs (we did when our children were young, but switched to 19-21 yr olds when our children were school-aged), but we do screen for motivation, for how much an AP *wants* to do a good job in everything she does, and for how seriously she has taken whatever jobs she has done. An AP who works every summer selling strawberries from 6am-10am (an actual job one of our best APs had held during her HS years) is likely to be a better candidate for us than someone who has babysat 100 times for 100 different families but hasn't ever had to work a job day in and day out, getting up early and doing something monotonous and tiring, but still showed responsibility and tenacity to get the job done.

In terms of hours -- our APs almost always work 40-45 every week. I think you can control for this during the matching process by doing two things:

1) I emphasize -- over and over again -- how "hard" our job is. I find this quickly weeds out potential APs who don't want to work this hard.
2) I look for maturity in my candidates. By age, experience, and other factors.

I think APs who get upset over their work hours (or compare them to their friends') either 1) weren't warned ahead of time about what they would be, or 2) are simply immature girls who don't have a healthy dose of "job reality" yet.

This has worked very well for my family.

Anonymous wrote:You need to comprehend what you read because the PP said if it goes over and AP babysit, she pays what she pays babysitter. This is illegal.

NP - No she didn't. She said she paid her more if she works on a weekend, not if she goes over hours.

The parenthetical (if they do) was referring to the clause immediately beforehand, which discussed weekend work. The pp never once mentions working her AP over hours.

No, she said they work 40-43 hours/week. If she wants to pay her AP extra to work the additional 2-5 hours on a weekend, that is her business.

You need to comprehend what you read because the PP said if it goes over and AP babysit, she pays what she pays babysitter. This is illegal.

Ugh no one said anything about working an Ap more than 45 hours! Pp was simply suggesting that IF a portion of the 45 hours happened mainly at nights or on weekends, then an AP would be unhappy. Please please please stop (purposely) misreading and jumping to ridiculous conclusions.

Anonymous wrote:My DH and I both work outside the home and use 40-43 hours per week, all when we're at work On balance, our AP's schedule is near regular and they almost never work weekends. (If they do, we pay them a little extra as if we would have hired a sitter.) Yes, there are so APs who are looking to work as little as possible, but we try to weed them out during the interview process. If you have a good relationship with your AP, like a PP said, they aren't going to be unhappy over the number of hours. In fact, the only time I've heard of APs rematching over hours is when their hours don't allow them to have any social life whatsoever (every evening, or most weekends).

No matter what, you are not supposed to work them more than 45 hours a week. You are abusing her if you are having her babysit for extra hours and breaking law by paying her extra. I would report you I your name, etc.

Honestly, isn't it a little passé to judge other women and their work/childcare choices? Who really cares?