Views on nannies

In London being a nanny is a fairly well paid job. I paid the agency £22/hrs and I think she got around £17 plus pension/holiday etc. And my kids were at school so most of the time she was making dinner/doing kids laundry/tidying.

The exploitation that MH describes happens everywhere in the US, where the labour market for childcare is in effect totally unregulated. Many professional women hire nannies from Central & South America - often undocumented - who work for poverty wages.

It is very typical of MH to pin the problem on women, rather than on lawmakers. Someone on Twitter described her as having "the mind of a 14-year-old boy", which just about nails it. Wowed at all the clever words she can use, lacking in maturity, and desperate to fit in with the cool kids.

I think bc you said the situations weren't comparable. But clearly she's interpreted what you wrote to be much more harsh than you meant, it's clear you didn't mean it that way. You're not saying it's bad for MC women to have a career, are you, just saying it's had knock-on effects for many working class women.

What are you talking about?

I don't think TempestTost meant it like that.

I DO think that the 'care feminists' & feminist-ambivalent/outright antifeminist male pundits I've read are often quite narrow in their view of working class women

On MN, and in a lot of other places, I've read a lot of accounts of bright working class girls encouraged to take their education further by teachers, and their mothers sharply telling them that they should stick to housework & childcare.I feel that the views of the antifeminists male pundits and care feminists are similar.

They're not interested in nurturing the talent of working class women writers like Shelagh Delaney or Kay Mellor or Sarah Waters, or to give a US example, Dorothy Allison, or actresses like Samantha Morton or Julie Walters, or anything else, as far as I can see.

They want to support the working class women who want to be SAHMs, which is great. But I don't think they have much interest in or desire to support those who want something else.

I am grimly amused to discover that my grandmothers’ need for money is an entirely different and non-comparable need to mine. I have been “tainted” by feminism and had educational opportunities they didn’t, so therefore my materialism, child raising and efforts to balance both is suspect in a way that theirs’ wasn’t.

Do tell.

Yes, I was going to say this. The 'maternalist' US feminist strain around the New Deal era had people like Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, Frances Perkins, & quite a few others doing important work w women & children. Many argued (some Victorian UK feminists did similar) that as you say, working class women needed to be able to stay at home so financial support was essential. Also for hour restrictions on women's work
(. I would agree for physical jobs that's needed, but other jobs not. I understand this wasn't just about physical strain, but also being at home w kids..)

Interestingly I've read about the anger some men felt towards the mother's allowance, that it was taking away their power/status as sole provider.

It's worth noting that Eleanor Roosevelt and Frances Perkins had multiple kids themselves, tho not sure if they relied on nannies/childcare or not.

I agree about the single income economy being better. I want women to have equal pay for equal work & to be able to achieve anything career-wise that they work for, without the sense that women should only be at home. But that shouldn't necessitate single-income families being impossible.

If we go back as far as peasant societies where men, women, and children worked, it's not that comparable, they all worked together.

But the fact that there were mothers had to work in the post-industrial revolution is not an argument that contradicts the way feminism jumped on this, it is exactly the opposite. It's a huge part of the reason that this wasn't a particularly woman centred social change for wc women.

A very significant element of the Labour movement, meant to improve the lives of workers, was wages and supports that would mean women and children would not be driven out to work. Particularly factory work. Including the idea of mother's allowance which would mean mother's would have an income separate from their husband's wage packet.

That approach was abandoned for the women will work too approach, which was a liberation for women from the middle classes, but same old same old for many wc women. And ultimately has meant that it's not really possible for any but very high earners to manage on one wage, and especially it's difficult to buy a house with one wage. PMC families may manage to do so if they live as if they were lower earners, which gives them some flexibility if needed, but it leaves few choices for those on lower wages.

This.

I know of no working class women in my family who didn't work. Both men and women had no employment protection and could be hired or fired on a daily basis. It was impossible to rely on one male person's wage. Women in Lancashire worked eg in mines, textile factories or at piece work at home etc. as a seamstress, tailoress etc. In the country men, women, children were all working often at subsistence farming. Babies were strapped on their mother's backs. Until the late 19th century of course most children didn't go to school.

Going back to the 16th century on my father's side the men were weavers, the women spinners. Children ( we forget ) often didn't need child care because they too would be working from a very young age ( 5/6 ) as eg scavengers in the mills like my great, great aunts in 19th century Manchester.

We forget the appalling conditions most working people had to endure, witness the WW1 Manchester 'bantam' battalions ( for men under 5"3 - due to the endemic starvation in the working class.)

Even lower middle class women often worked as shopkeepers, ran cafes, living above the shop so the children were around and helping out from a very young age.

<Delicate cough>

My working class grandmothers both worked. They didn’t have careers, but their families needed all hands on deck to make ends meet. My grandfather even worked as a child after school and in the summer to chip into the family’s income.

The idea that work is an option for women is quite class-driven. It says a lot about people’s blind spots that they manage to forget that work has been NORMAL for most mothers for a very long time.

Focus on your uni work OP. Much more important than mumsnetting

All of this business about nannies could equally apply to childcare workers in institutions, and in fact I think many of the issues are more obvious there.

What this is really about is the fact that having a career is billed by many as a major win of feminism, and so there is also a lot of political support for things like access to childcare and so on, and this is presented as being for women.

But this model really speaks most to women in professional types of career, they usually find their careers satisfying, they earn a worthwhile amount on money that materially affects their lifestyle, and it usually gives them some kind of positive social or professional feedback.

it's less clearly a win for women in "jobs" including childcare jobs. There is likely not the kind of career ambitious progression, there may be none at all. Some of these jobs can actually be fairly unpleasant. Society looks down on some of them and sees people in these jobs as lame, not achieving much. And most importantly, they don't earn as much money or benefits that professional jobs do.

What this means is that for quite a lot of the women in the latter group, working less, or not at all, and spending time caring for their own kids, rather than other people's, is far more appealing. Going to work in a nursery doesn't represent a new freedom any more than being a cafeteria worker or receptionist.

For women like that, the old socialist idea that a factory worker's salary should support him and his wife (or perhaps the other way round) was much more appealing. That represents a freedom to pursue the very important end of family life which tends to be much more important in working class culture.

It seems from that point of view that the final decision of feminism was to support the idea of work for everyone being the model for women's liberation. And wc women's interests were sacrificed in order to provide the childcare that is required to make that model work. (And it is a rather a choice. It's not easy, policy wise, to have both models side by side.)

I’ve been a nanny for 23 of the past 27 years. The other 4 I worked in a nursery to gain childcare qualifications through part time study. I worked in a nursery and baby sat part time when I was at school too because I knew it was what I wanted to do as a career.

I am now a single mother to a 10 year old. I get very little child support from her dad, but can provide a reasonable quality of life for her on my above minimum wage salary. All my jobs since she was born have allowed me to have her at work as often as I like. As parents my employers have been understanding of my wish to take time off for school events and parents evenings, etc when possible, I am equally flexible to meet the needs of their families. I work hard but have never felt exploited, and have always had proper contracts. In fact I generally feel very appreciated and valued which is reflected in the fact most of my work has come through word of mouth. I would much rather be a nanny than an office or shop worker but certainly don’t look down on those that are the way you seem to view nannies.

This

OP, I’m not sure you really understand the cost of living, the cost of bringing up children or how nannies are employed or paid in the UK.

Thanks for your post, @Burntt. Everything you’ve posted chimes with my experience as one of those 3-bed house families who hired live-out nannies 10 or so years ago, except for you being forced to be self-employed. How is that happening? When I had nannies we had to employ them properly - taxes, NI (employee & employer) holiday and sick pay, grievance procedure, the lot. We’d have been in a lot of trouble if we hadn’t done it that way, though paying all the NI out of our taxed income was hard and often a little frustrating for the nannies, some of whom wanted to negotiate net take-home pay rather than gross pay. There was always a LOT of effort up front - from the ad, to the interview, to the contract - to make sure we were being very clear and above board.

Anyway, boggles my mind to hear there are good nannies out there right now working self-employed.

YY to the after school pick up/ nanny bringing her own children conundrum. I hired a couple of nannies-with-babies for after school care, and it only worked for women who had one pre-school child.

Our nannies were great and we’re still in touch with them, but I was glad when the kids were old enough not to need childcare anymore. It’s an expensive business, and it’s emotionally quite a thing to have someone working in your house with vulnerable people. (This is not confined to childcare. Elder and disability care has similar stresses and costs, but no-one goes after women for that, do they…?)

Are you enjoying uni op? Happy? Enjoying the course? Made good group of friends?

'I'd rather a nanny & her children starved than exploit her time away from them'
Doesn't seem practical.

My view is if the individual 'girl boss' concerned supports political parties whose policies effectively coerce women in poverty into making these choices via lack of social safety nets then the she's immoral & exploiting.

Sometimes all the choices we have are immoral one way or another so it's a matter of the lesser evil & whether you make an effort to change this that matters.