to think £25 for babysitting 3 children until 3am on New Years Day is disgustingly stingy.

[TaggieCampbellBlack]

DD and her friend. Both 14.
Parents said they'd be back shortly after midnight. Finally rolled in at 3am.

DD and friend slept over but were expecting them home before 3.

Stingy bastards handed over £25 this morning.

And also more than a little surprised. That isn't the done thing really is it? Getting in 3 hours late.

No you dont always get paid extra for nights, lates, weekends and bank holidays. My dp works in a childrens home and gets no extra. He worked xmas eve,xmas day and boxing day this year, no extra pay. There are plenty if jobs where you dont get extra for bank holidays etc.

£50+ is a lot as a tern i babysat and never got more than £2 an hour which was fine it topped up my paper round money etc.

I think.its shit the parents didnt get in at the time they had said but £25 is ok for a nights babysitting.

Another x-post. Thank you for clarifying, raven! I was beginning to think I was in a parallel universe or something!

DowagersHump, thing is, if you are living in an area where most people are paid minimum wage, where you yourself are paid minimum wage indeed, then babysitters should expect to be paid rather a lot less than that.

Wallison - I live in an area of the UK which has v high levels of unemployment. I still won't pay NMW or under for looking after my children because I don't think that's a NMW responsibility. I really hate the fact that childcare is so horribly underpaid and so under-respected in this country. It's really wrong.

Well, good for you Dowagers. Hope you continue to enjoy your 6 nights out a year!

Btw i would not leave a poorly child with a babysitter and if a chikd became ill.or upset i would expect to be called and i eould return home.

raven i think your situation is slightly diffetent as you say you are.unable to retutn home and you are expecting more to be done ie dinner etc. So rightly you pay more.

I swop babysitting with a friend and we just privide food/transport and we have a closr family friend who babysits in return for a meal and transport and we pay him back in other ways.

£35-40 .
Simple innit.

Weird that so many people expect children to be paid the same as adults. And have so much money to throw around.
To a 14 year old £25 (non-taxable) is a LOT of money. And baby-sitting is about the easiest job you can think of. Good fun too being in someone else's house for a change.
If I didn't have DCs to look after I would be out baby-sitting myself - unless the children are difficult it's money for old rope.
If teenagers charge the same as adults people will employ adults, simple as that. There are very few jobs that a 14 year old is legally allowed to do - so best not to price themselves out of the market.

£25 quid for babysitting at age 14 is fine.
Don't make me now!

Massively stingy between the two of them and very inconsiderate parents. I'd blacklist them for my DC immediately, however much they grovelled on a subsequent occasion. But I'm a hardliner when it comes to babysitting etiquette. If parents don't pay a reasonable amount and get back roughly when they agree and don't see the DC in question home safely then they don't ever get the DC again.

But the parents didnt want two babysitters. The tedns arranged for one to keep the other one compamy so the parents shouldnt have to pay both teens. If the parents requested both terns were there then yes they should pay both if them.

I would also provide a taxi/transport for a babysittet to get home.

For one teen £25 is fine and as orhers have said its only 79pence less tgan minimum wage for the hours worked. £25 and i presume snacks,transport for a nights babysittung for kids who were already in bed is perfectly reasonable.

£5 ph
7 hrs
£35

extra £5 for fucking them over on the time

£40 total

I pay £7 an hour to student babysitter and £10 an hour to qualified nursery worker babysitter, plus taxi home if back after 11. If you want to go out and have no babysitting costs, don't have kids.

£25 for 2 teenagers for that length of time is stingy and horrible.

WAY stingy. My child would never sit for them again.

DowagersHump I agree people who can't afford childcare can't afford to go out. Nobody owes anyone free or practically free childcare.

If any of my DDs' customers are paying for babysitting they are paying for full service and a guaranteed night out for themselves. Most of them would wonder what sort of mistake they had made in choosing a sitter if they were called home because a child had thrown up or had a bathroom accident or got upset. A bona fide emergency -- yes, but something that could be handled easily using household cleaner, paper towels and a bowl to puke in - most customers would think that was a bit much. The DDs prepare and serve dinner to most of the families they are babysitting (often something simple like peas and spaghetti or warmed up frozen meatballs, etc., or just pizza), clean up, supervise playtime and then cleaning up of toys and clothes and then bedtime. They are always told where the washing machine is in case something needs to be thrown in, where the bin is, how to use the oven and microwave and bottle warmer, where supplies like the nappies and the nappy bucket are. They are expected to leave the house in decent condition. After they've done all that they generally do homework.

The DDs are there to do what a parent would do and are paid accordingly. Teenagers are capable of handling a lot, and children are a bit more resilient than a few posters here give them credit for. Many teenagers are parents themselves and deal with all the mess that babies and toddlers generate all day every day.

DS has also managed to buy himself a laptop, clothes, shoes, trips to concerts and sports events. He set himself up doing odd jobs, beginning with a steady job for an elderly couple who referred them to all their friends and branching out from there. He made more per hour even as a novice (asking me for advice on stripping and painting a rusty garden gate) than the girls did after a lot of experience. He also got more per hour for his summer office job (in a law office, same sort of job as the DDs had, but different firm). I'm not saying this out of smugness but to agree with Dowager that work that girls do is underpaid and to suggest that we shouldn't be contributing to this inequity.

£12.50 for 7 hours work (8pm to 3am the next morning) is a rate of approximately £1.79/hour. Is that how low you value the services you perform for your children? Not talking about the mother/child bond or the lifetime of unconditional love here, just the sheer work you do. Childcare is horribly undervalued but this is ridiculous. What message does this give future mothers about their status in society?

Not entirely fair, math - if it is clearly understood by all parties that babysitting = 'being a human baby alarm who does no active childcare & phones parents, who are out locally, in case of a problem' then it's perfectly reasonable for it to be £25 for an evening.

The 3 hours late is unacceptable I think, & at the very least parents should have rung straight after midnight ('all quiet? Great, you girls get yourselves to bed, we're going to be late so don't wait up') & I'd certainly have assumed another 3 hours pay & called it £40 at that point.

But I'm actually a bit perturbed that you are suggesting that this has anything much to do with 'future mothers' & their status in society. Why not 'future parents'? Why does babysitting have to be a job for girls, & why would anyone equate it with parenting, anyway?

The fact 2 of them babysat - was that a request by the parents?? Did they book 2 sitters??? Or did babysitter decide to take a mate along for company?

£25 between the 2 is a tad tight IF the parents booked 2 sitters.

£25 for a teen babysitting is an OK rate. By minimum wage standards she was only underpaid by 76pence.

IMO - there are not many jobs 14yos can do and just having the opportunity to earn £25 in one night is a good deal imo. Not many jobs allow you to take a mate along for company as well. I would guess they had free drinks and nibbles thrown in as well - again not many jobs include that.

The fact the parents were 3 hours later than arranged is the underhand bit of this - not the payment imo.

mathanxiety - I think the parents that 'employ' your children should be hiring nannies. I would never dream of asking my sitters to do any of that, and indeed don't know anyone that does; maybe it's a class thing - if I want childcare, I'll pay a qualified professional rather than a teenager, and so does absolutely everyone I know in real life.

A 14 yo has no NMW they are not old enough to revive NMW so there is no NMW bracket to fit into.

And btw when I say 'childcare' I mean what your children are doing, not what I ask my babysitters to do (sit in a house with my son upstairs and already in bed and phone me if anything goes wrong). I don't need 'childcare' when I go out - I just need a person in the house who can contact me if I'm needed. If I did for eg if I was working nights and couldn't do the dinner/bath/bed thing myself then I would do what friends who work nights do and hire a night nanny. If anyone is skimping on childcare it is these people who leave teenagers (and not even teenagers - didn't you say that your children started doing this when they were 12 years old fgs?) in charge of children who need at the least personal care (feeding, bathing etc) and also from what you are saying regular nursing care because their children are ill when they go to their all-important book club meetings or whatever.

Exactly Socketreturningpixie - there is no NMW applicable because there is so little they can do to earn money at their age anyway. £25 is a good wage for 1 nights work imo. Its double a paper round which means going out in cold and wet probably for about an hour a day for 2 weeks to earn that.

I think they should have agreed a price upfront but I also dont think you can compare the care a teen would give to that of a qualified nanny/nurserty nurse no matter how good the teen may be.

Babysitting in the most part is sitting chatting to a mate whilst watching TV and eating free nibbles in the most part.

No, babysitting is agreeing to deal with all and every disaster that keeps a parent awake at 3 am if the situation arises.

Administering a dosage of an antibiotic is not nursing care. A child recovering from an ear infection is not an ill child. A small child who doesn't quite get to the loo in time while a mother is out is not a major disaster. A child who cries at bedtime is not a reason any of my DDs' customers would consider sufficient to call away from an evening out. A 12 year old who expects to be paid the rate my DDs were at 12 for babysitting should and could handle all of this.

I didn't mention bathing children -- you've gone from overegging the souffle to making things up there. Most parents are happy to skip the bath when the DDs are babysitting. It's usually a case of top and tail and brush teeth and bed. Children over the age of three should be expected to know enough about self care to co-operate in washing, tooth brushing and getting pajamas on, and should not require the services of a full on nanny to get to bed at night. Same goes for feeding themselves. Only babies in high chairs would need actual feeding. How do they manage in school when they don't have a fully qualified personal assistant available?

RavenAK -- it has been my observation that babysitting tends to be a girls' job. DS did some and got out of it as he realised he could make more doing odd jobs and gardening. Plus, when the babysitting callers ask for one sister and if she is not available they ask for the next younger one despite the fact that DS is in the middle, it is time to rethink the babysitting strategy. I had both boys and girls as babysitters when the DCs were young and was very sad to see one particular boy go away to university as he was brilliant and the DCs loved him. However, not all parents are willing to give a boy a chance, sadly. Both the DDs and DS learned much about how the world of girls' work and boys' work work operates from their experiences. The DDs were inspired to work really hard at maths and science as a result.

I never hired more than one sitter for an evening as in my experience having two friends over meant that they did more chatting than babysitting, and the DDs have never been hired as part of a team either.

But babysitting can't be dealing with everything the parents deal with, blue, if the baby sitter is under 16. A child under 16 cannot be legally responsible for another child. If someone under 16 is looking after a child, then the parent or guardian, and not the babysitter, remain legally responsible for the child's safety. If anything goes wrong, the parent is still always responsible ( NSPCC leaflet here ).

And what's more, if any harm comes to an under-16yo babysitter, the parent who's 'hiring' might be held responsible: s/he could be seen as accepting 'duty of care' for the babysitter as well as their own child(ren), by having her/him in their house for the evening. Also, the parent of the under-16yo sitter is always responsible for their child while they are babysitting - a fact that many parents of sitters don't seem to realise.

The Royal Society for Prevention of Accidents says "Under some circumstances, parents can be prosecuted and fined if they leave their children in a situation which a court might judge to be ?neglectful?. This usually occurs when there is an incident which requires intervention by the emergency services" ( more here ). This would include the parents of the under-16yo sitter as well as the parents of the younger children.

IMO it is a mistake to pay under 16s more, thinking this buys you a 'higher quality' service. If you need a babysitter who is more than "a human baby alarm who does no active childcare & phones parents, who are out locally, in case of a problem" (as raven neatly puts it) then you really do need someone aged over 16.

I dont think all 14yos could cope with every emergency the same way a qualified professional could.

Thats the risk you take as a parent if you choose to employ teens for childcare though over a qualified nursery nurse or nanny.

Personally I would not choose a teen to watch my small children - but if I did £25 is a fair price imo. I would expect more and therefore pay more to someone qualified.

I got about that much for babysitting on NYE.

That was 15 years ago though, and they were back before 12.30 and drove me home.

YANBU.

(Although I wouldn't have had 14 year olds unless the children were about 10)