Cost of baby sitting

[Niloufes]

Our baby sister recently told us that she is putting her costs up to minimum wage per hour, £7.20 an hour. Am i being unreasonable to think this is too much? She comes round when our 3 year old daughter is asleep and waits until we get home. Only once has she woken up and needed a drink and so the sitter is just sitting watching tv the rest of the time. Is this a normal amount to pay? we paid £6 before. aibu?

FWIW I pay £10/h to a sitter from our nursery. She knows my kids and is very experienced. I wouldn't give her less than £40 for a night.
At this rate she earns more than me but it's not a salary, it's very occasional work and I'm happy to pay it. Cleaners charge £10 an hour so I think babysitters deserve at least the same.
We don't go out very often though.

I'm more shocked that a lady of 40 has been bs for you for much less than nmw. Yes it's gone up to 7.20 but wasn't £6 before that

You have been grossly underpaying for probably years

I babysit at a minimum of £10 and for minimum of 4hrs regardless of used all of that time

If you want cheaper then use a teenager

Yes 99% of the time the bs will sit on sofa and watch tv

But you are paying for the reassurance if your child wakes up/ has temp /sick etc that the bs will be Able to deal with it without panicking

I think I find prices of £10+ hard to accept is that I was a baby sitter and never got anywhere near that as it was a doddle of a job. Revising whilst being paid for it! These wages are more than teaching assistants get paid and they are directly helping children progress, teachers wouldn't be able to work without them.

If people are paying £5 an hour for a childminder during the day then this seems a reasonable wage to me although by reading this thread I'm obviously in the minority!

A security guard can sit and read a book and know that they are still also doing their job. A babysitter can watch tv and still be minding the child. They're both waiting for something to happen and you're paying for their ability to act responsibly in that event.

A security guard job require training and can obviously be quite dangerous. The same is not true of babysitting. I'm not sure what people think might "happen" when looking after a child but it really isn't anything that requires more than basic common sense.

The whole "minimum wage" thing is rubbish as well. Babysitters are not (usually) employees. If you think they are I hope you are giving them a payslip, pay taxes, national insurance, pension contribution etc?

I sure know what I would prefer given the choice of £10 p/h for babysitting kids in bed or cleaning. They are not comparable.

I think the expansion of organisations like Sitters etc has skewed this somewhat, with their remit of providing so-called 'professional' (in this case the term seems to mean 'gets paid for what they do' rather than the original 'doctors/lawyers/teachers' usage of the word) babysitters. It has also contributed to the mindset that you cannot possibly love your kids unless you spend £50-£70 on booking a person to sit and watch telly while you go down the pub, because they're worth it etc. Of course, outside of mumsnet, most people earn rather less than that an hour themselves, for actual work, and so make other arrangements.

It has also contributed to the mindset that you cannot possibly love your kids unless you spend £50-£70 on booking a person to sit and watch telly while you go down the pub, because they're worth it etc.

Very true!

Just wanted to remind everybody who thinks that paying minimum wage for babysitting is taking the piss, babysitting is very often a job you take on on top of your full time job to earn extra money, (so you work your standard 8-12 hour day, travel to and from work and then travel to your babysitting job) so if you think you'd love to earn that much money sitting on the sofa (while pocketing somebody's hard earned cash) instead of meeting your friends, having an early night or just enjoying relaxing after hard days work please feel free to try it out! If you can't stomach paying for it, don't go out, stay in and do nothing while your kids are sleeping - it's free! For all of us that babysit after our long days at work, our free time is worth more than minimum wage, we take our job seriously, we don't relax and fall asleep while watching a film, we stay up and ready for your children if they need anything, we welcome you back with a smile and reassurance that everything was fine, and once we get home collapse on the bed for few hours, only to start it again in the morning...
A good babysitter is worth her weight in gold, especially today with all the dangers surrounding our children, you should appreciate her as she is looking after the most precious thing you have - your child and giving you peace of mind so you can enjoy your night out without guilt or fear...

Yes, there are many many dangers surrounding children. In the UK. In 2016. It's practically like downtown Aleppo. And as for taking it seriously, as I said, the one time I paid a so-called 'professional' babysitter (what next? Professional frozen food packers?) she did indeed fall asleep on the sofa, after raiding my cupboards, completely unlike the lovely teenagers I have always used before and since, so ime you definitely don't 'get what you pay for'. I don't know anyone irl who pays what people on this thread are saying they pay to babysitters. Probably because loads of the people I know irl earn a lot less for doing an actual job.

I've done babysitting and it WAS a piece of piss. All I did was sit on the sofa eating biscuits. I got £40 for the evening and thought it was daylight robbery!

Sure, if there had been an emergency or if the child had woken up, I'd have happily got more involved but as it was that didn't happen so it was an easy life for me.

It's reasonable for her to say she's entitled to minimum wage, but minimum wage for over 21's has been over £6 for the last 5 years so it seems a bit tight to suddenly decide she wants it and increase her hourly rate by so much. I wouldn't begrudge paying that amount, but prob would to such a large and sudden increase.

The whole "minimum wage" thing is rubbish as well. Babysitters are not (usually) employees. If you think they are I hope you are giving them a payslip, pay taxes, national insurance, pension contribution etc?

Very true.

I just wish I could find some babysitting work, would happily do it for £6 an hour, where are all these people who pay such fabulous rates - certainly not where I live.

You aren't just sitting on the sofa watching telly like you might be doing at home. You are away from home and your family, you can't just go to your bed if you are tired and how many parents would be ok if you drank a few glasses of wine, watched an 18 film and fell asleep snoring with it still playing? I was missing out on pretty much the only time I got to spend any good chunk of time with my husband that day. You are being paid to behave a certain way that is often late at night and the end time is at the beck and call of the parents not the sitter so you are being paid for the convenience factor too. Yes that is on the sofa, but you keep the TV low enough that you can listen out for the kids and honestly it isn't a lot of fun sitting watching TV an hour or more past your bedtime when you are tired and usually cold and not sure exactly when it is going to end and then driving home.

While it is very unusual to have an emergency and most responsible parents don't go out if their kids are a little off colour there are some that do. It isn't unusual for kids to stir though and need you to creep upstairs and stroke their backs or quietly murmur to them because they are having trouble getting back to sleep. Older kids sometimes wake for the toilet and you need to listen out when they do or they want to have a drink and call out because they wake and are thirsty and dozy. Sometimes when they wake having you there is distracting enough that they want to talk and you have to convince them to go back upstairs and go to sleep and that can involve a lot of sitting on the top stair in the dark until they settle back down otherwise some kids will go up and down the stairs for an hour trying it on.

I don't babysit any longer but when i did if i had one that was restless or hot or thirsty or chatty I wouldn't call the parents, I would deal with it. I also wouldn't share the mind numbingly boring and tiring hour sitting on the top stair trying to get the child back to sleep or rocking a baby who woke and is freaked out you are there instead of mum or the school age kid who wanted the light on and a book and a drink and to potty and to chat and to....., i'd just say that they were a little restless and needed a little help getting back to sleep. Some kids don't sleep as well when their parents are out regardless of whether they have been told their parents are out or not.

I charged the same amount whether I watched Strictly come dancing and other shows all night without having to leave the couch or if someone stirred repeatedly and needed me to go up and down and settle them. One kid I babysat for was when I was first married and my husband came with me and we had supper together (with approval of parents). We spent several hours taking it in turns holding the baby and rocking him because he didn't want to settle unless someone was doing this. It was exhausting that late at night when I had already worked a ten+ hour day that day, driven home, cooked dinner and then driven to my babysitting job.

I can imagine that looking after a baby could be hard work but looking after older children (e.g. school age) when they are in bed really is not. Nobody is saying that babysitters shouldn't be paid at all, just that not drinking wine or falling asleep or giving a drink to a child because they are thirsty, or having a "smile on your face" when the parents come home really isn't too much effort compared with other jobs and certainly not worth £10 an hour.

And yes babysitting covers babies also

When mine were smaller, as a close gap, any babysitter would be looking after two children under 18 months. Mine also as babies didn't go to bed before us so with babysitter they would be up most the evening also, and just napped on sofa/ babysitter if tired. We also don't even own a tv!
So a babysitter here would involve feeding dinner around 8pm ( they never ate earlier as babies/ toddlers) semi entertaining children a while with toys and books until they fell asleep on them or sofa. Then babysitter would read book or similar

We have the same babysitter 6 years on so they obv aren't put off

You can't really charge based on having done a day's work elsewhere though, that can't be the responsibility of the people hiring a babysitter! It is silly to get into comparing jobs, but there is no way an hour as a babysitter is as hard as an hour working in Macdonalds or at a care home or in many other minimum wage jobs. There will be some hours that are worse, due to the child crying etc, but this must be made up for by the majority of hours which are spent watching tv/on Internet/studying.

There are lots of jobs that are easier than working the chip machine at McDs and tons that are harder, not sure why that is relevant. Older children IME can be harder work than babies but sometimes babysitting is sitting on someone else's couch wondering when they are coming home and watching crap TV after your bedtime while trying to stay awake.

Hang on I thought that baby sitting was now a "professional" job with an hourly rate to match- why then are you talking about doing it on top of a twelve hour day doing another different job entirely? Are you saying that baby sitters are less than committed to their oh so professional careers?

I once got paid £10/hour to look after our neighbour's athritic dog

The dog was ancient - it had hip replacements (!) and was their pride and joy. It was, however, extremely anxious and if he was left alone he peed everywhere and destroyed the front door. So I got paid to sit on their sofa, watch SKY TV, and eat biscuits all evening. Once I asked them if I could get takeaway to eat at their house and they paid for that too!

Not a helpful post, but £6/h to look after children is a pittance. Childminders charge less because they have several children from several families, not because their job is worth less than minimum wage!

Also, and I probably don't get it because my job isn't classed as "professional", but doesn't most work involve rather more than "staying awake" and "saying hello to people"? Which of course baby sitting does as well, but the baby sitters on this thread are talking as though these things are onerous duties.

how can you not pay her minimum wage? If she worked anywhere at all for those hours she would get it. It's the minimum for a reason, the absolute Rock bottom payment for one hour.

For people saying other jobs like McDonald's sre harder I fully agree. I earn min wage in my second job (6.70 for me!) which i think is harder than babysitting.
The answer is not pay the babysitter less, it just highlights how unfair that others don't get more.

If babysitting is honestly seen as the easiest work ever (it's not!) then that means or warrants the rock bottom minimum wage payment, all other work should be paid higher.

Obviously you can't change the world! But you can chose to pay fairly.

Lots of jobs are easier than babysitting, but they're still worth the MINIMUM wage. £7.20 an hour is not a lot of money for an adult to earn. Four hours at that is only just over £28. That's not a lot of money when you have a home to run and bills to pay.

The government has decided that £7.20 is the minimum that an adult over 25 should be paid. If you can't/won't pay it, hire a teenager. But I would say £7.20/h is a good amount to pay to make sure your children are looked after in your absence.