Unsure au pair - am I expecting too much?

[Potentialaupair]

Hi! I’ve seen a lot of discussion on here about au pairs and I was wondering if anyone could spare some advice for one?
get ready for a ramble…

I’ve got a contract with a family but I am now having a bit of a wobble about them. They were super lovely on the call and so I accepted the position with them a bit too quickly. More recently some stuff has raised some red flags

• firstly the room is very small (5 square meters). It is clean and just been painted which is nice. However, the family have only put a bed (with some under bed storage) in and no other furniture and said that they will add more furniture if needed once I’m there. I feel a bit put out as I don’t really want to be living out a suitcase! Additionally as far as I know there is not a radiator in the room, which is a problem as the room is not connected to their house (it’s a chambre de bonne - service room on top floor of paris building) and I doubt the corridors in the building are heated.
• they have also asked me to cook dinner for the whole family every night - which I can do but combined with the room makes me feel not very on equal footing
• they also changed my start hours from 4:30 to 3:30pm between our first call and signing the contract and reduced the pocket money in the same time frame

I feel very torn as they did seem nice and I want to give them a chance and make sure I’m worth having around but at the same time I feel like they’ve already shown lack of regard for my comfort with the room etc. I feel like I could handle each of these things individually but together it’s a lot! Please let me know what you think!!

Red flags. You'll be Cinderella in a month.

They are taking advantage.
An au pair never takes sole responsibility for the children or any domestic work; certainly NOT cooking family dinner every night. ( An Au pair might occasionally help sometimes by by peeling the potatoes or setting the table while the employer cooks dinner).

You should have a heated bedroom with seating, storage for clothes/books etc, curtains, good lighting, bedside light etc.

When is your regular off-duty time? They are supposed to allow time for you to see frirnds, attend language classes etc.

'An au pair never takes sole responsibility for the children'

This is not true in the UK. Most people have au pairs for the purpose of before/after-school care while they work.

Maybe in France it's different?

The room is illegal in Paris. It's 8m² or 12m³ of it's got a raised bed. You need to check if there are other tenants on the same floor. You'll likely be sharing a likely dirty toilet. Based on my experience of Paris, the room will almost certainly be damp, poorly insulated and unliveable in the summer. The family will certainly know all of this. Unfortunately, there are a lot of undocumented people in Paris so it's relatively common to treat foreigners as servants.

This is not true in the UK. Most people have au pairs for the purpose of before/after-school care while they work.

Yes - but in the same way that an elder sibling or baby sitter would be responsible. It’s a responsible person following instructions until the parent returns.

The expats in Paris Facebook group is really good. There are a lot of au pairs who can give you advice and you'd probably be able to find a placement there too if you want something different

'Yes - but in the same way that an elder sibling or baby sitter would be responsible. It’s a responsible person following instructions until the parent returns.'

Exactly. Parents are away, au pair is in sole-charge of the children (but obviously following parents instructions, not making life decisions for them!). It's the same as a babysitter really.

Don't do it. Trust your instinct.
Many years back I was an au pair in Italy.
The mother seemed so lovely on the phone. Told me to book the most convenient flight (insisted that I didn't book the cheapest as they wanted me ASAP and would reimburse me)
The dc were lovely but the mother certainly was not.
After 6 weeks she still hadn't reimbursed me or even paid my salary. She also stole my return plane tickets so I couldn't just leave. Luckily my dparents knew an Italian lawyer and had her call to sort it out. The mother then acted all hurt and put out, but she did pay me.
She had me making 2 meals a day, spring cleaning and ironing. She made me work one day at the weekend and refused to let me meet a friend of mine on my birthday because she needed me to babysit, even though her sister was there and capable of babysitting.I wasn't allowed to use their washing machine unless I paid the equivalent of £5 a time, therefore I ended up trying to wash my clothes in their bath. She had a cupboard on the third floor landing full of real fur coats, so wasn't in any way strapped for cash.
Early on, the dc had told me that their previous two au pairs had run away in the night! It soon dawned on me why. I started to fantasise about how to do away with her, there how much I hated her guts!
I lied to her about a family emergency, spent another 3 weeks with friends who kindly let me stay with them and got the hell out of there. The kids were sad when I left and I was even more sad for them having such a horrible witch as a mother.
She called me a year later asking me if I'd like to come back again for the summer!

I have been an au pair in france (shit experience) and had three au pairs (all of whom wanted to stay until the end of their visas, all of whom I’m in touch with and super attached to!)

There is no WAY you should be cooking dinner for all every night. Making a pot of pasta because mum or dad is late, great, cooking something quick for kids, sure. A pasta dish or fish fingers and veg, or sandwiches or reheating left overs is the most mine ever did, but tbh rarely that as I cooked for them!

All three had absolute horror stories of being treated abominably- one was by someone I knew who was super ‘nice’ but basically expected the services of a high-end full time nanny for a few hundred quid a month.

You sound so lovely and conscientious- trust me, there will be a fun, kind family that will LOVE to have you come to them. If you don’t get it right first off, leave and find someone else. Presumably this is your big life experience- you owe it to yourself to make it worthwhile, not to some unknown family!

Sorry for the delay! Thank you so much for all your advice, you have made me feel much less alone in my worry!

Tell me you are not going through with it!