The Blogfathers

In the age of my grandparents, the roles of parents were fairly common. The father of the family worked and the mother was the one at home with the children talking care of the home. My parents changed that routine. They both worked outside the home, and had people to watch their four children while they were at work. In my case it was my Grandmother. She lived close enough that they could have free child care.

We have all heard the term DINK’s (double income no kids). Many couples get used to having a career and more so, they get used to that two paycheck per month income. We buy more expensive cars, live in more lavish houses, and we occasionally actually eat a meal at home if we are not out on the town every night.

This was our story. We had a very nice income, and we did whatever we felt whenever we felt. We had brand new cars, a nice house, and our fridge was stocked with more wine than any other food group. Then came our children. We made a choice that we would continue to have two incomes in our family. This is not an odd decision as many couples have decided to have more income. Since we both had jobs, we had to decide who would raise our children.

This sounds like I am being flippant about the rearing of our children, but in fact we agonized over the decision on what we would do–a childcare facility, an in home care person, a relative, a nanny, an au pair? We had to make a choice. Not just any choice but a choice that would ultimately shape our children’s foundation and behavior. How could we possibly put our children’s lives in the hands of a total stranger to watch over them and protect them? My company offered a service to help me find a form of daycare so I called the service and told them what I wanted. My nervousness must have shown through because I was making jokes about this serious topic, and the voice on the other end of the phone was not laughing. They of course took this seriously and in spite of my attempts to make it humorous, she wanted no part of it. They found us a list of three providers and we would interview each to see which stranger would be the one to take our child.

This is a problem faced by every set of new parents that are both working outside the home. They get to come home to a recap of what they are missing in their own child’s life. The bruise they received was not even noticed until you got home, but it would be nice to know how it got there. When your daughter or son was struggling for that first step and finally found the balance for that first step it was missed because the sitter was changing the diaper of another one, and of course, you were in that board meeting wondering how much longer the meeting would drag because you had a deadline to meet

Our first sitter was a joy. She had in home care, and we were her best client’s, as we never missed a payment and we always gave her a year end bonus. In turn she watched our children never once calling in sick or telling us she could not do her duty. This I know is a rarity and we enjoyed her watching our kids and became good friends over time. She watched our daughter as an infant and watched the next two through their infancy and we never once had a questionable problem, other than the weird bruise, but you would have to know my kids to understand their propensity for getting weird injuries. They were always well fed, and they never had a difficulty while in her care. The only problem I had, was I was not sure what she actually did with my kids. What did she teach them? What little bits of foundation did she instill in them?

Our fourth child has now come and the sitter moved during the time my wife stayed home for her maternity leave. We had to find another sitter. Would we possibly be as lucky as the first time? This time we looked to a mother of a child at my daughter’s school. She went so far as to quit her own job just to watch my children. Turns out she is the best sitter from a foundational standpoint we could have. She has our same values and thoughts on child rearing, and better yet she looks at us like we are the bad parent, and often handing us “how to” pamphlets. She has older children out of the home and a new child that is 6. She has seen most of it and been through most of it as a parent. We are one of the lucky ones. We found our perfect Mary Poppins.

Other People's Parenting, Nanny 911