Wanted: Toddler's Personal Assistant: How Nannying for the 1% Taught Me about the Myths of Equality, Motherhood, and Upward Mobility in America

by Stephanie Kiser

There are certain things in America that can suggest a person is either very wealthy or incredibly poor. Where I come from, a yard with dozens of cars in it screams poverty. The cars are mostly junk, being saved in the hope that one day they’ll have a healthy part that can be salvaged or an engine to repurpose. But a person in East Hampton with a driveway full of automobiles has surely done well for themselves. At the very top of the list of wealth indicators is something far costlier than cars: children.

When an Upper East Side mother has a third child, there is no question as to why: she wanted three kids, and she could afford three kids. Where my parents came from, multiple children typically occurred at a much younger age and suggested something entirely different: a couple of high school sweethearts liked to shag and played fast and loose with the condoms.

The fact was, Americans supported working wives, so long as the women still did all the things they’d done when they didn’t work.

I’m surrounded by families with more money than they could ever need, and they’re being served by people who are likely just as capable as them but who simply weren’t fortunate enough to inherit millions at birth.

Despite how much I loved the children I’ve cared for, I’ve grown resentful of them. Resentful of the opportunities they have to become anyone they aspire to be. They’ll never need to choose a university based on the financial aid package or sacrifice their passions for a livable salary. They’ll be able to take unpaid summer internships that impress future employers instead of working minimum wage jobs to save for the year ahead. These things won’t matter. They can afford to be anyone they want to be.

In Manhattan, having a therapist is a mark of success, wealth, and awareness. In a poor neighborhood, it can mean only one thing: you’re crazy.

My father’s reasons for voting Republican, backward as they may have been, made sense to him. He had worked harder than anyone I had ever known to get where he did. The truth was my dad was not racist or dumb or evil. He was scared. He was scared of the government taking more of what little he had. Like me, he just was not fully clear on how it all worked.

The first child seems so dependent and fragile that it’s hard to believe they will ever be anything other than terrifying. Then comes the second child, and maybe a third, and suddenly you have this acute understanding that it is unlikely you will kill the children. In fact, it’s far more likely that the children are going to kill you.