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

Once, a first-generation college student and, now, just a toddler’s personal assistant.

But that’s the thing about kids. Rich, poor, smart, fresh, happy, angry, it doesn’t matter. Children are universally difficult.

I begin to think maybe I hadn’t been slow after all. Maybe I had just been born into the wrong class.

The less I take, the less it will appear I need. Wealthy people can afford to look greedy. It’s not unusual for them to be given free products, clothing, or experiences.

The thing I would later come to realize is that women needing validation from men is a universal problem that affects every class.

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.

Women in America were fucked. Poor, minority, and uneducated women in America were doubly fucked.

I feel a flash of shame at how easily I focused on my mother’s faults, never recognizing her strengths.

It feels easier than what is real, which is that I’ve made a choice that I don’t particularly like and that I am deeply ashamed of.

It strikes me that education was how I ended up here. Everything about my life today can be traced back to one pivotal moment: the day I set foot in a private high school.

I had been under the impression that in America college was for anyone, but student debt was nothing more than tax on the poor.

the art of being the poorest person in a wealthy room.

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.

she treats herself like an equal, and as a result, everyone else treats her that way too.

Vacationing with small children isn’t a vacation at all. It’s just a bunch of mundane tasks and tantrums with a bad sunburn.

Because for every blissful moment with a child comes ten more of hell.

Her life hadn’t always been easy, and for the first time, I thought maybe she’d been doing the best she could all along. I felt sorry and ashamed that it had taken me this long to see that, but growing up is hard, and accepting people for who they are is even harder.

I have spent many years pretending and wanting to fit in with the 1 percent. But looks are deceiving. I can never be one of them. And I’m no longer sure I want to be.

Respect. I had been so desperate for people to give me that, but how could I seek it from others when I refused to give it to myself?

The only thing truly precious in this world is having people who love you, and success and happiness often have no correlation whatsoever.

you’re doing the hardest job in the world. You should be so proud of yourselves.