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

But slowly her real reasoning for not addressing his behavior is revealed. Stefany takes a progressive, modern approach to parenting: “My philosophy is no discipline. Digby is a good boy; he needs guidance, not regulation,” she says.

No, that's just not parenting

At her core, I believe she is a good person, but her desire to be regarded as a great mom by her privileged peers brings out unpleasant qualities.

Too many rules and too much sheltering have resulted in a socially inept child.

Wanting help was one thing, but finding quality help, affording it, and pushing yourself through it was another. It seemed the mental health system was flawed, no matter what sort of patient was seeking treatment.

I clutch my new puppy tight against my chest.

Girl...when are you going to have time for it?

“We didn’t even have a gym until a few years ago. You’re starting to live like us. Makes me think maybe we’re paying you too much.” She laughs.

Girl what?! Also, Kiser ends the chapters with such great lines

Digby is five years old and shits his pants nearly every day. Not accidentally, but spitefully, on purpose. He has been potty-trained for three years, uses the toilet when convenient, and is fully aware that this behavior is unacceptable. But still, he keeps doing it, and his mother keeps making me hand-wash his soiled underpants. “He just is so smart,” Stefany sighs as I carry a pair of briefs caked with poop into the laundry room. “He can’t stop whatever he’s doing to go. That’s what it is. He was so focused on his LEGO creation that he literally couldn’t pause to go to the bathroom.”

That's insane

I no longer respond to her wildly inaccurate observations of her son.

These are linen boxers; do you know how much they cost per pair? Put them in the sink and scrape it.”

I feel bad for him, this oddly independent, scared little boy, shouldering fears instilled in him too early by an overprotective parent who’s more concerned with seeming like the perfect mother than being one.

I have not yet mentioned that I don’t typically cook or clean, but I don’t have to. By simply looking at me, this man presumes that these are not tasks I am willing to do. I wonder what would happen if I was a young woman of the same age but a different race sitting here in this interview—would they consider me maid material then?

She’ll be happy to give me the contract after I start. I turn to my friend, report back the news, and tell her I don’t like the sound of it.

Yeah that's sus

I spent an entire semester solidly maintaining my insular worldview—hearing facts, feeling disturbed by their content, and ultimately disbelieving them.

If Rose was surprised I hadn’t read Hard Choices, I was equally surprised she had. I knew that Obama was, unfortunately, the president of the U.S., but at the time I couldn’t have told you who the vice president was. I had no clue who governed Rhode Island or what a House seat was. I certainly didn’t know who the “president” of the UK was. It struck me as odd that someone in this country would have any interest at all in a politician from another.

She really lacks curiosity...

she was “a crazy snowflake pushing her liberal propaganda,” my father would have said.

but what do YOU say

It felt like a betrayal to every living family member to so much as hold Hillary Clinton’s book.

The bottom line was this: liberal agendas put our family at risk because all they care to do is take from the rich and give to the poor. Much later I would wonder why it had never occurred to me that we were the poor we stood so firmly against.

😭😭😭

I realized that I had no idea how politics actually worked. Worse, I had no idea how the world worked. My opinions, so deep and impassioned, were based on hearsay. I had never once considered forming my own beliefs on politics because I had been given them from the start.

Each day, Lila saw the gears turning, my mind reading a passage then my hands googling a topic, but she never said a word. She had her opinions, and she let me decide mine.

Love Lila

It was, in a way, exactly what I had been hoping to find on my trip abroad: more. I had wanted to learn more about myself and the world that existed beyond the tiny bubble in which I had grown up.

“It’ll be much cheaper than missing your flight and having to buy another.”

She has the money...

My whole life I had heard my family debate universal healthcare. “You know who wants that? Welfare leeches. You want healthcare, you oughta work for it. Nothing in this country is free.” For years, I had echoed this rhetoric. Healthcare, my family had assured me, should be earned. But now all I could think was, should it? What would happen if I walked into a hospital here with an emergency but no Blue Cross card? Would they take me? If they did, would I receive the same quality care as everyone else? And most importantly, would it be worth it to seek care, or would I rather die than pay the bill?

After that, I promised myself I would never risk going without proper health coverage, but then I became a nanny, and I found myself doing exactly that because that is how domestic jobs often work. No insurance is just part of the package.

The days are boring and hard and, above all, lonely. I wonder if this was how my young mother had felt. If this was, in fact, how all mothers felt, regardless of their social status, location, or race.

It’s one thing being unable to control a child in private, but public meltdowns are an entirely different phenomenon.

When a child is having a tantrum at a restaurant or a store, in a bus or on a plane, that child’s caregiver is typically as mortified as the people around them are bothered.

After all, they aren’t my children. They are simply mine to feed, bathe, nurture, love, and protect for twelve hours a day, five days a week.

fighting fire with fire won’t put one out; it’ll set the whole damn house ablaze.

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 friend list split into two categories: friends from the small suburban town where I grew up and friends I’d made in college or New York City. My hometown friends became very aggressive in their posts. Drain the swamp. No more freebies. Kill Hill. What I could not understand was that, similar to my father, the people posting these things were the same ones who would have benefited most from Hillary’s policies. I told my New York friends it made absolutely no sense to me, but that was a lie because just a few years earlier I would have been echoing them.

Make America Great Again, my father texted the group chat that afternoon. I snapped. You have three, NO FOUR, daughters, I texted back, and you’re celebrating that a womanizer is now in charge of the free world. You think his tax plan is going to help you? You’re in for a rude fucking awakening BECAUSE YOU DON’T MAKE ANY REAL MONEY. You’re disgusting for voting this way. Too stupid to stop voting against your own best interests. This was the precise moment in which my parents’ and my differences were no longer avoidable. I resented everything they were, and they hated who I had become. To them, I was a traitor. A stuck-up city brat who had become too materialistic to remember where she came from. To me, they were closed-minded, unaware, and uninformed. Everything I was trying to run from. We were all right, and we were all wrong.

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.

Our friendship offers her a glimpse into everything motherhood has stolen from her: freedom from mom life.

Devon loves her children but isn’t afraid to talk about how difficult motherhood is and how exhausting she finds it. “Theo and I have the same job, same credentials, same education. Everything about our professional workload is equal, but when it comes to the children, most of that lands on me.”

Before I started this job, I’d always imagined myself having three or four kids. Now, I feel more like Stew did when he was awaiting his fourth baby: children are nothing more than another mouth to feed.

She is the opposite of anything I’ve ever observed in the help: she isn’t submissive. In fact, I’d go as far as to say she was dismissive of the folks paying her. In the homes of the rich, I’ve always felt, to some extent, that I was privileged to be there, and my employers often reinforced this feeling. But Esther approaches it as if she’s doing them the favor.

Esther might be hired to help, but 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. The moms I see are rarely without a child in tow. While I often observe fathers drinking beers by the pool and chatting with friends on the phone, the moms never seem to stop being mothers.

Peace is a luxury I no longer take for granted.

“Steph?” Russ whispers. “Yes?” “I love you.” There are rare instances of nannying that feel more like a privilege than anything else. The sort of unconditional love children offer is different from the affection we share as adults. It’s given without judgment or boundaries. Their love is pure and simple. There’s a generosity to it that they quickly outgrow. It is the one thing I get from this job that I could not possibly find anywhere else. And it is no small thing.

“I love you, too,” I say, and as I occasionally do, I think of how lucky I am to be here and wonder how I’ll ever leave. But this feeling is fleeting. Because for every blissful moment with a child comes ten more of hell.

“Don’t worry, Steph. We’ve been doing this a long time. Kids are crazy. We’ve all been there,” Marilyn smiles gently. “You’re a good nanny, and we have your back.”

Awww 😌

I was so obsessed with making money, and now even that isn’t enough to keep me happy. I’m trying to write on weekends, but my free time is so limited and the work never goes anywhere. Sometimes it feels like my entire identity has become being a nanny. I am still lost.

Russ snuggles a little closer to me. I love him so much, but I hate being his nanny.

I find myself inching closer to Russ now, aware that just as he has grown to find comfort in me, the same is true on my end. I’m not just a big part of Russ’s life. He’s a huge part of mine. I wonder which of us will take my departure harder.

It’s then that I imagine someone else taking my spot, filling my shoes, and replacing who I am to these three children. I don’t want them to have a new nanny. I don’t want a stranger taking care of them. But I also don’t want to do it anymore. I have had this conversation with myself so many times. It’s the problem with this job. You treat them like they’re yours, but they never were. It was always meant to be temporary.

In my mind, success equated to things. Earning things, buying things, owning things. I wanted more, and I got it, but now I wondered at what price?

It is time for me to move forward. I come to this realization in the last week of February 2020.

OMG

feel rustling as my dog lies down by my feet.

Who cares for the dog when she works 12 to 14 hr shifts?!

No one here feared they would be denied a bed if they entered Southampton Hospital. Everyone could afford the best care, and more importantly, they could afford to leave the pandemic hotspot in which they lived and have their staff risk exposure in order to keep themselves safe. And the staff couldn’t afford to refuse.