My wife and I have a set of infant twins, and we are staring down the barrel of the end of her maternity leave. We’ve been examining child care options, and bringing someone to live in the house is quite price competitive with taking them elsewhere, with the added advantages of convenience, low caregiver-child ratio, and easy oversight. We can spare the room in the house without too much fuss, assuming the live-in is reasonable.
I am a little leary, however, of having a stranger living in my house. After a few weeks they should cease to be a stranger, but with au pairs they cannot be interviewed face to face. Domestic help and second-year au pairs are also available locally, at an increased cost. Does anyone have any experience with this? Did you use an agency? Which one? Or did you strike a private deal with a nanny? How did it work out? Any and all advice accepted!
Not that I’m trying to be all Dr. Laura on you or anything, but what’s preventing your wife from staying home? It sounds to me like you make plenty of money (if you’re considering hiring live-in help). Do you need her salary to make ends meet? Or does she really really love working?
My former boss had au pairs (a pair of au pairs?) for both his children when they were young. He never had any problem with any of the girls, and they quickly became members of the family.
I met only one of them. Her name was Jenny, she was from Sweden, about 6’ tall with legs that went on forever, and was, well, stunningly beautiful. This being summer, she had just come back from taking the children to the swimming pool in their neighborhood. I almost asked my boss to adopt me.
We have 18-month old twins too, and a third child on the way.
We made the decision right off the bat for Mrs. Moto to stay home. That was important for us, for our own reasons. But cost was a consideration here.
Child care is expensive, no matter what option you choose. Au pairs or nannies are the priciest of all. If they’re live in’s - the cost is astronomical.
Add to that the cost of your wife’s business attire, commuting costs, lunches out, frequent dinners out or takeout food. Also a higher tax bracket from the second income.
Have you considered the fact that, with her working, breastfeeding would be nearly impossible? Breastfeeding for us was impossible anyway, due to medical issues with my wife and the twins. I can tell you that keeping twins in formula was a huge expense.
It’s entirely possible that you’ll be losing money by having a dual-income household. Now, whether that’s something you want to do anyway because your wife loves her job or her income is really good, is a decision you’ll have to make. But you should be clearheaded about the financial implications.
You’ll also be having someone else raise your children for the first, most fun years of their lives. This isn’t a decision to make lightly.
I would love for my wife to stay home and raise the kids, but its not realistic. I make a decent salary, but its not quite enough to cover all of our expenses. Also, my wife enjoys her work a lot, and earns a lot more than I do. Since we can afford the help, hiring a leggy blonde Swede to take care of our children seems like the next best thing to staying home. If anything, as the lower-salaried parent I should stay home, but I have some excellent benfits and I only work about 5 minutes from home.
How do you figure that? The cheapest child care we’ve found is in-home day care, provided by a local caregiver in her house. All of the people we’ve interviewed (who are state licensed) start at $125 per week per child. Au pairs start at $250 a week, which is the same thing. We give up the suite in our basement, but get the advantage of a much more hands-on situation: the kids get to stay home, and the caregiver is almost a part of the family. The major additional cost is food which is trivial, since we already cook in bulk quantities, and auto insurance. It seems a lot easier and simpler all around.
Funny, $12,000 a year seems the definition of astronomical to me.
Emilio, some of the things you’re posting here are quite telling. You’re saying that your preference is for your wife to stay home, but it’s not realistic because of your expenses and her desire to work.
Expenses basically translates into lifestyle. People can always make do with less - they just choose not to. You become accustomed to steak instead of pot roast, a new car instead of a used one. A big house instead of a townhouse. Stuff like that.
The real issue is that your wife doesn’t want to stay home and raise your twins. She wants to work instead. That’s a lifestyle choice.
We made a different choice. Mrs. Moto is staying home. Incidentally, we’re doing this in the metropolitan Washington, DC area, not all that far from you. We own a 3 bedroom townhouse and two cars. We’ll be buying a minivan shortly. And I make far less than $100,000 a year.
It can be done, and managed relatively easily. Your choice, though.
You are making some pretty big assumptions about the OP’s household income and expenses, and why they are making the lifestyle choices they have. For all you know, the OP is making $15k and his wife is making $100k, and they would actually be below the poverty line if his wife stayed home.
And maybe you don’t think so, but $100k is a hell of a lot of money to most of us; it’s a whole lot more than I make, for example, roughly triple what my mom made when I was a kid, adjusted for inflation (and she was the sole employed person in our household), and significantly more than the median U.S. household income:
You have no idea how easily they could manage on one salary, because as far as I know you have no clue what the salary in question is, or what their other obligations are. He didn’t ask for advice on whether his wife should stay home; he asked for advice on child care options.
By the way, I am also annoyed at some posters’ apparent assumptions that the wife should by default be the one to stay home with the kids. Obviously this makes breastfeeding rather simpler, which is a Good Thing. But one of my co-workers managed quite nicely with a three-month maternity leave, followed by her husband quitting his job and staying home, as she made several times his salary. There are all sorts of ways to make things work. Mentioning that people might want to consider some real-life number crunching is one thing, but blanket assumptions that the person with the uterus is automatically the best, or even the most appropriate primary caretaker in every situation, are ridiculous.
Kid #2 is now imminent for them, and 4 years later Dad is still going to be the primary caretaker parent. It works well for them. Different strokes, you know.
Well, that’s true, Eva Luna. I was making a few assumptions, just to keep the conversation moving.
The OP is a homeowner in the DC-Baltimore area, considering hiring an au pair. I was assuming he wasn’t skating near the poverty line.
Emilio also mentioned that he would love for his wife to stay home. If any assumptions were made about her staying home, it started with him.
I admit to a preference that a parent stay home with tthe kids, if financially possible. That’s what we did in our family. It seems financially possibly for Emilio as well, and seems to be an option he’d prefer. I was just telling him that we were able to easily accomplish this.
Yes, it would be nice to actually get an answer to the question you asked, wouldn’t it?
We didn’t have live ins, but my husband’s niece worked as a nanny/au pair for a couple who had twins. She had a good experience and was very attached to the kids. She was a student in the Bay Area, where housing is expensive, so it worked out very nicely for her. She cared for the kids during the day and took classes at night. She’s also American, so it may be possible to find more local people you could interview.
Another relative had a live-in from Mexico who did child care and light housework. They seemed happy with the arrangement–she stayed with them for quite a few years.
Since I’m neither married nor do I have kids yet, I can’t give you a personal story about an au pair, but I did work (temping) at an au pair agency for a while. I dealt with a lot of the files on the au pairs and families, and it seemed to me that most of the families were extremely happy with their au pairs, and vice versa.
They would become like part of the family, and many of the au pairs would accompany the families on outings even when it was not necessary that they be there, they just liked spending time with both the parents and kids. The agency worked very hard to match the family with an au pair that met their needs, and also would be willing to help you find a new au pair if the one you got did not work out for some reason. Also, if the au pair was unhappy, they would find a new place for her (or, occasionally, him).
Personally, growing up my parents always worked, my father during the day and my mother at night, so somebody was always home with us. However, I would have preferred that both parents be home at the same time and be able to spend time together if possible. I think that if you can afford it, then an au pair might be a good idea for you.
Au pairs start at $250 a week, which is the same thing.
You think you’re going to find a full-time au pair for a thousand a month?
My guess is the only type of person you are going to find that will live in on that salary is an older woman, maybe divorced or widowed, who already has a car and whose kids are out of the house. This is not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but when I think of “au pair” though I think of a tall leggy young Swedish blonde who has the energy to keep up with rowdy kids.
Basically a young au pair, especially a GOOD one, isn’t going to work for what you’re offering. Especially in the DC area, where her colleagues are probably getting paid two or three times that amount.
Yes, the rent would be free and you’d feed her for free. But still. When you figure in taxes and the health insurance she’s going to need, twelve thousand a year isn’t much. Let’s pretend that, on average, your au pair is “on call” 14 hours a day. I assume you guys will let her sleep and give her a couple of hours to herself every day That’s 98 hours of “work” a week – yes she’ll have downtime when the babies are sleeping but let’s pretend it’s 98 anyway. That’s an average of $2.55 an hour for watching 2 babies. Even with the extras you’re throwing in, most women would do better working elsewhere.
Another thing to keep in mind is that there are immigration-related program requirements that come with au pair programs. It’s been a while since I looked at the particulars, but for agencies to be certified to sponsor au pair programs and issue the necessary visa-related paperwork, the program has to comply with standards set by the State Department for this purpose. As I recall, these include a predefined minimum wage and working hours, health insurance, free time, and the opportunity to attend academic classes; you aren’t simply getting unlimited amounts of the person’s time for whatever the market will bear.
These requirements are standard across all approved au pair programs so you should be able to call any agency and get the basic scoop. The $250/week salary is probably not the only cost you’re on the hook for, which may throw off your calculations.
Just to give a different perspective, I was an au pair twice in my life. Once in England and once in Australia. I enjoyed both of my placements and really did become a member of these families.
The important thing to getting a good au pair is a good agency. In my first experience even though we never met face to face we exchanged letters, photos and even a few telephone call before I was placed with them. Also it was my third or forth family that I chose based on compatibility and criteria that both myself and the family had outlined.
The second time I au paired the agency was horrible. I was traveling and needed work so I basically just filled out a form and bingo I was living in someone’s home. I think both myself and the family lucked out that we got each other because there were little or no checks.
Also to the comment about how much they are paid, it really is very low. It’s supposed to be about experiencing another culture by getting to know and becoming part of a family.
It’s important to remember that if they are true au pairs that will be limited to the length of there stay so that they will have to get a replacement about every year.
I don’t yet have children but I think it is a definitely a good choice for child care.
When my husband’s aunt had triplets (eek!), they hired an Irish au pair to help out with the babies and their four-year-old brother. In their case, though, both mom and au pair were with the kids full-time. It worked out really well for them; the au pair wound up staying in the U.S., and she still babysits the kids often–the triplets are now ten.
OTOH, when my sister-in-law was in au pair in France, she wound up working for a family that was involved in a New Age cult. Not, I assume, that that would be an issue in your case, Emilio.
Wow, lots of things to respond too, and not much time. Mr. Moto you are correct that I would like for her to stay home, but thats not going to happen. Even if I could convince her we could live on my salary, she wouldn’t be happy staying home taking care of the kids, which would defeat the purpose. At some point I might consider staying home, but I have some shortcomings as a primary caregiver.
As with all such things, the answer is compromise. Although we can’t stay home with the kids 24/7 we do keep our workdays limited to 8 hours, and my commute is minimal, so we can realistically still spend plenty of quality time with the kids.
The $250/week figure comes from various au pair palcement agencies as well as some on-line classifieds. The typical au pair work week is limited to 45 hours, which should not be hard to arrange as I am working 4-day weeks until I run out of vacation and sick time, which won’t happen for almost two years, and my wife is in negotiation with her boss for a similar arrangement. We have a large in-law suite in the basement, and several colleges and universities within a few miles, one of which is where I work.
Since it seems like we’re going to need some help, having someone living in seems like the best option for all concerned.
A few other notes…first, I want to try to avoid the trap that I see many of the parents in my neighborhood fall into. One parent (usually the father) works so hard keeping the other parent home with the kids the he himself is rarely home! I think two part-time parents are better than one full-time and one absent parent.
Second, it seems like pickinga good agency is important. I am naturally drawn to the ones that require the most documentation from the host family, including interviews, home visits, and recommendations. If they’re fussy about whom the will assign au pairs to, they should be able to get better au pairs in their program.
Thirdly, using an agency costs more, but they handle payroll taxes, health insurance, visas etc. So there is a plus to using an agency rather than finding someone on the free market.
had two different live-in nannies and have a bunch of friends with au pairs.
Basically, its a crap shoot - one nanny was a cleaning lady of ours who wanted to shift to a different life - not working from house to house. She was great until one of her parents got sick back home (South America) and she had to go.
Next nanny was through a friend’s nanny who was Russian and had a friend who wanted to come to America. She was great when our son and daughter were babies and needed caring for but not as much interaction. When they got older, she was less effective - just not that type of person.
We have had friend who love their au pairs - although young, they are nuturing and great; and friends who go through 3 or 4 before they get one that is really okay.
I wish I had advice - even if you get to interview them, you only get a first impression. True it can help weed out obvious No’s, but it won’t get at the subtle “how comfortable are we with you in our house?” aspect of the whole thing.
Bottom line - you get used to it, the help is great, but the ultimate “perfect fit” can be very elusive.
That’s 98 hours of “work” a week – yes she’ll have downtime when the babies are sleeping but let’s pretend it’s 98 anyway. That’s an average of $2.55 an hour for watching 2 babies. Even with the extras you’re throwing in, most women would do better working elsewhere.