I’ve seen a couple of movies and TV shows (real and fictional) where wealthy families have hired nannies for their children. In at least two, the kids are either in or approaching their teens.
How does that work? I cannot for the life of me think of any 15-year-old boy who is going to cotton to being picked up from high school by his nanny, nor can I think of any 15-year-old boy who even needs one.
But on the other hand, if your kids’ nanny has been with them since infancy, they’ve obviously developed a close and meaningful relationship with them over more than a decade, and they’re a part of the family (unless you raise your kids to just think of them as “the help”). Is it customary to keep a nanny employed until her charge is out of high school?
So what happens when your kid doesn’t need a nanny any more? Do you just fire them and hope the kids stay friends on Facebook or something?
Was your house 4000 sq ft and were you expected to keep it “entertaining ready” all the time?
In my experience, most nannies age into housekeepers and general assistants. They may work fewer hours and pick up a second family (often a referral in the same social circle).
Nope, it was a crumbling dump in the ghetto. But my point stands: by 15 I was expected to cook for myself when I was hungry (I could whip up a mean grilled cheese at 8), clean up after myself, and do my own damn laundry (mom’s words, lol).
Sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s reasonable to expect a 15 year old to keep a huge house clean. It really is a lot more work. It’s good problem to have, of course, but a kid is not lazy because they don’t have time to vacuum/sweep and mop 10 rooms 3/week.
A good article that addresses, under one set of conditions, the OP’s question: My Family’s Slave.
Other than that I can only speak anecdotally. My son had a nanny (not because we’re filthy rich, but because we were living in Indonesia and that’s how it’s done there, for many reasons) and was very close to her. But we moved to Egypt when he was 4, and while I would have been happy to bring his nanny if we could, it was legally impossible and she (quite understandably) did not want to move. Fortunately I had always been careful to the point of obsessive about making sure that my son’s time with the nanny never overshadowed time with his mom and dad, so while he did miss her, the break was not as painful as it might have been if she’d been his primary caretaker.
I have had friends (all of them Indian, thought that may just be coincidence) who grew up with a nanny and, when they became adults and struck out on their own, always continued to employ the nanny as a housekeeper/assistant. Pretty much what Manda JO says.
While not a 1%er, my family is firmly in the top 5% or so. We had a nanny for close to 10 years.
She came to Canada from the Philippines under a program for care givers that eventually gives them a path to permanent residency and citizenship. She didn’t live in the house, but she was with us from the time our older daughter was 2 and before the birth of the younger daughter.
We all knew this wasn’t a forever job and encouraged her to go back to school and she now works in a neighbourhood office and we see her periodically. She takes the kids out to the movies on their birthdays.
On the other hand, we have friends who are probably 0.1% people. Her childhood nanny still works for her mother and I fully expect her children’s nanny will be with her forever.
I will also say this: because I teach in a city, I’ve worked with many children of affluence and many children of poverty–both working class and true destitution. I’ve never seen much of a correlation with work ethic. There are plenty of stereotypical lazy rich kids and hard-working poor kids, but there’s also a lot of rich kids who come from families where they are expected to work: in those cases where they aren’t washing their own clothes or cooking, they are supposed to be obtaining perfect grades with a rigorous academic schedule, participate in community events, volunteer, play sports, etc. And it does make a difference: those kids achieve more because they have an extra 10-15 hours a week to study, to create, to dedicate to their passions. And that’s not fair, and I’m not trying to pretend it is. But the problem isn’t that they are being lazy. It’s that they are able to get a much higher ROI on their effort because they have more opportunity to put that effort into avenues that pay off.
In general, I think it would be quite rare to employ a nanny for a teenager these days. In Brideshead Revisited Nanny Hawkins still lives in the family home long after the children have grown up but that was an unusually wealthy (and fictional) family. Winston Churchill was famously devoted to his nanny who worked for the family for something like 18 years. Churchill’s parents rather shabbily fired her without warning, though Churchill himself continued to stay in touch with her and I think helped support her financially. But in the 21st century, I would say such cases of the long-serving family retainer are quite rare (in the US and Europe at least). Nannies often just move on to a new job with a new family when their services are no longer needed.
One of my son’s friends had an au pair when he was 14 or 15*. She would come over to pick him up from our house on occasion. She was about 18, Norwegian, and very cute, with a cute accent. My husband opined that if he had had such a person living in his house when he was that age he would have had a terrible crush on her and by crush I mean, well, you know what I mean.
I guess it was very handy to have an au pair. In addition to chauffeuring him around before he could drive, she did things like, when that kid was told to go home and change because he was wearing something that violated the school dress code (a red t-shirt), she drove over to the school with a change of clothing for him, and supervised the house when the parents went on business trips. And yes, it was a grand house in a very exclusive neighborhood.
*14 was when they became friends. I have no idea what his arrangements were before that. It couldn’t have been the same one; she was too young. By the time he was 16 I think she went back to Norway, but for all I know she immigrated here.
The lifestyle of the parents is going to make a difference as well - sure, a 15 year old doesn’t need a nanny to pick him from school but that doesn’t mean his parents want to leave him home alone while they are both out of town for a week or two. If the household is the kind of wealthy where there is a housekeeper and a nanny , then at some point they may drop down to employing only one person who does both housekeeping and provides an adult presence for an older child and as Manda Jo said, if they employ only a nanny then the job may grow to include general housekeeping and assistance in addition to providing that adult presence.
But that's assuming the nanny was employed for a lengthy period of time. From what I understand, it's not uncommon for a family to employ a nanny for shorter periods of time , for example from the birth of a second child until that child starts pre-K.
The current family I know with a nanny has one because the mother works insane hours (she’s a lawyer). The kids are both attending private schools. They are expected to get very good grades, participate in sports at school, and they participate in activities outside of school as well. The nanny makes sure they are fed, clothed, on schedule, and that they get everything done. They are entering high school now and I see no reason it won’t continue through high school. They’ll be able to drive, but they’ll still a support staff.
Growing up, those families among my friends who had nannies were very similar.
My sister in law and her husband decided to go that route when they had kids. He is a director in an IT company and she is a physical therapist. They just decided that they did not want to put their kid in daycare, so they found a woman that wanted such a job. Her own kids were either grown or in HS and her husband makes pretty good money, so this lets her make some additional money doing something she loves.
My oldest neice is 4 and her younger sister is almost 2. Their nanny has been with them since shortly after the oldest was born.
The nanny and her whole family are involved in my nieces lives. They come to the birthday parties and such. She makes ornaments and cards and stuff for the parents and all for holidays, and special occasions.
I am really not sure what my sister in laws plans are. Clearly when both girls are in school, the nanny would not be needed all day, but I doubt they would pay enough for her to be available to pick the girls up after school.
I would guess that if she went to be a nanny for someone else, she would still want to come to the birthday parties, school events, sports, etc.
But I am pretty sure that they are not going to plan to keep her employed once the girls are older.
The one family I’ve known personally who had a nanny was a man who was divorced with sole custody of two preschool-aged children, one of them severely mentally disabled although she was physically the healthier of the two children, and he also had a job with very irregular hours. He found out that a nanny was less expensive than special-needs day care (and could, of course, also take care of his son and do some light housekeeping) and whenever he was off work, she was too.
We will be facing nanny-transition issues in the next couple of years. Our nanny, however, has been attempting to start a side business in cosmetics, which we will likely try to help her with. Ideally, this would allow her to continue with us in a part-time capacity as our kids get older.
I lived in Minneapolis in the '70’s in an affluent neighborhood. Our neighbors had what was called in our neighborhood “summer girls”. Summer girls may live in, live with you all year long, etc. In the case of my neighbors, they had three kids. School-aged or in preschool programs. The summer girls had an third-story private suite with bedroom room and bathroom. They made good money (in the '70’s, $75/week plus college tuition and room and board) They were expected to mind the kids, help with cleaning, and meal prep (although the mom did most of that). When they graduated, or decided to go back home, they just hired someone else. The kids liked the summer girls, but didn’t mistake them for family.