Hiring a Nanny: The Limits of Private Solutions to Public Problems

Dual-career couples in urban areas commonly rely upon nannies or housekeepers to allow them to flexibly combine work and family lives. Highly personalized services allow parents to manage competing demands. Such forms of child care also contain their own tensions and dilemmas, though, in part because they are based on profound social inequality between parents and caregivers. Based on 155 in-depth, tape-recorded interviews with parents and caregivers in the New York and Los Angeles metropolitan areas, dilemmas arising between even parents with egalitarian ideologies and caregivers are analyzed. One dilemma concerns the parents' authority over the caregiver. Parents may want to let the caregiver exercise her own authority and judgment; yet, to the extent that there are class differences between caregivers and parents, there are likely to also be different definitions of quality child care. The second dilemma arises from parents' and caregivers' efforts to maintain some social distance while still wanting commitments that transcend employment obligations. Private forms of child care solve some problems but have limits that must be considered in assessing social policy options.