Jul
15
2010
The Perfect Stranger: The Truth About Mothers and Nannies
Posted by Blogmaster in Working Mother Books, tags: About, Mother's, Nannies, Perfect, Stranger, Truth
Product Description
Lucy Kaylin has written a book that begins with the watershed moment in a mother’s lifewhen she decides to hire a proxy to care for her children. Given that it’s not only affluent women who turn to nannies anymore, this arrangement is also a watershed in the history of women’s rights. Women now have choices. And therein lies the problem. Having choices has forced women to confront their feelings about motherhood and work, and to make difficult decisions requiring wrenching sacrifice. It’s a murky, ambivalent time, and nowhere is that ambivalence more acutely expressed than in a working mother’s relationships with her children’s nanny, who serves such a precious function in the private space that is the family home. Lucy Kaylin, an experienced journalist who has interviewed prominent newsmakers of every stripe, isn’t afraid to ask the tough questions to get to the heart of this complex relationship. She looks at the nanny/mother relationship from both sides. As a working mother who hired a babysitter of her own, she knows the process intimately. Kaylin exposes both the great joys and the difficult emotional issues that play out when working women invite perfect strangers into their homes to help care for their children.
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I can’t tell you how many times I laughed out loud while reading this book! It seems to be marketed towards working mom’s but I am a stay-at-home mom with 3 kids under the age of three (we have a part time nanny) and I still felt as though I related to every word in this book. It is written with hilarious wit — some parts truly hit home and were so funny that I actually marked the page to read again in the future just to give me a laugh. The book brings to light all the things that as a mom (working or stay-at-home) overwhelms and worries us as we try to stay sane while caring for our children and hiring help to give us “a break”. The best is that the book points out the comedy and humor in all of it along with exploring the working relationship we have with our children’s nanny’s/regular babysitters.
If I had to find something “bad” about the book — it does seem to get a little wordy in the middle and the author seems to loose the wit and humor that got me pouring into the book. It also occasionally paints a stereotypical portrait of working mom’s on the extreme side. For example — the author states that when she took her kids to the park, even though she really didn’t want to, she didn’t know how to push them on the swings resulting in the youngest falling off… I thought that seemed at tad bit exaggerated. But when the book comes to a close the author picks back up her great wit and humor, leaving you smiling. Definitely read this book! You’ll love it!
After you are done reading this book another great one that will have you laughing out loud is “What’s the Matter With Mommy?”
What’s the Matter With Mommy?: Rantings of a Reluctant Stay-at-home Mom
Rating: 5 / 5
Perfect Stranger was refreshing and insightful. As a new mom returning to work, I was overwhelmed with guilt and nervous about employing a nanny. Lucy Kaylin’s necessary book examined many of the emotions I was feeling and essentially comforted me. I was able to examine my conflicts and fears with tools extracted from the both the author’s and others’ nanny relationship experiences set forth in the book. While no nanny is perfect (though she must be a million different things), neither is any mom. I am confident now that together with my husband, our nanny and I will raise my son with love and laughter. As for my relationship with our nanny, as Kaylin points out, while the expectation is not that our nanny be my best friend, it is the mutual expectation that there be respect, fairness and honesty.
Rating: 5 / 5
Eye opening if you are considering having someone help you raise your kids. I had a strong idea that I wanted to raise my own (taking time off of my career), and this book confirmed it. There are pros & cons to a career hiatus, and this book illustrates it…again and again.
Rating: 3 / 5
I wanted to read this book after reading a review in O Magazine. The topic was of interest to me but I thought the book would be more along the lines of “The Nanny Diaries”. This book is really a “how to…” for new mothers who will have a Nanny working for them. While well written and informative, the mindset is disturbing.
I should say that I am about 10 years older than the author. I am a professional (nurse), educated woman with 3 children ages 20, 18 & 15. I was a stay at home mom (during the week) when my children were young. I worked weekends & holidays to help out financially while they were small. Now that they’re older (2 away at college) I work as a school nurse and I teach a parenting class for expectant couples. I should further say that my work has always been a “job”, not a career because my work does not define me. Here’s what bothers me about this book and this mindset in general.
First, while some of the book reviews for The Perfect Stranger mention it being a guide for women who have to return to work, some for financial reasons -(those women probably couldn’t afford a nanny) – The book actually speaks mostly to professional, career women who are returning to work for their personal fulfillment. (Needing to work so you can afford to live in Manhattan, summer in The Hamptons and buy $75.00 baby dresses is not financial need).
Next, and more troubling, is the mindset of the author and the mothers she interviews for the book. The proper lip service is paid to being a mother, caring about the child, loving the child but the actions of these women speak louder. At several points in the book, various mothers are quoted as saying how important it is to find a nanny you’re comfortable with because after all “they are watching your most valuable possession” like it’s a purse. In fact, as I read, there were times I thought if you substituted the word “child” with “puppy” this sentence would read the same. EX: “For a while, when I (mother) would walk in, Emma (baby) would want to stay with Gloria (nanny) if Gloria was holding her, and that was hard, a little bit. But I didn’t get overly distraught; I knew Emma was like an amoeba, and she was happy being in the warm arms of whoever was holding her”. This is a mother talking about her baby! These same mothers express dismay at the realization that they are paying someone to love their child.(Most nannies are making minimum wage). There appears to be a lack of trust, or is it realization, that no matter how much you pay the nanny & no matter how much the nanny does love the child, she can’t really love them like a mother would.
There are examples of the use of nanny cams where one mother catches her nanny stealing large sums of money from her husband’s stash, and she actually hesitates firing her. “You rely heavily on this person, and you don’t want to go through the pain and agony of finding a new nanny”. The author speaks about her own guilt when she traveled extensively and she “worried about the toll it was taking on the kids”. But all was well when her 5 year old presented her with a picture he made when she was gone with the headline “The Advenchers of Mi Mom”. The author was pleased it didn’t say “Mi Mom, The Sellfish Absunty Bich”. Astounding! As if it was the child’s job to make mom feel better. She speaks of her choices “because those couple of hours a day (plus entire weekends) I do see my kids are delicious, as soul-feeding and character defining as work could ever hope to be”. She mentions the rhetorical question ‘why have children if you’re not going to raise them?’ but she never answers that question. It is the question all of us who have raised our own kids would like answered.
The guilt we all feel for the choices we make as parents is based in us knowing, in our core, that what we’re doing or have done is wrong. Babies need their mothers, as do children and teenagers and even grownups. When you “choose” to have a child the focus is suppose to shift from what’s good for ME to what’s good for the child. I could not find one example in this book where that principal was being played out consistently. The mothers total focus was on themselves. Hire someone to do the day to day mothering, provide the money to buy every “thing” a child could want and get to call yourself a mother. Not bad.
What these children are missing out on will become apparent the older they get (but I have a feeling mom & dad will blame the nanny). Babies & children need stability – maternal/infant bonding is essential to that child being able to establish bonds later in life – yet many of these women dismiss the nanny on a whim as if it will have no effect on the child. What these mothers are missing out on is something you can never get back. All the things that are in the day to day “job” of parenting (and it is extremely hard work)are what makes you a mother.
I find it disturbing that so many parent’s see children as adornments and not people. During the classes I teach the question of “how do you get your life back?” is asked repeatedly – and these people haven’t even had the baby yet. As a school nurse I see daily reminders of the neglect of children – no baths, no breakfast, lack of sleep, kids begging for attention, sent to school sick because mom & dad had to work – and this is at a wealthy, private school not an innercity school. Working women will continue to try and kid themselves that hiring someone to raise their child is just a “choice” and it doesn’t really matter who raises the baby, as long as someone does, but they’re incorrect. The ability to leave your baby with a virtual stranger speaks to a lack of bonding on the part of the parents and the more you do it, the easier it becomes.
A few years ago someone described parenting to me this way “it’s like a bank, you make deposits then you get the rewards”. In almost 21 years of parenting I find that to be true. You reap what you sow and it really is all “quality time”.
Rating: 2 / 5