Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes by Mark J. Penn & E. Kinney Zalesne

Author:Mark J. Penn & E. Kinney Zalesne [PENN, MARK J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BUS000000
ISBN: 9780446402064
Published: 2007-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

Modern Mary Poppinses

College-Educated Nannies

With more and more Moms working, there has been an explosion in the child care industry. The demand for nannies has gone through the roof, nearly doubling in the past fifteen years. This has bid wages up, increased competition, and also created a new class of nannies: the well-educated nanny.

Often coming from families with lots of children and missing the excitement of that kind of household, this well-educated nanny takes full control of the kids while Mom is at work, perhaps under the supervision of a nannycam.

The role of nannies in the upper class has changed from mother’s helper, when Mom was at home; to primary caregiver during the workday (until preschool kicks in) and afternoon caregiver after that. Even in the toniest of families, women are choosing to go back to work, and this is creating demand for a new kind of nanny.

The formal nanny system is really from Europe, but Americans have been entranced with the idea, especially in pop culture, for decades. Mary Poppins, the 1964 film about a nanny who literally blows into town and shows children how to find magic all around them, is to this day the biggest Oscar-winning movie in Disney history. In the fall of 2006, it was made into a multimillion-dollar Broadway extravaganza.

The Sound of Music, in which nun-in-training Maria leaves her convent to care for a widowed Austrian’s seven unruly children, is one of the most popular American films of all time.

In the 1990s, the hit series The Nanny, starring Fran Drescher as the jilted lover/cosmetic saleswoman who ends up caring for the children of a wealthy British Broadway producer, was wildly successful, ultimately playing on four continents.

And the two nanny shows of 2005—Fox’s Nanny 911 and ABC’s Supernanny—both of which reaffirmed the stereotype that hefty British schoolmarms know more about childrearing than hapless American parents ever will—pulled in millions of viewers each week.

These pop culture nannies are well groomed and respected by their employers, and for the most part considered their emotional and intellectual equals. Indeed, both Maria in The Sound of Music and Fran in The Nanny end up marrying the men who hired them—raising from subtext to story line the idea that nannies are as worthy and as cherished as Moms.

Of course in real life, nannies aren’t always revered the same way. According to Domestic Workers United, a New York City–based advocacy group, most in-home workers are low-income, poorly educated, or both. Many are illegal, and care for other people’s children because the informality of home-based hiring helps them fly under the radar of the immigration authorities.

Now there’s nothing new about the fact that there might be a gap between popular culture and reality. What is new is that after all these years, fact is actually inching closer to fiction. Increasingly, upscale, college-educated Americans who can compete elsewhere in the workforce are choosing to stay home with other people’s kids. The industry is as yet too unregulated to have precise data on this. But two things are happening.

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