So, you just got fired. In this market, you’ve got no prospects and no reason left to live. What’s the next worst thing that could happen? Being quit on by the nanny, of course, over an issue as minor as not being able to compensate him or her for keeping your child at an arm’s length, at least while it goes through that “growing” phase. Enter: some great news. Even if you are to get canned in the near future, and find yourself in the position of no longer being able to come with the scratch to child rear via proxy, your hired help will stick it out, on the assumption you’ll figure something out eventually, even if it’s trick turning.
If a customer loses his or her job, [Ruth] Ferry [senior vice president and a director of Au Pair in America] said Friday, the company will refund part of the $7,700 upfront, annual program fee — the refund is based on how far along they are in the annual contract — as long as the family can continue to pay the au pair’s weekly stipend of about $177 and provide living quarters. The weekly cost of an au pair, including the program fee, comes out to $335.
The company’s program fee covers the cost of recruiting, screening and transporting the au pairs, as well as its administrative costs. The latter includes costs for counselors who live in each of the communities Au Pair in America serves, Ferry said; those counselors work with families and au pairs. The company has placed au pairs in 40 states, and it has more than 3,000 families from Boston to Washington, D.C., with more than 450 in lower Fairfield County. More than 70 percent of its families are repeat business, Ferry said.
The program came about as staffers talked about the economy and heard from clients who had lost jobs, Ferry said.
“It makes really good business sense for us . . . (because) families are not looking for child care for just one year,” Ferry said.
Related: New York Nannies: They’re Just Like Us (You)!
Lose A Job, Keep Your Au Pair [Greenwich Time]
Where I used to work we had lots of Eastern liberal feminist types who occasionally had pangs of guilt over the fact that they were paying illegal immigrants to raise their children, but the prospect of actually, you know, raising their children always gave them the strength to go on, somehow, and sit in their childfree offices and collect their large checks.
The former owner, who had no equity interest or any other association with the place and therefore couldn’t harass anybody, would occasionally come and have lunch with the current owner. He invariably asked one or more of these women, if he ran across them, “So… still paying strangers to raise your kid?”
The looks on their faces were fucking *priceless.*
He was smarter than the lot of them put together, and they knew better than to engage him in a battle of wits, so they had to just laugh uncomfortably and walk away. Good times.
So an au pair gets $ 177. a week plus room and board to get punched by some spoiled brat with abandonment issues although the mother is probably willing to cough up $ 35,000. a year for private school? Factor in thousands more spent later on for the shrinks, Kaplan tutors, and junior’s rehab in Arizona while the child “processes” the pain of not having a mother who liked it enough to raise it herself and something’s out of whack here, seriously effed up. Why have a kid in the first place if they’re too busy to begin with?
Motherhood is not for everybody.
- Mrs. Jim Bob Duggar
@1 Would your hero say the same thing to the fathers?
@3 Touche! Absolutely Touche!!!
Why all the blame on mothers. Where’s the fucking Father in all this? Oh yes! He’s “supposed” to be the breadwinner, right?!
Losers!!!
Oh, and I’m a hetero-sexual male and father so suck it up!
3: He asked it of a pair of ‘em at the holiday party once. He wasn’t sexist, we just happened to have mostly females working for us and most of the men had stay-at-home wives.
4: IMO the person who can make the most money should work, and the other parent should stay home while the kids need a parent at home. If either of them can support the family comfortably, then they can work it out and I really don’t care. Don’t blame me, blame economics. If my wife could earn what I do, I’d stay home for a few years, no sweat.
@3 He probably wouldn’t….but he certainly could — even if they were being raised by the mother.
everyone should just relax, have a drink and a Xanax. it works for blndebnkr.
1: I boned your stay at home mommy today. Met at the gym after dropping off the kids. Her pilates class is really paying off!