Low-wage nannies and how they affect the children they care for

Marie Galetto: Research Hypertext Topic Invention

I have always lived a comfortable life and have only ever worked for low wages by choice. I volunteer a lot of my time and work mostly with children. I have worked as a teacher’s aid for my grammar school and as a camp counselor for my church. I have also had paying jobs that deal with children. I have been a babysitter for a family friend multiple times. More recently I filled in for my brother’s girlfriend who is a nanny. She was having knee surgery and the family she works for needed a fill-in. I never realized how much energy and patience goes into being a full-time nanny. The girl I took care of needed constant attention and lots of different types of entertainment. It was not a job that you could do without focusing your whole attention on the child because they would notice if you were ignoring them. I left each day feeling drained and ready to just relax. I only worked for them for a week but it was enough to make me understand what hard work that job entails.
When I went back to visit the girl I took care of after my brother’s girlfriend went back to work we took a trip to the park. I noticed that most of the women at the park with children were obviously not the children’s mothers. It was a very affluent neighborhood and most of the women taking care of the children looked young and most had accents. I also went with my aunt and 2-year-old cousin to her gymnastics class and noticed that a few of the children called the women they were with by their first names. My other aunt has three young boys and hires a nanny who comes a few times a week. The nanny is a young new mother and brings her 2-year-old daughter to play with my 3-year-old cousin while she works.
The job market for nannies seems to be dominated by either very young women trying to get through school or immigrant women. Both of these types of people are forced to work at this highly demanding job while at the same time confronting stressful personal situations. Young students have to plan classes and homework time around babysitting hours. These hours can be very demanding and long, especially if the children the watch are not in school yet. I could not imagine putting in a full day of work only to have to go to class or do my homework. A lot of the immigrant women working as nannies have their own children or may work more than one job. This especially takes a toll on their children at home since they may come to feel like their mother cares more about the children she takes care of at work since she is probably very tired by the time she gets home. Also, these jobs often do not offer any kind of benefits since the nannies are being employed privately by individual families. There is also an issue of how nannies effect the growth and development of the children they take care of. I would like to focus my research hypertext on the hardships of low-wage nannies and how they affect the children they watch.