Is It a Mistake to Hire a Hot Nanny?
The day before I offered my current babysitter the job, I ran into a friend outside our neighborhood subway station.
I told her that I thought we’d found a great new nanny for my girls, who are 9 and 6. Then I mentioned an interesting detail about her, only relevant because I knew she would eventually meet her, as our kids play together on occasion: “Oh and she’s gorgeous. Like, she’s an actual, working model. She legit looks like Cindy Crawford’s daughter,” I said.
Her response: “Um, do you really want to bring that into your house?”
I wasn’t entirely shocked by the question. My best friend had said as much the night before, when I’d updated her on our sitter-search on the phone. When a mom-friend at school recently hired a new au pair, who’s a particularly stunning Brazilian girl, another mom joked to me that this “was a dangerous move.” And I know someone else who has a kidding/not kidding rule when it comes to picking child-care providers: “Only ugly nannies.”
Then there’s the pop-culture trope. On the second season of Big Little Lies, Renata’s husband, Gordon, not only loses their fortune but is also revealed to have been getting “stress management” from their daughter’s French nanny. And in an episode of the truTV comedy I’m Sorry, the main character, Andrea, notes that a beautiful young blond on the playground is actually the new nanny for one of her daughter’s friends, and she immediately quips:
“Have we learned nothing from The Sound of Music? It basically just the story of a taken man banging his hot nanny. It's like the story of Ben Affleck, but with jaunty nun music.”
So, let me get this right: if I bring a hot young thing into my home, I’m inching towards marital mayhem?
The Ben Affleck-effect is surely behind some of the mistrust. (The tabloid transgressions of stars like Affleck, Ethan Hawke, and Gavin Rossdale—a.k.a Mr. Gwen Stefani—all reportedly had disastrous dalliances with their kids’ caretakers, despite being married to some of the most beautiful women in the world.)
“Sure, I think that high-profile cases of celebrities hooking up with or running off with their nannies does heighten the worry that the same will happen for everyday people,” says Julia Pelly, a mother-of-two in North Carolina. “But if you're secure in your marriage, hiring a hot babysitter is really no different than 'letting' your partner work with a hot colleague or spend time with friends who you might feel are more attractive than you.”
That night, I told my husband about the peanut gallery’s comments. (He actually hadn’t met our sitter before I hired her. I do nearly all of the childcare arrangements and have 90 percent of the face-to-face sitter contact every day.) He was taken aback: “That’s totally insulting to both me and to her. Like I have no self-control—no ability to behave around someone good-looking—and that she’s a mere object, a temptress. Oh, and that she’d even be remotely attracted to me.”
And yet, the nay-sayers still insist that domestic proximity is enough to prompt indiscretion. To that end, the I’m Sorry playground scene continues with Andrea offering the following comparison: “Why would you put that in your house? I mean, you’re a snacker and I trust you, but I wouldn’t put potato chips in front of you. Even if you weren’t hungry, eventually you’re gonna snack. That’s just terrible judgment.”
My friend Jocelyn, a mother-of-two who asked not to use her real name, recounts a recent “don’t put that in your house” horror story from her small town in New York. “Not long ago, a father here cheated on his wife with their 20-something au pair, and it was a huge scandal. He was a big man on campus here—both a town official and co-owner of a popular local establishment, so it wasn't low key. He left his wife and now lives with the au pair, which continues to blow people's skirts up.” According to Jocelyn, the whole thing feels less like a cautionary tale, than one that begs the question: was the “problem” the hot au pair in the house or a married man with no scruples?
Which is to say, if you’re at all concerned about the appearance of your nanny, it’s probably time to look hard at the man in the mirror (or the marriage license). “Not hiring a super-hot nanny because you're afraid someone in your marriage will stray is a huge red flag about your marriage,” says Jamie Beth Cohen, a mother-of-two from Pennsylvania.
Julie Provenzano is a real estate agent and married mother-of-two in Dallas, and she’s had a series of bombshell au pairs from Europe over the last several years. The static from friends and neighbors have been steady. “I find that so bizarre,” says Provenzano. “The focus is on the 20-something hot au pair when it really should be about society’s concept of all men as pigs. Are men that debased as a gender that they simply can’t be trusted around a young pretty woman? Certainly, some qualify for that reputation, but I don’t buy that. If you’re really that concerned about a cute au pair as a threat to your marriage, there are most definitely bigger issues at play.”
Provenzano’s husband, Frank, also a real estate agent, puts it even more succinctly: “My job is fairly simple: 1. Don’t be a creep. 2. Make sure the au pair has a safe and fun year. That’s kind of it. And if you get #1 wrong, #2 is impossible.”
But there are still people who think that no matter how much you have faith in your relationship and trust in your partner, the nature of child-care work is one that can lead to blurred lines. Kat Kendall lives in Bend, Oregon, with her husband and young daughter. “I would trust Ben if he was lost in the woods and came upon a house of strippers engaged in an orgy and there was no way I'd ever find out, but I still would probably think twice about bringing a supermodel nanny into our house,” she admits. “I don't really like that I would do that, but when someone is in your house all the time there is an opportunity for intimacy already there and if they are highly attractive then it just does seem like a risky element that I wouldn't want to have around. Like, what if you feel super schlumpy someday and you are sort of in a grind with your spouse and then this beautiful woman arrives to lovingly take care of your child and laugh at your husband's jokes and clean up around the house, then wouldn't that sort of make you potentially feel a little worse?”
Beauty cuts both ways, though, says Kendall, who says she probably wouldn’t hire a hot “manny” either. “I'm naturally flirt, and I just wouldn't want that distraction for myself in the house. Being married is tough,” says Kendall, “and staying monogamous—not just physically, but emotionally, and mentally— can be really hard. It's like, just don't put yourself in a tricky situation.” Emily Furlani, an art director in Brooklyn and a mother-of-two, agrees: “Seeing a man be great with your kids is a natural aphrodisiac.”
The desire to let it all hang out at home (aka, the schlump factor) was something many women brought up. Middle school teacher Lauren Goldberg, a mother-of-two in Brooklyn, wouldn’t be keen on a hot sitter because “when I'm at home, that's my time to be relaxed and chill and not worry about how I look so much. I think if I had a sitter who was really beautiful and super stylish, I would always be comparing myself to her and perhaps wondering what my husband is thinking even if he has no intention of doing anything. I don't read fashion magazines and I'm not on Instagram to minimize comparing myself to other people (other women) and thinking about my age etc. So, for me, it's more about me and how I would feel about myself. There are enough things in the world to chip away at my confidence. Home should be a refuge.” Similar insecurities are why Camille Chatterjee, a mother of a toddler in Brooklyn, says “no way” to a drop-dead babysitter. “My husband knows this, and I know it’s my insecurity driving this, plus the feeling of having to compete as an older, haggard new mom versus some nubile young thing.”
If all of this seems terribly unfair to the women looking for work as a caregiver, it’s because it is. It’s certainly one place where “pretty privilege”—the wealth of evidence that looking a certain way can lead to certain economic and social benefits—can actually have a bit of the opposite effect.
When I started writing this story, I broached the topic with our breathtakingly beautiful babysitter, E, who didn't want to use her full name for this story. She has spent the last three years modeling around the world, and recently came back to Brooklyn to enroll in college. It felt weird—and almost unkind—to write about this without asking her thoughts. It’s hardly the first time her looks have dominated her life—and in fact, not the first time that her looks have prompted whispery discussions or unwanted distractions. “I definitely think there’s a real stereotype out there about babysitters in general, and good-looking female babysitters for sure,” she says. “For me, there are a lot of instances where being conventionally attractive can work to my advantage—and certainly I decided to model exactly because of that— but there are also plenty of situations where it can be frustrating or not as much of an advantage as you’d think.”
While the celebrity news cycle has, in part, kept this trope alive and well, the bottom line for A is that everyone “remember that if these celebrities ‘can’t hold onto their husbands’ it’s not the nannies’ fault–nor is it their fault. It’s because their husbands are assholes,” she says.
And that’s just it: pre-emptively pointing an accusative finger at a good-looking babysitter or tongue-wagging husbands reeks of both ingrained scorn for both women and men. For many people (and sometimes with good reason) there simply exists male-female dynamic that’s fundamentally underpinned with a bit of mistrust or derision—where men are only one flirtation away from being predators, and women are either preyed upon or ready to pounce on a halfway decent married man. It brings to mind the absurd precautions that Vice President Mike Pence has in place, where he won’t even dine alone with a woman who is not his wife.
Perhaps what needs to change is our standards for men. The baseline standard should be that a man can have lunch with a woman —“attractive” or not—without hitting on her in any way. Many women are finally holding our partners to higher expectations around the home in terms of the visible and invisible labor that’s up for grabs, and so we all need to do that here.
While I see where so many of these wary women are coming from—and I am not deaf to the steam of tabloid tales and the stubborn tropes—I don’t want cynicism to rule my life in any way. I’m already pissed off enough about other things. I don’t compete in any way with a 20-something woman whose legs are almost as long as my whole body. (Show me a 40-something in my field with kids and pets and good skin and obedient hair, and then I might get fired up or competitive!) Besides, I don’t want to see women as the enemy, nor do I want to corral my husband into a men-are-dogs stereotype he has never actually earned.
So yes, we have a babysitter who’s smoking hot. But more importantly she’s also warm, creative, reliable and safe. That’s pretty much all that really matters.
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