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I remember my baby’s first child. Cute and precocious, he would stare into my eyes and ask, “Are you a child or a mother?”
I don’t think I’m not. About 14 years old, I am by no means a parent, but I am considered mature enough to take care of the toddlers and elementary school students in the community, microwave dinner, make hot wheels and show them Small mountains.
Babysitters occupy a bondage space in the lives of children – not nanny or daycare teachers, who may offer more full-time care and education, but people who come over for an evening or an afternoon, hang out for a while, and then leave. “You are supervising the kids and implicitly giving them a model of age and teenagers – but you are not inspiring them.” Anne Helen Peterson wrote Last year’s Millennial Teen Babysitter. “No one asked for my resume.”
The babysitter has changed since Peterson and I finished this job in the 90s. What was once A ritual for teenagers and teenagers Have become a professional job in professional applications and experienced adult workforce. Katherine Goldstein Double shift,tell me. “Are you feeding them the right stuff? Don’t you let them watch too much TV? Are you doing approved activities?” she asked.
From teenagers to adult babysitters, from safety issues to growing teenage schedules, there are many possible reasons. Experts and parents say that this is lost when a babysitter becomes an adult job and expects to match it.
Taking care of children for a few hours can be a formation experience for teenagers. “Until a few years ago, Gracie was shy, but the babysitter encouraged her to use her voice,” Karen Johnson author Mom to a 14-year-old babysitter told me in an email. “She has to see her family for the first time and looks confident. She also has to learn to state her salary and know her time as a nanny.”
It’s not just the nanny that benefits. Children also look at people who are closer to age and look at something unique. For young children, “big kids are more charming than adults.” The culture of resurrecting adolescent babysitters can help strengthen some of the community connections that have been struggling in recent decades, making the degree of isolation between children and adults far more distant from each other.
For Goldstein, believing that teenagers caring for young children is part of “a feeling more collaborative about how to raise children” – she and others say it’s a big need in the United States today.
The rise and fall of teenage nanny
Modern nanny appeared in the 1920s, Faith Mountain Written in the Atlantic Ocean Last year, moms became more acceptable to go out at night as middle-class families gained more disposable income. If the “60s and 70s” were a time when anxiety was felt around the babysitter (the surrounded nanny turned into the horror movie Trope), the 80s might be the cultural culmination of this custom. Not only did I see that ten years Baby Mining Club The book series is also my favorite fictional babysitter: Rosalyn Calvin and Hobbes.
When Calvin’s parents, 6, went out for a date night, Rosalyn ruled with an iron fist, usually forcing Calvin to go to bed while it was still light outside. A tough negotiator who often insists on paying previously from Calvin’s parents, she looks like a reader to me, she seems to have grown up and now she seems to be very grown up for me.
But she is obviously a teenager, justifying her apparently high rates by pointing out that she needs to save for college.
Even in the 80s, you had to do a lot of babysitters to create dents on your college tuition (Peterson wrote that she made $2 per hour; I think I made $5). Nevertheless, nanny is a widely accepted pastime for teenagers – especially for girls, nanny. It’s a way for young people to make money and a way for parents to leave the house without hiring full-time caregivers.
But times have changed. Hard data is hard to get, but as Hill points out, the perception of teenagers and teenagers has fundamentally changed since the 1980s. Although 12-year-olds used to be babysitting often, most American parents now believe that their children should be over 12 years old before they can go home alone.
Teens are also busier than before. Johnson, author of Johnson What do I want to be when they grow up?,tell me. “Sports and academia are more stringent and time-consuming than in the past few years, leaving less work time.”
indeed, Job employment for young people Overall it has been declining since the 1970s, although it has rebounded in recent years.
At the same time, rise Surveillance culture Many say intensive parenting makes people expect more from nanny. Goldstein said the message she got from her parents in her teenage babysitter was: “Have fun. Pizza has some money.”
Today, babysitters “may be more anxious and stressful,” Goldstein said. and platform Care.com Making it easier than ever for parents to hire adults with reviews and star ratings, rather than relying on teenagers on the street.
Benefits of babysitter
This is bad news for teenagers, and they need more experiences that a babysitter can provide. “We didn’t give the kids enough to give the independent challenge I said.” Parents today often believe that their older children should spend their time academically or Structured Activitiessuch as sports or enrichment courses.
“The babysitter offers many important nursing skills, critical thinking skills, responsibility,” Goldstein said. “You can’t get the same skills in adult-led activities.”
Care for other children also helps teenagers build real-world social skills, a long-standing concern For adults and teenagers. The babysitter “forced me to use my free time to connect with my kids and learn how to deal with the problems I might have when I became a mother, rather than using my free time to scroll on my phone,” Gracie, 14, told me in an email sent through her mom.
Meanwhile, the time spent with the teenage babysitter may be closer to free play – this Today’s children often lack – Not adult supervision. “Young kids can enjoy a vibrant teen who is willing to do something fun,” Johnson said. “Gracie will run around, play games, do crafts and pretend.”
I don’t want to romanticize the teenage nanny. As Vox’s Abdallah Fayyad wrotethe decline in teenage employment actually coincides with a huge jump in high school graduation rates. And, given that Reading scores for high school studentsfocusing more on scholars may not be the worst thing.
at the same time, Peterson pointed outteenagers of babysitters don’t always make money, they can spend money – some are forced to work hard to help their families.
Actually, I don’t like babysitters like I was in my teenage years. The kid who asked cute and had problems also managed to make me piss. Sometimes I feel the babysitter-I believe the pressure is right and if I were a boy I wouldn’t have experienced it.
Still, I learned patience, adaptability, when to gain a foothold and when to succumb to my back-prepared not only for my parenthood, but also for my relationship with my partner, friends and colleagues.
“The hardest part of a babysitter is having to make a split decision, as if your babysitter’s kid (Ren) is there,” Gracy said. “It’s hard to figure out what’s the best thing is when every family has different rules and runs in different families.”
After some coverage of youth nannies, I think this is not the perfect solution for every family or every situation, but rather as part of the care ecosystem, their decline tells us something about American families and communities.
Goldstein noted that her family’s favorite young nanny was the children of parents she knew. But, “It can feel terrible or unsafe to get a teenager to end when you don’t invest in those bigger family and adult relationships.”
Indeed, because it becomes less common, and It’s harder to know our neighborsIt is difficult to have a family bond that promotes babysitting – and many other forms of care, from Dining train Check on the elders. Hiring a teenage babysitter won’t reverse the social forces that isolate us first, but for families that can make it work, it’s a small way to build a community in a world of anti-community that feels more and more.
Also, a good babysitter is just a fun holiday for children who are sometimes restricted in family habits. Even if parents are at home, her children sometimes ask their babysitters to go play. As Johnson points out, “Getting special attention and getting someone willing to see their special rock collection or a revelry for their beautiful artwork is good for the happiness of the child.”
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Thanks to everyone who writes on the Peace Sign, you can always contact me at anna.north@vox.com.
