Last week’s Post article on high-end babysitting in the city struck a chord — sort of. Take it from a college student who sits and has many friends who also babysit for the more average parents of Manhattan: Things are a little different down here in the trenches.
For starters, the pay I’ve encountered isn’t quite the $33-an-hour for the high-end families in the Post piece; it averages closer to $15 or $20.
That’s still not bad for someone working toward a college degree. It’s nice to be able to babysit for four hours here and there and walk away with $60 to $80 of cold, hard cash.
And there are reasons why rates are higher here.
Start with the things that make parenting tougher in Manhattan. Notes my friend Rachel, “The scariest part of babysitting in the city is protecting children from the constant danger all around us.”
Watching kids in the suburbs means making sure they don’t fall off the trampoline.
But Kate, who sits for several Manhattan families, notes that here, you have to “be mindful of how close the kids are standing to the subway tracks, if there are any speeding cars lurking around intersection corners” and you have to keep your eyes on children at all times.
Manhattan moms can’t just pay the highschooler next door to watch the kids play in the backyard, because there is no backyard.
Anyway, these kids barely have time to fit play into their schedules.
And it’s the sitter’s job to keep them on schedule. Between karate, piano, soccer, school events, summer camp, Jewish school, arts and crafts and occasional visits to the Museum of Natural History or the library, a sitter’s responsibilities add up.
Maybe “personal assistant” would be a better job title. Certainly, some moms are that demanding.
Lauren, originally from Virginia, says, “Mothers in Manhattan do tend to be a bit more high-strung and detail-oriented than mothers I babysat for back home.”
Lauren says she’s received extensive instructions from Manhattan moms, such as, “‘Take this train, to this stop, to this street, to this building, to this room, at this time, until this time, from which you go to this place, etc.’ When I first meet a family, I often have to repeat in my head all of the details to remember until I don’t have to think of it anymore.”
Plus, sitters get handed countless other tasks. I’ve been asked to fold laundry, make dinner and do errands from grocery shopping to running to the Post Office. Other women are expected to clean the house, arrange playdates for the kids, assist them with their homework, put them to bed and sometimes even spend the night.
One friend is supposed to teach a 5-year-old some French.
All of the demands go into negotiating rates.
Rachel babysits for a family of four children, ages 3 to 10. She started at a very low $10-an-hour for watching one child, $12 for watching more than one — plus an unlimited monthly MetroCard ($112).
After a while, she was able to negotiate for $12 per hour all of the time. “The funny thing is, when I told other friends who babysit my pay, they told me even with the unlimited MetroCard and ‘pay raise,’ it’s still cheap pay,” Rachel recalls.
But, as Rachel says, the lower pay is worth it if you’re caring for a great family.
How does it look from the other side? Jane, an Upper West Side mother of three, says, “You feel that if you pay better, maybe you’ll get better service. You want to keep your sitter happy, your children safe and you want them to return.”
She tells possible sitters up front that she pays $15 an hour. “There are enough really great sitters in the city that are OK with what I pay, that I have the ability to do that,” Jane said.
Then, too, many moms aren’t hiring sitters because they have to go to work. My friend Jen notes, “Rarely have I babysat because the mom is ‘at work.’ It’s almost always either a date night, running errands, etc.”
In fact, a Manhattan mom will often hire a sitter to watch the kids while she’s home. Sometimes she’s running in and out doing errands, or bringing one child to an activity, but it’s not unusual for a mom to stick around the house while paying for a sitter.
Basically, they’re paying for a chance to not be “on” 24/7.
You just have to pay more to get the sitter that never sleeps.