Nanny burnout is real
Nannying can be a super rewarding career: spend your days with kiddos (rumor has it they laugh more than corporate colleagues), watch them grow, be an indispensable support to a family, build lifelong relationships, and have fun! But it can also be a lonely profession, and draining. How can you make the most of the good bits – and get support for the less fun sides that no one ever talks about? We’ve got you.
An out-of-the-box profession
A few things are expected when you work as a nanny. Taking care of a child or several is sort of a given. But there are a lot of things that aren’t so clear-cut when you step into making childcare your career path.
There are no clear promotion cycles (it’s hard to become a middle manager… of yourself?) or given timelines for raises, no upward mobility unless the family’s needs expand. We talk often about setting professional boundaries – and that’s important! – but it’s hard to set boundaries with a kid, who may cry when you leave or want to FaceTime on your days off.
Then there’s the emotional involvement; you’re an employee and a professional, but you’re also involved in a family’s home life, the kiddos don’t know what it means that this is a job for you (Who else has gotten the question from a kiddo, “but so like what is your real job?”🙋♀️), and when things are heavy for the family, that’s an emotional weight you bring home with you.
All this to say, it was always an unusual job. And lately, it’s gotten even more so.
Work from home and a new generation of parents
In the pandemic, more parents than ever started working from home, creating new challenges for both themselves and their nannies. Suddenly you had to navigate kiddos wanting to go see their parents, or parents micromanaging your previously so free days.
A recent article from The Cut says that more and more nannies are feeling a shift in the parents they work for. Rising childcare costs may have parents short-changing their nannies, or WFH and nanny cams have parents interfering with the nanny’s work style.
We hear you
The thing about nannying is, when you run into trouble, you’re often alone in dealing with it. You have to handle conflicts with the parents, you have to be in charge of negotiating raises and advocating for yourself, and even though other nannies at the playground may feel like colleagues, you all have different bosses to answer to. It can get lonely.
If you’re feeling this way, or even like you’re starting to get burned out on the whole profession, we hear you. It's tough handling it all on your own. That’s why we’ve always made it our mission to support nannies – in their careers, and as people.
Find support – it’s out there!
We realize that babysitters and nannies mostly come to us for one thing: they want us to help them find a great job. And that’s a big part of what we do!
But here’s the thing a lot of people don’t think about when it comes to working with a nanny agency: a good agency who cares about nannies and sitters becomes part of your professional support system. Now, not agencies work that way, and we get that. But we want to remind you of what’s good about the ones that do.
If you have a solid nanny agency behind you, you have someone who can:
Advocate for you to get the income you deserve based on your role, experience, and location
Advocate for you to get a proper job contract, get paid on the books, and get additional benefits like paid time off, sick leave, and bonuses
Help advise and guide you if you get into a sticky spot with a family and don’t quite know the right next steps
Help resolve conflicts between you and the family
Answer any of a thousand frequent questions you may have (“Do I have to say yes if they ask me to walk the dog?” “Is it reasonable to ask for a raise when the second kid comes?” “When is the right time to ask for time off?”)
Connect you with other childcare professionals to make your job a little less lonely (shout-out to our very own Community Coordinator, Ashley, who organizes fun meetups and Q&As for our nannies!)
Oh, and one important thing to note – agencies should be providing you with this support at no cost to you! It’s just part of being an awesome caregiver for one of their families.
TL;DR
Now we’re not here to toot our own horn about the things we do on the regular for nannies in our network. The point is to say, we see you. We know it can be a tough job, and we know it can feel like a lonely profession.
But we also know you do an amazing job and that you are invaluable to the families you work for. We’ve heard from so many families what a life-changing role their nannies and sitters have had in their lives. So if you haven’t heard it directly from them, hear it from us: the work you do matters, it makes a difference, and it. is. worth. more. than. gold.
Ps. If you’re thinking, huh, a nanny agency seems like a great way to stay in this career, apply to become one of us! Tell us about yourself via the link below, and we’ll take it from there.