Posted on 01/05/2007 8:32:57 AM PST by qam1
Here is my nightmare. I moved to Madison without knowing anyone here, so I found a babysitter through the University of Wisconsin graduate program in early education. The woman I found was great, but she said that she was really busy, and could her boyfriend babysit instead.
I squashed all my sexist stereotypes and asked for his qualifications. She said he has a law degree in Puerto Rico, where they are from, but he can't work here because he didn't pass the Wisconsin bar, and he doesn't want to study for it because they'll only be here two years. So he is looking for work. He has five younger siblings and he babysat them.
I said okay. I did the normal routine-- stayed with him and the baby one day. Went out for a little the next. The third day, I told him I'd be at the coffee shop. I told him if he wants to go there, go when the baby is asleep so the baby doesn't see me and start crying for me, so he shows up at the coffee shop at naptime.
I say, "Where's the baby?"
He says, "At home."
"AT HOME?!?!?"
So I sprint eight blocks home, imagining all the most terrible things a mom can imagine. I get home and the baby is asleep, on my bed, ten feet from an open stairway.
The guy says, "I'm sorry."
I say, "You can just go."
He says, "I think it was a language problem. I just misunderstood you. I thought you told me to go to the coffee shop and leave the baby at home."
This could happen to anyone, and it does. My friend paid a chic agency in the New York City area to find her a bonded, background-checked nanny. But she turned out to be anorexic and she fainted behind the wheel. My friend didn't know until the car was wrapped around a pole. (Everyone safe, thank goodness.)
The difficulty of leaving a baby to go to work cannot be understated. And babysitting situations like this make it even more difficult. So we've now gone months with no babysitter, and my husband is about to kill me because he's picking up a lot of the slack.
So here's where the advice comes in: how to find a perfect babysitter, right? Wrong. There are no perfect babysitter situations. It's the nature of motherhood to be unsure of leaving. One thing I can tell you, though, is that I am a part of the opt-out generation: I sprinted up corporate ladders and ran two startups of my own, and I don't want to do that now, when I have young kids.
A press release from Lifetime Television just announced, "Women in generation Y do not want to permanently drop out of the workforce." The assumption here, of course, is that the Generation X women-- me-- who are dropping out of corporate life today are going to abstain from all business for the next twenty years until all their kids are in college.
Newsflash: The current opt-out phenomenon is not permanent. Some moms can do it, some can't, most fall somewhere in between, like me. As the kids get older, the opt-out revolution is about opting out of the absurd and inflexible hours that corporate America is demanding right now. It is not opting out of all work that does not involve kids. In fact, the majority of small businesses are started by women for these very reasons.
So, finally, here's some advice. Babysitter problems are not unique to you. They are part of a massive trend, and one bad babysitter doesn't mean you should give up on corporate life, and the crazy demands of corporate life don't mean that you should give up on work outside the home. We are all trying to find a compromise, and some of us are trying to find a sitter.
Do you think I'm serious? Or are you just funnin' me?
Trouble was, the writer neglected to actually talk to any for-real teenagers and find out if they REALLY were heavily armed. When called out on it, the newspaper called it "hypothetical exposition". Classic double-speak - also, unless you read the article closely, you just assumed that the author had a source, rather that an idea.
Anyhoo, I'm just sensitive to madeup newspaper articles, of late.
True. Unless he's sick, and then you thank God for antibiotics!
There are plenty of examples like yours, especially when the editorial writer is the only "source," as in this case. She could have made the whole story up.
What a jerk!
Sounds like that whiney nancy-boy needs to be b*tch-slapped and force-fed a big bowl of Harden The F**k Up.
Call me an ignorant, primitive caveman, but it's the MAN's job to see to it that the mother of his children be provided for during the children's formative years. Mom needs to be free to see to the kids' needs until such a time when they are old enough to take care of themselves around the house.
Women went for Clinton in his elections even when they knew he was a cheating scumbag.
I was actually making a counterpoint to the person who said that women working outside the home is responsible for society's failings. You could point to that as the reason but that's shallow logic just like highlighting women voter's bad decisions. Yes, it is better for women to be home with babies (for her and them) but at some point kids do need school and socialization with other kids. That women work is not amoral of always a flight of fancy.
I'd be willing to give up voting if it would prevent the election of another slime mold like Clinton. I suppose the same sort of women are going to vote for John Edwards because he's "handsome" ...
retch.
I have three under 7.
They have never been left with a babysitter, sans Grandma, and that's once or twice a year as they don't live close by.
I can deal with it.
God FORBID!!! He made the baby too didn't he? They both sound like utter idiots with a 'me, me, me' problem. What is wrong with these women and men? One look in a baby's eyes and many men and women get their priorities straight real fast. Apparently not these two though. This woman needs a brain, not a babysitter.
Wow. Just wow! I am scared for your little boy just reading your post after the fact! I am so glad you found him. Thank God!
Excellent point.
Marry a maggot, don't complain.
Every child has a mommy (that's how it works).
Now (this is where the math comes in), if mommy A of child A pimps off so unrelated woman B has to be hired instead, won't unrelated woman B need to find nanny C to watch HER kids?
I mean, for a few unusual women this can be made to work, but it's kind of a Ponzi scheme, isn't it?
As a mass phenomenon, how can it possibly work?
gee....and WHO IS IT whose doing the laundry and the grocery shopping and the cooking and the dishes and srubbing the toilets and buying birthday gifts for HER HUSBANDS relatives and buying the clothes and picking up the toys and vaccuming and paying the bills and running all other misc. errands and making appointments and picking up her husbands shit stained underwear and mowing the lawn and planting the flowers and on and on and on and GOD FORBID she ask her husband to actually TAKE OUT THE GARBAGE he might actually think she's asking him to do 50% of the housework!!!
here here. I thought the same exact thing and I agree with many that her initial management direction to the babysitter was to leave the baby at home sleeping and then come to the coffee house. Even though that was completely ridiculous and stupid, this is what it sounded like.
God help that this woman if she ever leaves this child again. The 'babysitter' will need to be a solid knowledgeable care giver and have a decoder ring!
12 years, up for Chief Petty Officer, but affirmative action did its dirty little deed.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who interpreted the woman's directions as did the sitter. Of course, no one in his right mind would leave a baby, whatever he thought the mother said.
There are a lot of clueless parents out there. Heck, I was one, when I first had a baby; fortunately, my babysitter was an experienced mom :-).
The story is full of holes. She could hire a real nanny, instead of someone's non-English-speaking boyfriend, or use a commercial or church daycare center. Either it's a fiction to make a point (Help me, Big Daddy Government!) or she just feels like whining instead of doing something.
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