As any working parent knows, finding the right child care is a daunting task. That goes double for attachment parents. We have spent countless hours holding our babies, wearing them, and sleeping next to them. We have nursed and rocked them for ages. We’ve researched diapers and baby-led weaning. We have set up yes environments. And now we are supposed to hand them over to someone else to care for? The thought of it makes giving birth sound easy.
With two kids and two careers in our family, we have looked into every option for child care and tried several. We toured what felt like every daycare in town. We’ve hired nannies. We did Waldorf preschool for two years. Our current arrangement, and the one we love most, is hosting an au pair.
What is an au pair?
The au pair program provides full-time live-in child care combined with cultural exchange. Your family gets a responsible and fun big sister or big brother figure to take care of your children and provide some light help around the house for 45 hours per week, and an 18-26 year old from another country gets the chance to experience life in the US.
How do you find them?
There are several au pair agencies that you can work with, including Cultural Care Au Pair (our agency), Au Pair in America, Great Au Pair, CHI Au Pair, and several more. When you sign up, you create a profile to describe your family, your lifestyle, your philosophies, and your values. The au pairs do the same. Much like online dating, families can browse au pair profiles and au pairs can browse family profiles. The agency can help match you or you can look for matches on your own. You can also narrow down your search based on criteria such as male or female au pairs, being a speaker of a particular language, being qualified to work with infants, having a driver’s license, or anything you choose! Once a potential match has been identified, families and au pairs typically do a Skype interview. From there, a match can be made or both parties can keep looking.
So they live with you?
Yes! As an introvert who doesn’t like to be “on” all the time, I was concerned that having a stranger move into our household would be unpleasant and exhausting. Happily, that wasn’t the case at all.
First, an au pair is not like having a house guest. You don’t carefully screen every house guest to make sure you have the kind of compatibility that would allow you to live together for a year or more. With au pairs, you do. Second, your au pair isn’t going to want to hang around you 100% of the time anymore than you want to hang out with her or him 100% of the time. Everyone needs their downtime, especially someone who just moved to a new country and is speaking a second (or third) language all day. Chances are your au pair will also quickly make friends with people her own age quickly and spend a lot of evenings and weekends hanging out with them.
Having live-in child care is also a huge bonus for attachment parenting families. With my oldest, we had a lovely couple of nannies, but leaving the house was still hard a lot of days. My daughter didn’t want me to go. With an au pair, leaving the house is almost always a seamless transition. My kids happily wave goodbye as I head out for work. That’s worth a lot.
Are there any special requirements?
The only requirement is that the au pair must have their own room with a door. They don’t need their own bathroom, although for most families I think it is helpful to have separate bathrooms if possible. Your au pair probably needs to get ready for work in the mornings around the same time you do.
Do they need their own car?
Nope! In fact, for most of the time with our first au pair, we were a one car family. My husband rode his bike to work, I worked from home, and the au pair took the kids out of the house on trips to the park, library, children’s museum, etc. Later we added a second car, but we have absolutely zero plans to ever get a third car for an au pair.
How much does it cost?
The program is advertised as full-time help (45 hours per week) for $7.77 an hour. You pay an agency fee of $8,500, which covers the cost of the visa, the flight from the home country to the US, and a weeklong stay at the au pair “training school” in New York before their arrival to your home. You also pay $197.75 directly to the au pair each week. The total cost averages out to about $1,500 per month, regardless of how many children you have. Other costs, such as adding the au pair as a driver on your insurance policy and having one more person at dinner most nights will vary, but should also be accounted for. For families who need full time child care for more than one child, an au pair is often much cheaper than daycare.
What if it doesn’t work out?
This happened to us. Our first au pair was amazingly fantastic and stayed with us for 18 months. Then our second au pair arrived. She was responsible and polite, but after a couple of weeks or so, we realized it was not a good match. We initiated re-match and both parties started interviewing again. She found a new family a couple hours from us, and we found a new and wonderful au pair our kids adore and have a blast with!
From this experience, we learned to be as explicit and up front as possible about what we are looking for. Our top priority is having someone who is super engaging and LOVES to play with kids. We need Mary Freaking Poppins, but nicer. We don’t care about keeping the toys organized or the playroom (aka living room) clean. We don’t have any rules to enforce beyond basic safety and kindness. Other families, we’ve learned, are often looking for a completely different type of au pair. For example, someone who can keep the household in shape, make sure the kids do their homework and don’t exceed their 30 minutes of screen time. Learn from our mistakes and be clear about what it is YOU are looking for.
What else should I know?
Having an au pair is a wonderful opportunity to have your children cared for by someone they love and trust, a way to help them broaden their view of the world, and it’s completely customizable. You can find someone who fits your family’s lifestyle and shares your values.
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