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Travel with a baby sitter?!?!? How big can that market be?
by msh 5y ago
Travel with a baby sitter?!?!? How big can that market be?
- staticautomatic 5y agoProbably bigger than you’d think. My family occasionally traveled with a babysitter when I was a kid and at the time we were thoroughly middle class.
- Judgmentality 5y agoWhat is your definition of middle class?
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoProbably not American middle class ;-) . In Asia it is (was?) common to have a driver, servant and yes even a dedicated babysitter for the kids. To respond to the people who are going to say that's just exploitation of the poor, well, your Uber driver and your food delivery person would like to talk you, as well as the people who were poorly paid to mine the rare minerals found on your fancy phone.
- aaomidi 5y agoSurprise! You were not middle class.
- lupire 5y agoEh, an au pair from overseas provides childcare in exchange for rent and food, and comes on vacations. If you aren't a stay at home parent, you can use some of the money you earn at your job to pay for child care.
- sidlls 5y agoHaving an au pair puts one firmly above the middle-class. Not necessarily rich, but certainly flirting with "affluent."
- ghaff 5y agoRightly or wrongly, a lot of people in the US consider middle class to be anything between barely putting food on the table and flying around in private jets. It's probably fair that people hiring au pairs/nannies are on at least the upper range of middle class income but that doesn't make them "rich" in typical American parlance.
- nec4b 5y agoAu pair can be cheaper that the day care. Middle class people from much poorer countries than the USA have au pairs.
- staticautomatic 5y agoWhat’s really surprising is that a stranger on the internet is an authority on my childhood and family. What else can you tell me?
- bad_good_guy 5y agoYou have to be in some serious denial or have complete lack of perspective to think having the means to bring a babysitter on your holidays is "solidly middle class"
- pc86 5y agoThere are literally dozens of comments elsewhere in this thread about how an au pair can be extremely affordable, borderline cheap. Feel free to read some of them, it's actually pretty enlightening if you're able to get over your unwarranted knee-jerk anger :)
- aaomidi 5y agoDon't think anyone expressed "anger" so I'm not sure why you had the knee jerk reaction to assume that.
- staticautomatic 5y agoYou're entitled to believe that bringing a cheap babysitter on a family road trip a few times means we couldn't possibly have been middle class, but the assertion that I'm in denial or have a complete lack of perspective is uncalled for.
- rhacker 5y agoNot as big as the market of traveling with maid. edit also sounds like the title of a xhampster video.
- rhino369 5y agoDoesn't have to be a 100k/year governess. Lot of families bring grandma/grandpa or a niece along to help with the kids.
- cannabis_sam 5y agoWho would describe their parents (the kid’s grandparents) as “babysitters” in this context? (It’s a genuine question, might be some cultural differences at play, but in my family this would be a family trip with a grandparent, not a family trip with a “babysitter”.)
- rhino369 5y agoI was trying to speak generically to cover all options. Friends of mine travel with an au pair AND grandparents.
- cannabis_sam 5y ago> Friends of mine travel with an au pair AND grandparents. Sounds absolutely reasonable! Do they differentiate in any way between the grandparents and the au pairs, or do they, for instance, also share accommodations? Also how do you separate the grandparents from the au pairs in the family photos???
- chrisseaton 5y ago> Friends of mine travel with an au pair AND grandparents. Surely you understand this is completely out the reach of almost everyone in society?
- jnwatson 5y agoExcept for the target demo of this website.
- chrisseaton 5y agoEven a line Googler doesn't normally have domestic staff do they? Or am I completely out of touch with how most of tech live?
- foobiekr 5y agoIn the bay area, I actually know a very surprising (shocking, to me) number of people with au pairs. It would never even have occurred to me that people would do this. But it’s common at least as far as I can tell, among people in their late 40s who’ve made a modest amount of money. I still can’t get my head around it. These are people who have a relatively low asset base (owned house, 401ks, maybe modest taxable brokerage account), high combined salaries and high burn rate. Also an unusual frequency of divorces, some of them explicitly tied to the presence of an attractive young woman in the home.
- gpapilion 5y agoMy sister has an au pair in the bay area, and she pays less for child care than I do at a in-home daycare. The au-pair industry is a bit of a scam, bringing labor from low cost countries. They are not paid the same as a nanny or day care worker, often it is half of full time daycare. The idea is that you're providing room and board, and thats part of their comp. Also the quality of care you get from an au pair is mixed, often its a bit like having a teenager care for you child. One acquaintance had a indoor play place call the au pair provider since they were concerned with how the au pair treated the children.
- dzhiurgis 5y agoNot much of a scam when there's millions in second or third world country dreaming of such work experience. We forget safe home + food security is far from given in many places. Let alone other perks of Bay Area.
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoHonestly not even 2nd or 3rd world, I know a few Western European au-pairs who did a year in the US.