Sharing a nanny between two families is becoming increasingly popular, writes SHEILA WAYMAN
FOR FIRST-TIME mothers, the biggest ordeal after labour can be finding suitable childcare before returning to work. A few pragmatic ones start organising it during pregnancy, while those who don’t want to tempt fate wait until they have a baby to call their own.
But, as parents-in-waiting, you see childcare arrangements primarily in terms of logistics and finances; it is only after birth that the emotional aspects kick in. Handing over your child to somebody else to mind can be painful.
With no previous experience, it is hard to know what will work best for your family. The options range from a creche or a childminder, to a relative or a nanny and now there is another choice which is beginning to catch on: nanny sharing.
The big attraction is that it is inhouse childcare, tailored to your family, at half the cost. If the logistics are right, it makes a lot of sense at a time when even people in well-paid jobs are seeing their incomes drop.
Nanny sharing is well established in the US and is becoming increasingly popular in Britain. The number of nanny shares in the UK has increased three-fold in the past year, according to figures from Tinies, the UK’s largest network of nanny and nursery staff agencies.
One in four nannies on Tinies books now works for more than one family, up from one in eight a year ago.
Meanwhile, a website which caters for families looking to pair up, NannyShare.co.uk, reports a rise in registrations from 100 a month in January this year to close to 300 in March.
Linda Meegan, an accountant, was one of those ultra-organised expectant mothers, who provisionally booked a place in a creche when she was pregnant with her first child Matthew, now aged three. There was huge demand for childcare places around their home off the Navan Road in Dublin.
However, after his birth, she was concerned at the idea of “uprooting” him every day. “Once I started thinking about going back to work, my biggest thing was getting him up and out in the morning and the fact that he was going to have to be stressed and displaced by the fact that I am going out to work.”
Then a friend, Maireád Walsh, who lived one minute’s walk away in the same housing estate and was also preparing to return to work after the birth of her first child, mentioned nanny sharing in conversation. She had heard about it from the Dublin-based agency Nanny Solutions.
Carol Flynn, who set up Nanny Solutions six years ago, says it is a service it has always offered, but one that is becoming more popular due to the current economic circumstances. She matches families who either both need a nanny on a part-time basis, or who are interested in “pooling” their children with one nanny. Depending on ages, up to four children is feasible.
Employing a nanny is an expensive form of childcare, but once the costs are halved it may be financially manageable. A nanny would expect to earn about €550 a week, depending on qualifications and experience, and then there’s the employer’s PRSI to be paid on top of that.
The thought of nanny sharing stayed in Meegan’s head after that initial conversation, and she and Walsh talked more about it.
“I think we both liked the idea,” says Walsh, “because the children would be minded in our own homes and then there is the flexibility when the child is sick and the nanny is able to mind the baby. There was the added bonus of the social side of it for both. If we had a shared nanny, at least the kids would have each other to play with.”
She and Meegan had similar views, she says, which is important for nanny sharing, and they both felt the arrangement would give them what they were looking for.
“We were good friends before we embarked on it, which was brilliant,” points out Meegan. But they were also aware that if the arrangement did not work out, it might compromise a very good friendship.
The two couples agreed to sit down and talk about it without any commitment, to put all the pros and cons on the table, openly and frankly, and then decide if it was something they wanted to pursue. One concern, says Meegan, was if one side was habitually late home and left the other parents holding the baby. But they all undertook to treat the nanny’s finishing time as they would a creche closing and make sure they were back.
The two mothers interviewed two candidates, and both opted for the second one. “Both of us liked Paula [Naves]. Then she met both children together and then both husbands,” explains Walsh, who works as an employee benefits tax consultant for Mercer.
Another aspect to the arrangement which made it attractive to Meegan was the fact that the children would be able to go out regularly. “Not having tried any other childcare, that is not making any judgment,” she stresses, “but when we interviewed Paula, it was very apparent she was going to be outside and go for walks and go to the playground and I loved that. And I loved the idea of him sleeping in his own bed, and not being disrupted in the morning.”
They decided to have Naves based in one house one week, and in the other the next, and bought a double buggy for her to use.
The week the nanny was in your house, you did not have to get your child up and out, says Meegan. “The next week you didn’t have to be hyper organised and have the shopping in.”
With both mothers generally starting work at 8am, their husbands handed over the babies to Naves, who arrived at 7.50am. And then both women would be home by 6pm, very rarely availing of the agreed 15-minute margin to 6.15pm.
One drawback of nanny sharing is that holidays have to be co-ordinated. Walsh and her husband Dave were tied to taking them in August, so Meegan and her husband Andrew took them then too. As Naves was from Portugal, she also liked to take two weeks at Christmas to go home.
When Walsh had her second child, Gavin, Meegan offered to have the nanny mind the two toddlers in her house for 10 weeks, so that she could have some peace with the new baby. Walsh was able to return the favour some months later when Meegan gave birth to her second child, James.
Both mothers stress how well nanny sharing worked for them in their circumstances, but it ended when Walsh and her husband moved to Malahide. They now have a nanny of their own.
Meegan is still on maternity leave with nine-month-old James and has Matthew in a Montessori group. They are also moving house so have not settled on what sort of childcare they will choose when she returns to work but she is very open to the idea of nanny sharing again, with Matthew continuing at a Montessori in the mornings.
“Paula was excellent with the boys and very reliable – in the two and a half years, she did not take one sick day or was ever late,” adds Meegan.
It is the sort of stress-free childcare arrangement which working women need, says Flynn. “Parents are going out to work, they want to be able to concentrate on their job, particularly in this environment, and they want to know that they have this reliable person caring for their children. People have said to me their lives have been transformed since getting a nanny.”
Nannies who register with Flynn’s agency have childcare qualifications, Garda vetting and at least two years’ full-time experience in childcare. The majority of them live out.
A nanny also provides age-appropriate activities similar to those in a creche or playgroup, Flynn stresses, there is no question of the children sitting in front of the television all day. She can also bring the children to toddler groups, music groups and library sessions in the area.
Another agency, Executive Nannies, is open to the concept of nanny sharing and thinks it is something it may be suggesting to clients in the future. Its recruitment consultant, Michelle Fitzgerald, is personally enthusiastic about the idea, having worked herself as a nanny for two families in the US four years ago.
She went out to San Francisco to care for a schoolgoing child and a baby, and then a friend of the family asked if Fitzgerald would take on her baby as well. She loved it and saw the advantages.
For parents, particularly with a two or three-year-old child, who do not want to go down the creche route but are worried about isolation, it can be the perfect solution, she adds, by providing a buddy or two.
PROS AND CONS OF NANNY SHARING
FOR:
In-home childcare at half the cost.
Your child has company but is not in a crowd.
Nanny will look after children’s food and laundry.
Children are less likely to be sick than in large-group childcare.
Even when they are sick, it does not mean you have to stay home from work.
You have other parents as back-up if there is a crisis, such as the nanny being sick or you are delayed getting home.
AGAINST:
Collaborative decisions are always more difficult than just suiting your own family.
Any difference of opinion over how the children should be cared for could soon fester.
Organising holidays can be complicated, needing to suit at least two families and a nanny.
If one family suddenly pulls out of the arrangement, it leaves the other having to bear the cost or look for another family to share, which could take time.
TRICKS TO MAKE IT ALL WORK
A similar outlook on child-rearing is essential for any parents entering a nanny-sharing arrangement and sisters Jane Mooney and Gillian Dunne were confident that they ticked that particular box.
Already in business together, running a sandwich bar in Dublin city centre, the sisters thought it made sense to collaborate on childcare too and share the costs.
“We were looking for the best options for the kids. We wanted the one-to-one interaction, but with some mixing with another child,” Mooney explains.
Her son Adam was 18 months and becoming a bit boisterous for the grandparents who had minded him up to then, while Dunne’s son, Finn, was just six months.
The moment they met Susan Crosbie (24), through the Nanny Solutions agency, they knew she was exactly what they were looking for. They hired her to work in the Mooneys’ Rathfarnham home in Dublin, while Dunne commuted with Finn from their home in Trim, Co Meath.
“Susan would get to my house at 7.30am and I would get into the business early,” says Mooney. “Gillian would arrive about 9.30am.
“It was a fantastic set-up. I knew he was in his home environment, safe and happy. I did not have to drag him out. Some mornings he would be still asleep and I did not have to wake him.”
Every day, Crosbie had a different activity planned such as baking, arts and crafts, colour charts, going to the library.
“We were so lucky with Susan; she was a Montessori teacher as well and Adam was at the age where she was starting to teach him things. By 20 months he could count to 10 and was starting his ABCs.
“He absolutely adored her. Every morning he would be jumping around waiting for her to come.
“I could go to work and know that everything to do with Adam would be sorted. She would have the general areas tidied, the floors washed, all the toys put away. She would keep a journal on everything they did, from changing nappies, what they ate and what they did in the day.”
The sisters were back before five and Crosbie would have Finn all ready to put in the car for his return trip to Trim.
The arrangement ensured Mooney had quality time with her son in the hours before bedtime.
“I was not having to start looking after his washing or cooking food for him. I could just play with him, which was great.”
Both sisters highly recommend nanny sharing and, although they have just sold their business, Mooney, who is expecting her second child in July, says it is definitely something she would look at again.
So much for the satisfied parents, but what about the nanny? It was Crosbie’s first experience of a nanny share and she says that it worked out really well for her too.
“They were both sisters so in that sense it was probably a bit easier than two completely different families,” she says. “They had the same ideas on upbringing.”
She met up with them twice before starting and talked through everything to make sure they were all on the same wavelength.
“You know when you walk into a family whether they are going to be the right family for you. If you do not feel it is right, it is not going to work because you are dealing with the parents every day. It’s just you, the parents and the kids and you have to have a good relationship with them.”
The boys got on really well together and she was able to get them both into good routines.
Having been a Montessori teacher in a creche before switching to nannying, it was a big step going from working with 20 staff to being on your own all the time, she explains. But she is very happy, as it is not only a better paid job but she also enjoys working in a more homely environment and the greater freedom.
“With a creche you are confined to the room and the building itself. As a nanny you are free to go to the playgrounds. I like the outdoors and even for the kids it is great to be able to get out.”
