Comments about the 2021 Nanny Survey

 

Comments about pay & benefits

  • i wish the tax and low income benefits system will be reformed. Most Nanny interviewed only wants cash to maintain low income status for their family’s benefits may it be free medicaid, food cash benefits, or college financial aid. I wish the state and federal tax and benefits can be reformed.

  • We pay her in cash.

  • nanny prefers to be paid in cash, does not want benefits as she works less than part-time and prefers the flexibility

  • We always paid the 2 child rate even for several days with only one child. We had a minimum income for her and she was always paid 40 hours despite working less

  • I would like to clarify the rate of pay per child. We employ a nanny to take care of just our child on some days and on other days we have a share with a different family. The nanny gets paid $22 when taking care of one child and $14 per child ($28 total) when shared with another family.

  • We pay $22/hr for 1 kid

  • We pay $16 an hour for our child. The other child is the nanny's so it would be equivalent to $32 per hour if it were two paying families.

  • For the overnight question, we also paid our nanny hourly up until our daughter went to bed, in addition to the overnight rate.

  • When we hired her, we asked her if she wanted us to pay Social Security, etc., and she declined. The family’s preference is to keep our arrangement under the table.

  • We pay our nanny $21/hr and guarantee 40 hrs. a week. Pre-covid she would work more but now that we're WFH, we stick to 40hrs. most of the time (she actually leaves 1 hr. early each day - when toddler goes to sleep, meaning her total is 35 hrs/week but we pay 40). We pay on the books half-time. She receives 5 days sick leave, 2 weeks vacation, and any time we're away as well.

  • I believe in paying a fair livable wage. Not everyone can afford having a nanny and I feel very blessed to be able to afford one.

  • We give our nanny some but not all federal holidays off since we're taking off quite a lot of time. In total she has at least 5 weeks of paid vacation over the year.

  • I give two weeks paid vacation and one week paid sick leave as well as two weeks of COVID sick leave.

Comments about duties

  • My kids are now middle school age so the nanny duties are older kid duties now and the nanny is only with is from school dismissal through early evening. But we had a similar arrangement and pay scale when the kids were you get, except nanny was 55 hrs per week.

  • We told our nanny she doesn't need to do housework, but she says she is happy to do some (mops the kitchen once a week, wipes the counters) because our son naps 2-3 hours everyday.

Comments about nanny shares

  • Our nanny share is hosted at the other family’s house, and they host a second nanny share (during covid) for 3 older kids (including the older brother of the child in our share), and it’s been awesome to have 2 nannies + age variety. 

General comments about nannies

  • As I was once a nanny myself I understand that we must pay nannies a fair wage so they can also survive. In the bay area the cost of living is extremely high, so a fair wage is definitely recommended.

  • We had 2 nannies over the past year. Both ended up quitting within 2 weeks. One quit after we signed an income verification form for her child to qualify for subsidized care and the other quit after injuring her shoulder outside of work hours (we had a non-walking baby at the time, so being able to pick up the child was an essential part of the job). After those two experiences, we found a group daycare provider.

  • This is the bay area and it’s very expensive to live here. A nanny is a luxury and would never expect to nickel and dime someone who is looking after your children. Imagine if your nanny was trying to pay the rent and completely stressed out about there finances. The stress then carries on to the person‘s job and this is just not acceptable.

General comments about the survey

  •  How can we see results?

  •  Your limits are not high enough. Our nanny earns $2750 weekly as a minimum.

  •  Thank you

  • We share our nanny with another family and she watches each of our kids individually some days and we share some days so maybe would have been nice to include more options for that question. Thanks!

  • Excellent survey - thank you for collecting this valuable data so thoughtfully!

  •  Thank you for doing this!

  •  Thanks

  •  It would have been interesting if you'd asked about primary language of the nanny. Our nanny's primary language is Spanish; my family's is English, but we are happy that our daughter is learning Spanish.