Chances of Finding Share Partners
I'm looking for a nanny for my son starting in late April, and I'm hoping to do a nanny share for the sake of a more manageable rate. I looked at posts for available spots in existing shares but haven't found anything that works for us yet (location, language preference, hosting preferences). I'm considering just hiring a nanny who is open to a share, and then searching for someone to fill the share spot once we've secured the nanny. We would be paying her one child rate in the meantime. My question is - what are the chances that we find someone to join our nanny share within a few months? We can afford the single child rate comfortably for a few months, but long term it would be a squeeze.
So, for anyone who has done this before in Oakland (we're in the Piedmont/Lakeshore area), how long did it take you to find a family to share with?
Parent Replies
This was a long time ago, but we posted on BANANAS https://bananasbunch.org/ that we were seeking a nanny share partner when our child was about 2 months old (basically half way point of maternity leave). We live in your area as well. I suppose it all depends on luck, but 3 different families within 1.5 miles of our house saw our posting and reached out to us within 2 weeks of our posting. We chose the family that was closest to us and met our hosting preferences as our share partner and then we began interviewing nannies together and found a nanny in about 4 weeks.
Hi there -
Our daughter recently left a nanny share to go to pre-school, however I don't know if this current share has an opening. I would be happy to make an introduction to the family currently with the nanny (her name is Consuelo) if you're interested? She operates out of the Laurel/Allendale area but may be flexible depending on your needs.
Thanks,
Patrick
Now is sort of a challenging time as well, which could be part of your problem. People are not typically ending their nanny committment right now. Preschools, TK, kindergarten all start in the fall so you'll see a lot of movement at that time, but right now there's likely less of it. I think you'll probably still be able to find someone to join your share since I'm sure other families are in your same boat, but if you can pay single rates until summer you'll probably have more options and can be more discrening about who you're sharing with. Good luck!
In my experience it's really hard to add someone to a share once it's established. We had a nanny share that could have accommodated three kids (two at a time since the parents all worked part time) but finding a third family was such a pain that we just two families and that was tricky enough to navigate on the day to day. It seems like you either find a family first than decide together on the nanny or get a nanny first and then decide on the second family. From what it sounds like, you don't have either right now?
You don't specify what doesn't work for you nor why, so I wonder what are the main issues there. I would say make sure you know what your expectations and non starters are, and then be flexible with a lot. Nanny shares are better than just a nanny cost wise but I'd be shocked if you found a nanny that didn't charge at least $17 an hour per kid. Also, nannies prefer one house rather than switching and in my experience a house near a park is preferable. Hopefully if you're having conversations with other families, you are figuring out what you need. i would also recommend local Facebook mom's groups, Kaiser's new parent groups, hell even NextDoor to find someone nearby. Best of luck!
For what it's worth, this was what we did, and it worked out great for us. We hired the nanny, set the schedule, and then advertised for a family to join via BPN. We're in North Oakland, Temescal/Rockridge area. We had quite a few interested families and ultimately found one that was wonderful.
We posted an ad on BPN with exactly what type hoping to do, and interviewed a handful of families. It took maybe 3 months and we posted the add about 3 months prior to the ideal start date.
A few folks reached out asking if we'd open to switching nannies as well.
Definitely worth posting a wanted ad with or w/o a nanny already.
We found a nanny for both of our kids and did solo care for about three months before converting into a share. We did this in late 2019/early 2020 with kiddo #1 and again in late 2022/early 2023 for kiddo #2. We also live in Oakland and had no problem finding another family to share with. We had at least a dozen families to consider during our process. I found it preferable to be the family with the nanny and getting to pick the family we thought would work best for us. We started looking for a family about 6-8 weeks before we wanted to start a share and that timeline seemed to work well. It also depends on when you want to start the share as their are certain periods of the year when there is more childcare flux (ex: August/Sept). Feel free to reach out to me directly and I would be happy to share more about our process and what worked/ did not work.