O-mama - Opinionated Moms

• By Benjamin Cheever • 10 Comments
• Tagged in: For Moms

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I just spent a week on vacation with my parents, all 3 of my sisters, all 4 husbands, and all the grandkids—13 kids in all.  It was pretty ideal in that we were in a hotel with a bunch of rooms—so you could retreat if you needed to—but the bulk of each day was spent on the beach with the whole group—playing in the sand and swimming in the ocean.   The age range of the kids went from twins at 7 months old to the oldest granddaughter from my sister’s first marriage who is going on 19.  She had a friend with her, so they did their own thing, but to their credit, they did come over to the daily kid party and helped dig the big holes.  The only sitters that came along on the trip were for the twins—otherwise the moms handled the kids—sometimes swapping kids based on activities, and a couple nights we hired hotel nannies so all the grownups could go out.    Honestly, the only semi-brutal part was the airport/security/airplane/baggage claim part—and now with all the DVD  players and i-Pads and i-Pods and what have you, we really only had to deal with the babies.  We took staggered flights as everyone is just superstitious enough to think it would be a bad idea for all 25 of us to go on one plane! 

99.9% of the time, all the kids got along really well.  88.8% of the time, all the kids minded their parents.  77.7 % of the time the parents got along with eachother, just kidding, but seriously, considering I am 1 of 4 girls raised by THE SAME PARENTS it’s mind boggling a.) how differently we parent –hands on vs. laissez faire and b.) how utterly and completely different—from us and from eachother-- all 4 husbands are.

My older sister was a divorced mother for a long time, so she almost always had a nanny for her daughter, and I think she kind-of got used to that, so when she remarried and had two more kids, she has pretty much always had someone to come and babysit and clean—plus she has worked on and off for as long as I can remember.  PLUS…and this is a big one, it’s a hell of a lot harder to deal with 2 and 3 year olds in your 40’s than when you are a sprightly young 30. That’s why we have medication!  But I digress. 

Okay, conversely, I’m always been somewhat stupidly obstinate about having any help at all—believing whole-heartedly that I could do it all by myself from the beginning—which now I can admit was probably more about control and maybe even a silent protest to having been semi-raised by nannies myself.  Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.  I probably aged myself 10 years when my second was a sickly newborn and my oldest was a psychotic fecal smearing 2 year old.

The next sister in line followed the sage advice of my older sister and my mother and has had various “mommy’s helpers” to give her periodic breaks from her little boys.  Plus she was and is heavily involved with some charity organizations and projects and needed caretaking during meetings etc.

Then, of course, we have the baby of the family who now has 6 babies of her own—3 boys: ages 7, 6 and 5; a 3 year old girl and twin baby girls.  She has always had help because, well, it would be virtually impossible not to.  Her husband helps a ton as well.  She swears by her help—a lovely woman named Gloria.  My sister pays her top dollar, and though she does feel guilt about Gloria taking care of my sister’s kids and not her own kids, she figures that by paying her so much, she is in fact, taking care of Gloria’s entire extended family and quite possibly most of her relatives in Mexico—and if she weren’t working for my sister, she’d be working for someone else and probably not nearly as appreciated and loved.

So what makes a good nanny?  That answer is probably different for everyone.  For me, since all we do is hire babysitters once in a while for date nights, my girls just like them young and fun—high energy, fort building, cupcake making gals.  For someone that works full time, I would imagine you would want someone truly capable—someone able to drive and deal with homework and soccer practice, orthodontist appointments and calls from the school nurse.  Some people may want someone to clean and disappear, other people—like Brangelina—have so many nannies and assistants floating around that they inevitably become part of the family.

So I don’t want this to be the working mom vs. stay at home argument—really it’s more a question of “do mothers need help?”  And who is qualified to “mother” your children when you are not around?  And if it’s not very often—is it okay to bring in completely random babysitters to watch over your kids while you enjoy a semi-subdued dinner?  The ironic thing is that now that my kids are mellow and pretty much fine with being left for a few hours; I don’t really want to leave them because I enjoy their company!  But back when they were babies and toddlers—when I was utterly desperate for an hour of civilized quiet dining, they would scream and cry and tear their hair out to guilt me into not going. If I did manage to get out the door, I’d sit there wringing my hands, inhaling my cocktails, and thinking of those “poor babies” every second.  My poor husband.  I would pretend to pee so I could call the sitter so often that he thought there was something wrong with me, and I really couldn’t talk about anything else because I had NOTHING ELSE IN MY BRAIN.

My mother can’t believe we would even hesitate.  Even in the days long before cell phones, she would just have the girl down the street come down and babysit for 50 cents an hour.  And if that girl was busy, she would send a friend—any warm body to call 911 if the house catches on fire, really.  But it begs the question—these are our CHILDREN!  Nothing could possibly be worse than something happening to our children---and remember, the hand that rocks the cradle…is the hand that rules the world.

The Good Nanny is a good read—not perfect, but it raises some great questions about upward mobility and materialism and the lengths to which we will go to “have it all.”  Most people will likely buy this  book because it was written by a Cheever.  That’s why I got it initially—to see how strong the writing gene is, and it is a good, complicated, interesting book—delving into racism questions along with all the child rearing issues. (The nanny in question is African-American.)  The reviews out there are mixed, and I agree with some: especially the issues about the ending as well as the believability of some of the characters’ choices.  Nothing worse than a dissatisfying ending, eh?  Not just in books!  But you may disagree.  The subject matter sparked a lot of dialogue around here and between my sisters and me—that’s for sure.  There are few more sensitive and touchy subjects than one’s kids—and very few that are as important.

P.S.  In the interest of full disclosure:  I also read Angelina: The Unauthorized Biography while on vacation—extremely juicy and cheesy—conclusion: yes, she is crazy and beautiful and evil. Then my sister gave me a hilarious series of anecdotes/essays by Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield called Talking To Girls about Duran Duran.  I’m a big DD fan, so that was a must read.