When I babysat as a teenager in the 1980s, the world was a simpler place. I’d read the kids a couple of stories, put them to bed early, and spend the rest of the evening watching TV and eating sugar cereal. At the end of the night, I’d walk home with a few bucks in my pocket, happy to have a little extra cash.
Boy, have times changed. Inflation aside, not only are children’s caregivers these days charging higher hourly rates than their counterparts two decades ago did, but they have also come to expect a bevy of additional benefits that are comparable to what some corporations offer their employees: health insurance, paid time off, and reimbursement for auto insurance and gas.
As many parents know, the stress of covering these costs is particularly pronounced in our current recession. Fulfilling all of a nanny’s requirements threatens to suck the life right out of your bank account and leaves you wondering whether it might actually cost you less to stop working full-time, stay home with your children, and forgo professional childcare altogether. But since most employed people know it’s foolish to look a gift horse in the mouth during the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, more and more parents are turning to nanny sharing, also known as share care, as a less costly alternative to private caregivers. While coordinating share care may require a little more work from you up front, the payoff makes it well worth your time.
The Basics
Share care is an arrangement between two or more families who hire a single caregiver to look after their children at the same time. The trend was born of necessity in the 1980s, when more and more families began to need two incomes to cover their living expenses; as the number of stay-at-home parents in the U.S. decreased, Americans’ need for professional childcare increased so much that demand for nannies began to exceed the supply. In recent years, share care’s popularity has exploded as the cost of living has risen, nannies have become pricier, and the U.S. economy has weakened.
