Firing the Babysitter

One summer day about 38 years ago today, I thought my career would come to a crashing halt. We had to fire the babysitter.

Our son—our first child—was five and a half months old. I’d gone back to work when he was three months old, and my husband and I had hired a babysitter to come into our home on week days to care for him. I’d placed a newspaper ad and interviewed several applicants. This woman, whom I’ll call Eliza (not her real name), seemed mature and friendly. She was a mother herself, so I thought she would surely be able to handle our little boy.

Eliza started work for us in early May, the week before I was scheduled to go back to the office. I watched her with my son while I puttered around the house, and I left her with him sometimes to go shopping and run errands. Everything seemed fine, so I blithely went back to work.

After a few weeks, Eliza told us she had lots of downtime while the baby napped, and she wanted to take on some housework so she wouldn’t get bored. We agreed to pay her more, and I let the woman who cleaned for us go. The house stayed clean, and everything seemed fine.

Then, one evening after dinner in late July, we noticed there were some fast food wrappers from Captain D’s in our kitchen trash container. We never went to Captain D’s, and no one else had been in our house, so I knew the wrappers were from Eliza.

The next day I asked Eliza if she’d taken our son out during the day. She said she had not. I asked her about the fast food wrappers. “I stopped there on my way to work yesterday,” she said.

I had no reason to doubt her. So I simply said, “If you ever want to take the baby out during the day, just let us know. We can discuss it, and be sure you have a car seat for him.” Once before, she’d arranged to take our son to her sister’s house in town, and we’d left the car seat. I didn’t want it to become a habit, but on occasion, with our consent, I didn’t have a real objection to her driving him somewhere. But I wanted to know where our son was going, and I certainly didn’t want him in a car without a car seat.

A few days later, on a Wednesday evening, I found more fast food wrappers in the trash, again from Captain D’s. This was in the pre-Internet days, so I telephoned the only Captain D’s restaurant in our vicinity. I asked what time they open. “Ten a.m.,” I was told. She couldn’t have stopped there before work because she started at 7:30 a.m.

My husband and I discussed the situation. It was clear we would have to fire Eliza. She had lied to us and was not behaving responsibly with our baby.

I was sick—physically and mentally. I could not continue working without child care. Parenting had to trump work. We had no back-up plan in place, other than my in-laws ninety miles away. They were out of town at the time.

I would have to quit my job. After all my hard work in law school, and after almost four years as an attorney, it was over. My husband and I made about the same amount of money, and I did not want to quit my job. I felt like a failure. But I had no choice. Someone would have to stay with our son, and it would be me. I didn’t know what else to do.

The next morning, a Thursday, when Eliza arrived, we again asked her if she had been to Captain D’s. She said the same thing as before—she had stopped there on her way to our house. When we confronted her with her obvious lie, she was silent.

We told her she was fired, and I handed her her last check.

I stayed home with our son that morning, and my husband came home at noon so I could work Thursday afternoon. I didn’t say anything about the situation to anyone in the office except to commiserate with one woman who had a baby about the same age as my son.

She lived not too far from our house, and she said, “I know someone who might be able to help. She’s our back-up babysitter, and lives even closer to you than to us. Jane takes care of infants and toddlers in her home. She might have an opening—she seems able to take our daughter when we need her to.”

Perhaps Jane could be a temporary solution to our problem. I called Jane (this is her real name). I was ready to send our son to her the next day, based on my coworker’s recommendation.

“I want to meet you first,” Jane told me. “We’ll see if we think it will work out.” She wanted to know something about the children she dealt with before taking them on. It wasn’t just about money for her. Her refusal to take our son sight unseen, actually made her rise in my estimation.

Friday morning, my husband and I took our son to meet Jane. We liked her very much—down to earth, experienced, active but grandmotherly. She must have liked us, because she agreed to start caring for our baby on Monday. I can’t recall if one of us took vacation that Friday, or if we split the day again.

I was hugely relieved. I wasn’t sure whether to place another ad and find someone else to replace Eliza, but at least I could keep my job for the moment.

So Monday, our son started going to Jane’s house.

It wasn’t as convenient as having a sitter in our house, though it was less expensive. We had to pack a diaper bag every day with diapers and milk. Once the kids were on table food, Jane provided the food, but she didn’t provide the formula.

I don’t think I even tried advertising again for a sitter. Our son stayed with Jane until he shortly after his second birthday. She was as wonderful as I thought during our interview.

The reason we left Jane two years later was that she fired our son. She told me a couple of months after he turned two that he needed more stimulation than she could provide. She preferred caring for babies and young toddlers, and he was already reading some words. So I researched day care centers, and a month or so later he started attending preschool.

But that sudden shift in childcare arrangements when we had to fire Eliza gave me tremendous sympathy for other working parents facing issues around childcare—Is my child safe? Is he healthy? Is she learning? Our crisis only lasted a few days, but it was memorable.

These days working parents grapple with huge challenges, often on a daily basis. Childcare arrangements have been turned upside down because of the pandemic. The stay-at-home orders this spring, the closing of schools and day care centers, the sudden working from home requirements, the online learning and technical adaptations—all of these upheavals have placed colossal burdens on working parents.

Our society is likely to face these burdens for another year or more, until the post-pandemic normal becomes clear and we settle into a new routine. My empathy for working parents will continue.

When did you have a sudden parenting crisis? How did you handle it?