Child Care

Photography by David Leventi

“Will any day care take babies under one year old? If so, how do I find them?”

Sure, New York day cares will accept infants under a year old. But you’d better be prepared for a wait, especially in Manhattan. The NYC Department of Health mandates a 4:1 child-to-caregiver ratio for babies 2 to 12 months old, and it limits group size to eight kids, which means open spots for infants can be hard to come by. “It depends on the center, but a yearlong wait isn’t unusual,” explains Carolyn Henriques, parent services coordinator at Child Care, Inc. “Many people apply when they’re pregnant, and I’ve gotten calls from people who were thinking about getting pregnant and wanted to get on a list.” (You can’t do this, by the way.) If putting off child care isn’t an option for you, steer yourself toward in-home family day cares, which are groups run out of individual private homes. “This isn’t just dropping the baby off with your next-door neighbor,” says Henriques, “There are a lot of professionals running these day cares—retired social workers, nurses, teachers.” In-home child-care groups musts be licensed by the NYC Department of Health, which means the home will be fully baby-proofed, and providers have to undergo at least 30 hours of training. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, don’t despair. Child Care, Inc. (childcareinc.org, 212-929-7604), a state-funded information and referral agency, will bring you in for a consultation, help you develop a long-term child-care plan and send you off with a list of child-care providers—all for free.—Nicole Caccavo Kear

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SUPER NANNY Sorry, but Mary Poppins is not going to land on your doorstep.

Photo: George Holz ©Disney/CML

I need to hire a nanny, but I’m completely in the dark about who to hire, what to pay, everything! What do other parents do?

Hiring their child’s caregiver is most New Yorkers’ first foray into employership. As such, it is bound to hold some element of mystery. Well, knowledge is power, so to get a more complete view of the New York nanny landscape, TONY Kids polled 114 nanny users about their practices. Here’s what we found :

The search

Of the parents we polled, 40% put their children under the care of a nanny when the baby was 3 months old or younger. However, almost a quarter of them held off on hiring a nanny until their child was at least a year old.

A month’s worth of interviews or more was needed by over half of the parents before they found their perfect match. But take heart: 23% said their search took less than a week.

“She was my manicurist, and I asked her if she wanted to work for me.”

New Yorkers like nannies who’ve been around the block a few times: 31% of the caregivers hired were pros with a decade or more behind them. Only a quarter had less than four years’ experience; 6% had none .

In this era of parent paranoia, a surprising 10% of the parents didn’t check references.

The person

The perfect nanny doesn’t appear to come from any particular age group; the caregivers in our poll were divided among twentysomethings, thirtysomethings, fortysomethings and over-fifties (about a quarter of each).

90% of the nannies speak fluent English, but 52% also speak another language. The most common foreign tongue was Spanish (16%), but we also heard about nannies who spoke Tibetan (5%), French (4%), Portuguese (4%), Hindi (4%), Creole (4%) and about a dozen other languages.

“We asked her to just speak Spanish so our child could learn the language from a native speaker.”

Tasks beyond simple baby-sitting are taken on by 83% of the nannies. Laundry duty falls to almost half of the nannies, as does cleaning. 20% handle cooking, 13% run errands.

“She’s not a housekeeper—I want her attention focused on my children.”

The compensation

The range of wages paid to nannies was vast: from $6 an hour to $25 an hour. Nearly a quarter of the parents paid $12 an hour (the most common pay rate), but a solid 18% offered $15. Only 6% dipped below $10 an hour.

“$250 per week, plus room and board, plus $5,000 school allowance and a car to use.”

70% of parents pay their nannies off the books. (If you choose to join the 30% who pay according to federal law, nannytax.com can help you juggle the paperwork.)

The vast majority of the nannies get paid vacation time (85%); most of those get two weeks, though a few get as many as six. 5% get to take off whenever their employers go away. Two thirds are allotted paid sick days (9% get no sick days at all— paid or unpaid!). 66% get meals provided while on duty. And a whopping 94% are given a yearly bonus.

“All Tibetan holidays are paid days off.”

The trust issue

Only 5%of the parents admitted to using a nanny cam. —Christopher Healy

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What’s the difference between a baby nurse and a postpartum doula?

One thing new parents can’t get enough of is help, especially the kind with no strings attached to overbearing grandparents. That’s where baby nurses and postpartum doulas come in. But which of the two is right for you? “A doula is there to take care of the whole family,” says Ruth Callahan, owner of Doula Care on the Upper West Side, “whereas baby nurses focus just on the newborn.” So baby nurses will handle the diapering, bathing, feeding, burping and soothing of your tot, while doulas will do pretty much whatever you need done, from cooking to running errands to taking care of siblings. Doulas usually also have experience with breast-feeding and aren’t afraid to show you what works. But they don’t do night duty; for that, you’ll need a baby nurse. Average fee: doulas $40/hour; baby nurses $225/24-hour shift.—Nicole Caccavo Kear

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