The Perfect Stranger: The Truth About Mothers and Nannies

by Lucy Kaylin

Overview

Lucy Kaylin has written a book that begins with the watershed moment in a mother's life-when she decides to hire a proxy to care for her children. Given that it's not only affluent women who turn to nannies anymore, this arrangement is also a watershed in the history of women's rights. Women now have choices. And therein lies the problem. Having choices has forced women to confront their feelings about motherhood and work, and to make difficult decisions requiring wrenching sacrifice. It's a murky, ambivalent time, and nowhere is that ambivalence more acutely expressed than in a working mother's relationships with her children's nanny, who serves such a precious function in the private space that is the family home. Lucy Kaylin, an experienced journalist who has interviewed prominent newsmakers of every stripe, isn't afraid to ask the tough questions to get to the heart of this complex relationship. She looks at the nanny/mother relationship from both sides. As a working mother who hired a babysitter of her own, she knows the process intimately. Kaylin exposes both the great joys and the difficult emotional issues that play out when working women invite perfect strangers into their homes to help care for their children.
Lucy Kaylin is the executive editor of Marie Claire. She was a senior writer for GQ and is the author of For the Love of God. She lives in New York with her husband and two children.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781596918283
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	12/01/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	279 KB

About the Author

Lucy Kaylin is the executive editor of Marie Claire. She was a senior writer for GQ and is the author of For the Love of God. She lives in New York with her husband and two children.

Read an Excerpt

Excerpt from The Perfect Stranger:

"Of course I had a complete breakdown our first night out—my mother watched our daughter who was two or three weeks old. At the restaurant I said, 'No stranger can watch my baby!'—it was a highly hormonal, highly lactating nightmare. Then about two weeks later, I was like, okay, now we've got to start interviewing people."

Editorial Reviews

The SAHM vs. WOHM debate is an active one...Magazine editor and mother Lucy Kaylin explores this complex relationship in her new book, "The Perfect Stranger: The Truth About Mothers and Nannies." After speaking with mothers, nannies and babysitters, Kaylin outlines the challenges, joys and emotions from both sides of this intimate issue.” —Urban Baby

“[A] frank, humble and big-hearted account of one of the most fraught aspects of modern motherhood...Grippingly but not giddily, Ms. Kaylin...fill[s] readers in on the Cheerios-begrimed true history behind the parodies, demonstrating that most nannies are not hired by socialites in white-glove buildings, but by cash-strapped working women, who turn over to them a substantial portion (sometimes all) of their earnings.” —New York Times

“Straightforward and engaging…Kaylin is a superb reporter, and her anecdotes ring true on both sides of the equation—the underpaid, overworked babysitter is given as much respect as the ambivalence-ridden, well-meaning mom. What Kaylin has accomplished here is a soul-opening portrait of this murky relationship that any working mother will relate to and find oddly uplifting for calling it like it is.” —O Magazine

“The nervy Lucy Kaylin bravely dares to confront the emotionally fraught relationship between mothers and The Perfect Stranger (Bloomsbury) they pay to nurture their children.” —Vanity Fair

“Kaylin addresses [the] controversy without flinching...taken as a whole, her book is more well-crafted collage than polemic — a portrait of the uneasy symbiosis between less-than-loaded two-income families and the 'unprecedented influx of women from economically unstable places,' of villageless mothers doing their best to raise a child…Absolution, she can't promise. But the book should at least serve as a big, huge greeting card to mothers who hire nannies.” —Salon

“Provides a valuable resource to any mother facing the challenge of hiring, well, herself.” —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher