HOW I LEARNT TO LIVE WITHOUT A NANNY… (And got my family back) – February 2^nd 2006

 

Tess Stimson, 38, is a novelist and author of ‘The Adultery Club’. She lives in Florida with her husband and three children aged 11, 8 and 3.

 

early half of all Britons employ some kind of domestic help, a survey revealed this week, costing £182 per month for every home in the UK.

 

It seems we are now farming out our ironing and our offspring in greater numbers than since the early 20^th century, when huge sections of the workforce were ‘in service’.

 

These days, however, our army of cleaners, au pairs and gardeners are more likely to hail from Eastern Europe than the East End.

 

And while our coffee-tables may be gleaming and our children’s faces freshly scrubbed, there’s a hidden price to pay for this release from domestic servitude, above and beyond the financial cost.

 

The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, as the old saying has it. I employed a series of live-in nannies for more than ten years, and it’s only in the past 18 months, since the last one left, that I’ve realized this truth.

 

Put another woman at the heart of your family, and there’s a risk she’ll become a cuckoo in the nest. She could steal your man – ask Sienna Miller, who split up with fiancé Jude Law after his affair with his children’s nanny.

 

She might win your children’s love from you: it’s widely acknowledged that as a child Prince Charles was fonder of his ‘Nana’ than his own mother.

 

 

ost nannies don’t deliberately set out to supplant a woman’s position at the centre of her family. But when she dresses your children, cooks your husband’s supper, cleans your house and tucks your babies in at night, what role is left for you?

 

My nannies were all charming, personable, competent girls, who seemed fond of my children and certainly took care of them well.

 

They knew how much Calpol to give a six-month-old baby and what age to stop pureeing carrots. Potty-training: no problem. Refusing to give up the security blanket? Nanny had the answer.

 

But they weren’t necessarily my answers. The problem was, as a new mother I was too insecure – and too afraid of losing my ‘gem of a gel’ – to risk disagreeing.

 

So I said nothing as my children were taught to say ‘serviette’ instead of ‘napkin’, or to cut their bread at the table rather than breaking it, reasoning I could always put it right later.

 

The cancer ran deeper than tea-table etiquette. The nanny took on the dull chore of ferrying my children to and from school; but she was also the one who listened to their excited recounting of their day as they burst out of the classroom. By the time they got home to me, they were too tired to detail it again.

 

When my son gave his first mother’s day card to the nanny, it was a knife through my heart.

 

And she didn’t just come between me and my children. My first husband traveled away from home a great deal; in his absences, she and I operated as a smooth family unit. So she resented it when he was home, and perhaps unwittingly, did her best to pit the two of ‘us girls’ against the male interloper.

 

If my husband and I rowed, she heard every word. She always took my side, bolstering my argument – and thus inadvertently undermining our chances of resolving our differences – it’s much harder to back down and say sorry when you have an audience.

 

There was quite literally a third person in our marriage: at the dining table, on the sofa in the evenings, on every family holiday, in the centre of every domestic moment.

 

And in marriage, as Princess Diana knew, three is definitely a crowd.

 

When I met the man who became my second husband, I was experienced enough not to let a nanny to drive a wedge between us. She retaliated by jokingly treating him as one of the children, refusing to take anything he asked her to do seriously.

 

When she finally left a year-and-a-half ago, we decided that as our children were growing older, with our youngest about to start nursery school, we couldn’t justify the cost of replacing her.

 

I was terrified of going it alone. In the ten years I’d been a mother, I’d never been without a live-in nanny.

 

But the difference it made to our family was immediate and unexpected. I hated getting up at six, and loathed the 90-minute round trip to school twice a day; there were moments when I was shuttling between dinner table, homework and washing machine and longed for another pair of capable hands.

 

But the children started really talking to me. We ate meals together in the early evening, and all pulled together to keep the house clean and tidy, with everyone responsible for individual chores. We even reclaimed the spare bedroom for guests.

 

 

est of all, my husband and I have some genuine downtime alone. A marriage is knitted together by the hundred tiny moments that make up daily life – like putting on a duvet cover together – rather than huge ‘set pieces’ like Christmas Day, which never seem to live up to the hype.

 

You think a nanny is part of the family; all too often I hear women boast exactly that. But she isn’t. Nannying is a job. Ultimately, someday she’ll leave to pick up the threads of her own life. But by then, it could be too late for your family to learn how to work together.

 

The other day, on the way home from school, my 11-year-old said to me, ‘I’m glad we don’t have a nanny anymore. We’re turning into a real family.’

 

It’s a thought that warms me on even the coldest dark winter morning.