Babysitter--Cultural Contrast

Three summers ago, we lucked into a babysitter, really a 'Mommy's Helper' on Martha's Vineyard. She was 14, here for the summer. Her paternal grandparents owned many acres on Chappaquiddick--unfortunately known for Edward Kennedy's alcoholic-induced fatal car wreck, the event that relegated him forever to the Senate. Each of the grandkids came for the summers to work, to go to the beach, to spend time with their grandparents. So, she came to us to be with our son as we went to the beach. And she's come back ever since as our summer sitter. She is now 16, going on 17, but with the maturity of someone far older.

The contrast of her against the usual nanny in LA is something worth commenting on. She is blond, blue-eyed, All American, and from Utah. Her father and mother became Mormon, and this religious faith has served as the foundation for their family. She indulges in all the teenage pursuits of dating, text messaging, and worrying about her weight, but without the precociousness of most teens that are exposed to far too much too soon. She is a wonderful combination of emotional maturity, yet untouched by boredom bred from privilege. College looms on the horizon, so most of our conversations are about how to get her academic life organized so the application process is not hellish. Her life, I imagine, will meander with some disappointments, but in the end will be much like most of ours: school, career, marriage, and kids. Her goal of becoming a pediatrician feels right when I watch her patiently listening to my son prattling on or demanding she go in the water again for the hundredth time that day. She will have opportunities that she won't even realize are gifts until it is much too late, a difficult lesson each of us learns.

Her life is, and will be, vastly different than the life of our Tia's pre-pubescent daughter, who already shows the lapses in educational opportunities and exposure that will relegate her to a life that will always be paces behind that of our summer sitter. The inequity is, I'm afraid, what our country has become.

I say this, knowing that even for our summer sitter, she faces challenges, perhaps not as steep as our Tia's daughter, but challenges nonetheless. OK. Let's put it in perspective, her desire to attend an elite, or semi-elite university is a far cry from a child, whose own educational future is dubious. If our Tia's daughter survives the current expectation of Latino students to drop out, or worse, to become young mothers, she may be able to propel herself to SMC, dreaming of getting to a Cal State for a BA, all of which will take her an average of five years, but more likely six or seven. Her BA from a fifth tier level school, if our current trend holds true, will enable her to get a job in some service department of a major company. She will be the voice on the other end of the phone when we call about our credit card bills or subscriptions. We will immediately recognize the accent as "Hispanic or Latino." If she's computer savvy, she may end up as Tech support, her voice among all of those with accents that are foreign, all evoking the exoticism of a world remote and distant. Her life will be different, hopefully an improvement from her parent's, but in the end, still on the outside margins to the epicenter of power and privilege of our society.

For our summer sitter, her dreams of university, beyond the state university most of her siblings attended, is achievable as long as she is able to maintain her grades. This jump from public university to private will be what determines whether her life will be middle class or better. Again, her life will still be paces ahead of our Tia's daughter, for the most obvious reasons, even as a Mormon.

The East Coast, unlike its Left Coast counterpart, is full of young children being pushed around its streets by West Indian nannies. These women, dark brown in color, are replicating our country's legacy of Black women raising white children. For us, this seismic shift, is something we are wrapping our heads around. The one advantage of being in LA was that our child's consciousness was taught, for better or worse, that those who 'served' him and others like him were Latino or Filipino. And so, for the first five years of his life, he has been shielded from our country's legacy of the Black woman as caretaker. Now, that is all changing as we move to New York where most babysitters in the city are women from islands far away, whose voices have the lilt of aqua colored waters.

Knowing all of the complexities of this is around the corner, I am hugely relieved and grateful for our summer sitter. Her time with our son has been invaluable in the conscious or unconscious information kids take in, especially at this age. He has understood that babysitters are many colors, ages, and sizes. They serve different functions, depending on the person and situation. His relationship with his Tia, who was more like his second mother, was that of parent and child. His relationship with his Summer sitter is that of friends. Yes, there is the gender stereotype that we are reinforcing since all of them are women. We did have a Manny for a brief period, but I'm afraid it was too brief to have made a difference. So, if we could just find the perfect Manny--Mary Poppins as a Man--then life would be perfect.