Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Family Affair: Santa Clara County Assistant D.A. Joyce Metcalf relies on nanny Betty Sizelove (right) to help take care of her 4-year-old daughter, Melissa. Susan Nedde, Metcalf's 21-year-old daughter, stands at left.
Good help is hard to find
There's a lot more to being a nanny or house manager than most people think
By Sandy Sims
The first thing a Redwood City couple did after they took their dotcom company public was travel to Chagrin, Ohio, to the English Nanny and Governess School to find their daughter an honest-to-goodness nanny. The couple signed a contract, paid the hefty fees, located an apartment for their new nanny on the San Francisco peninsula (the nanny would pay her own rent), and flew the nanny to California. The couple also set up medical insurance and a 401K retirement fund.
Gwen Morgan was 50 then, and this was her first nanny job. She came with a job description and a pedigree she'd paid for with a $5,000 tuition and intensive training at the nanny school--a real professional.
Our booming economy is generating a new career path, or perhaps regenerating a very old career path that is new to most Americans--professional house staff. The staff have new titles such as estate or household managers, personal assistants and child-care providers, but they are the old butlers, social secretaries, nannies and governesses with modern titles. Their job is to keep home and hearth running smoothly for the new yield of wealthy citizens.
In fact, the new group of wealthy is getting larger fast.
The New York Times reports that the number of American households worth $10 million or more has quadrupled in the last decade. The newly wealthy are acquiring all the trappings of moneyed people: extra homes, upscale entertaining, fine art, fine cars, tennis courts, club memberships, higher social standing and very, very large homes.
With so much of that wealth here in Silicon Valley, the home sizes for a fair or perhaps unfair number of people range from 5,000 square feet to 20,000 square feet. (3,000 square feet is considered by professionals in the home-management field the point at which some help with housekeeping is needed.)
"If you choose to build or purchase a 5,000-square-foot house, you must have a staff; you have no choice," Mary Starkey, owner of the Starkey International Institute for Household Management in Denver, Colo., says. "You need one housekeeper for every 5,000 feet in order to do a good job."
"Still," says Starkey, "Americans don't understand how to staff a large home."
To Americans--professional house staff are fictional characters like Mary Poppins, Mrs. Doubtfire or Lurch from the TV show The Addams Family--hardly real people on a career path.
In England, however, butler is a status position with a good salary. A man hires on as an under-butler in England because he aspires to be a butler. Newly wealthy Americans think of household help as contracted help.
Jody Tatro, who co-owns Professional Exhibits and Graphics with her husband and is also a partner in an ad agency, says the people she knows are "out-sourcing." They are hiring cooks, housekeepers, gardeners, handymen to come in and work.
"Some people have more than one nanny," she says. "It's like having a payroll," Tatro says as she cruises through résumés on the Internet looking for staff to hire for her company. Tatro says some people find one person to perform multiple roles in their homes.
Helen Riley-Collins is vice president and manager of specialized search at Town and Country Resources in Palo Alto, an agency for professional household staff. She says that she is seeing younger families with new money and fabulous 12,000 square-foot houses. "They think of house staff as a privileged thing," Riley-Collins says, "something [as formerly middle-class citizens] they are not comfortable with."
The couple returns to Riley-Collins because they are still not getting everything done. Riley-Collins may make a home visit to evaluate staffing needs. Issues come up, she says, such as "I don't want all these people underfoot in my home." Riley-Collins counsels them. "Maybe you would like five mornings a week or two long days," she says.
Susan Feigon from San Francisco-based Aunt Ann's Agency that places household staff in the Bay Area says, "The problem is the newly wealthy don't like telling another human being what to do in their homes."
Starkey Institute owner Mary Starkey is campaigning to set standards for household help and to educate the American public about how to use professional staff. Her campaign and promotion of the Starkey system of management has taken her to the BBC, CNN and MSNBC. The school has been featured in The New York Times, Town & Country magazine, The Denver Post and others.
For a hefty fee of $4,500 to $8,000 the institute will evaluate the household need. The institute will also train and install staff for an additional fee.
Starkey's aspiring house managers and personal assistants pay $6,300 plus room and board for 360 hours of intensive training. The average student is 45, usually with a bachelor's degree and experience in the business or service field.
In addition to learning the Starkey system of management, students study such skills as appropriate relationship boundaries and service etiquette, administration, aspects of entertaining, international protocol, fine wines, cleaning products, the care of fine art and antiques, clothing care, security, transportation, culinary arts for the private household, creating household menus and presentation. They also study technology as part of setting up a system within households.
House managers can receive a salary that ranges from $30,000 to $120,000 or more, depending on skills and life experience. Other perks such as housing, travel expenses, medical benefits, use of an automobile, vacations and other corporate-style benefits often accompany the job.
Michael Regules has just taken a position in Los Gatos with a new-wealth, high-tech family living in a 10,000-square-foot home on 10 acres. Regules brings 12 years of experience and Starkey training to a family that's never had a household manager before. There he "interfaces" with three staff members, a cook, a housekeeper and a groundsman, as well as some 22 vendors who come in to care for the property--electricians, window washers, interior designers, tech support because the house is computerized, air-conditioning repairmen, pool service and others.
Regules says, "It takes six months to set up a household system." He finds out the lifestyle and wishes of each family member. He catalogues everything in a large book he calls the house bible that becomes the staff's reference book.
There the staff can find out which parts of the house the employers want to do themselves, the family routine, favorite foods, the special diets for frequent visitors such as a mother-in-law visiting and if she is a vegan, which art pieces need special care, the routines for each staff member, when the vendors are scheduled. The list goes on.
Regules signed up for Starkey training because he wanted to learn more about etiquette, protocol and professional boundaries. "You are of the house, not in the family," Regules says. "You must learn the family's wishes, when to step in and when to back away, in which part of the house the family wants privacy."
Regules says he doesn't network much with other household managers. "We never talk about our employers," he says, "because we honor their privacy." In fact, Regules signed a standard confidential agreement.
Privacy is an important aspect of house management. "We all sign privacy agreements," Starkey says.
But then privacy is important to Americans, which is also why Americans generally prefer not to have live-in staff.
Regules, a married man, and the rest of the staff live out. His work week runs around 50 hours a week.
At the turn of the century it was different, Regules says. The wealthy employed a large live-in staff (usually brought over from the old country) to care for their winter and summer homes. "You were set for life," he says, "because the employer took care of you till you died. But today the cost is prohibitive," Regules says. Pay is high, and there are corporate-style benefits. "You take care of your own money market."
Lifestyle for today's employers is different too, because of modern mobility, he says. People want to take off and travel at will and leave the household in good hands.
In fact, nanny Gwen Morgan likes having her own apartment and her own life. And her Redwood City employers, who choose to remain anonymous, like their private time.
Sheilagh Roth the executive director and founder of the English Governess and Nanny School is waging her own campaign to develop certifiable standards for nannies and governesses. She explains the difference between a governess and a nanny is that the governess has a bachelor's degree and often is responsible for more of the children's education.
She also explains that an au pair, such as the one in the tragic New York case called "Nannygate," is not really a nanny. An au pair is simply a young person 18 to 21 years old from another country, who lives one year with a family as a baby sitter in exchange for experience in the new country. There is absolutely no connection between au pairs and professional nannies.
In fact, there's often no connection between professional nannies and the so-called nannies many people hire. Professional nannies earn their status, especially those at Roth's English Nanny and Governess School.
Students invest $7,000 to $8,000 for their training says Roth. Gwen Morgan lived just 10 minutes from the school so didn't have to pay boarding fees, but many students do. The entire process takes a full year, the first three months of which are courses at the school. "The course work is intense and equal to one year of college," Roth says. The courses are taught by police, The Red Cross, social workers, nurses, dentists and other professionals.
Classes include some 38 hours of child development study. Other courses cover nutrition, childhood diseases, pediatric dentistry, podiatry, awareness of child abuse, speech development, hearing problems and visual problems. Students learn pediatric and adult CPR, burn prevention, poison prevention, police-security services, defensive-driver training, water safety and rescue, boating safety, how to travel with an infant, toddler and preschooler, sewing basics, even horse safety.
Roth's school turns out 100 new nannies a year, and people are begging for her graduates. Applicants to the school are interviewed by a social worker and screened for police and driving records. "We know these new nannies personally through our classes," Roth says, "so we can make a good recommendation."
Professional nannies command a nice salary, up to $1,000 a week. In such places as Manhattan, it can go higher. An annual salary of $50,000 is pretty much tops, although Roth says it sometimes goes higher.
The nanny field illustrates the gap between the professional house staff and the American-style household help. Roth says, "Anyone can call themselves a nanny because there are no official standards."
People are essentially hiring baby sitters who call themselves nannies. A couple can grind through many so-called nannies, having one bad experience after another.
Joyce Metcalf, assistant district attorney in the homicide division of the Santa Clara County District Attorney's office, has had plenty of good and bad experiences with nannies. She used nannies while raising her older children, and now has one for her 4 1/2-year-old daughter, Melissa.
There were times when former nannies just plain didn't show up. "That's a big problem for me when I have a jury waiting in court," Metcalf says. She is thrilled with Melissa's nanny, 70-year-old Betty Sizelove, who's been with the family for four years.
Sizelove, lives on the border of Saratoga and doesn't like to be called a nanny because she thinks most nannies live in. However, she's as close to a professional nanny as one can get without the certificate.
"Betty wears jeans and tennis shoes," Metcalf says laughing.
"I wear jeans and tennis shoes because being a nanny is physical work," Sizelove says. Sizelove says she gets down on the floor and plays games with Melissa.
She also takes an active part in Melissa's school work, even talks to the teachers and helps out there when she can. She makes sure Melissa gets to her other activities, evaluates Melissa's strengths and weaknesses, washes Melissa's clothes, takes her to the park, and, at the end of the day, Sizelove shares all the events and little stories about Melissa with Metcalf.
Those in the high-tech field who have the money to pay top dollar for a nanny are struggling to find them, but ironically, it's those same high-tech companies that are luring potential "good" nannies away.
Still, those who do apply for nanny positions, many of whom are college students, command good money, Tatro says. One nanny wanted a guarantee of $500 a week after taxes whether she worked full time or not. "Not a bad salary for a West Valley student," Tatro says.
West Valley College students see notices for nannies all over campus. The notices offer $10 to $15 an hour. One offered $20 an hour. Most notices request CPR training and prefer someone who's taken an early childhood development class.
"We decided no more part-time nannies," Gwen Morgan's Redwood City employer says in a telephone interview. "We are trying to create a Leave-it-to-Beaver home life for our daughter by having a professional nanny."
The couple wants their daughter to have a stable and routine home life, coming home from school to do homework, dinner at a regular hour, a quiet evening, and all the attention she needs. During the week, Morgan prepares the evening meal for the family and dines with them.
"We even go out to dinner sometimes," Morgan says. "I tell them about their daughter's day. It feels like everything winds down then and we all enjoy the time together."
The family Morgan works for has quite of bit of support, American-style, to help create that Beaver Cleaver life in their 5,000-square-foot house. Over the last few years, the couple has evolved their own form of staff. The husband, who is 51 and now co-founding his second dotcom startup, says he has turned over more responsibility for the house to his bookkeeper. This allows him and his wife, a successful attorney, to go to work.
Morgan's employer also has a housecleaning service once a week, a fix-it handyman once a week and pest control once a week. They have a "pool-guy," a gardener and a landscaper. And they've contracted with a company that cares for the house plants.
"My wife and I don't really need to work," Morgan's boss says. "But for better or for worse, we choose to, and we're all happy." He says, "I couldn't do the founder-of-a-company bit without the support, and my wife and I can go home and in the evening and spend quality time with our family.
Morgan recalls one day the couple's little girl asked Morgan. "Do you feel like this is a job?" Morgan says she answered, "Your mom and dad pay me to care for you, but they don't pay me to love you, and I do."
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
