Why is it difficult to find a Russian nanny in Silicon Valley?

We are with children on holiday in Mexico. Photo from the personal archive of the author

The fact that I will have twins, I learned in the third week of pregnancy. But only after the birth of children thought that I need a nanny.

During the 9 months of waiting, I figured out a couple of times, just in case, the prices of babysitting services, but I believed that I could handle the babies myself. The husband took leave for the first couple of weeks after their birth, and I planned that this time would be enough for me to adapt. But I still wanted to understand what this market in Silicon Valley is.

Here's what I found out. Nanny fees range from $15-20 per hour. Of course, there are more expensive nannies, and employers willing to pay $30. The more children, the higher the cost. Nannies are available with or without live-in services. They can work for cash or as agreed upon. In my experience, most work for cash. And yes, not all local nannies have a work permit, and sometimes they don’t even have legal status. All this can be clarified immediately - over the phone or in a personal meeting.

In California, you can find a nanny who speaks any language, due to the multinational nature of the state. Personally, I was looking exclusively for Russian speakers: preserving the Russian language and culture for our children in the USA is not an easy task, so we decided to start from infancy.

Usually everyone looks for nannies based on friends and recommendations, actively using the Internet: local communities, websites for immigrants, message boards. There are also specialized portals dedicated specifically to the work of nannies - there you can post an ad looking for a nanny or offer your services. These types of sites are usually paid and cost about $30-40 per month.

If we talk about some average portrait of local Russian-speaking nanny candidates, then these are often recently arrived women (from 25 to 40 years old) who are looking for their first job. There are a lot of offers from grandmothers - someone’s parents are moving here who don’t want to just sit at home, but want to work. Such candidates, as a rule, have their own grandchildren, but they no longer require care 24 hours a day.

The qualifications of nannies also vary - there are some with no experience at all, there are those who work only with children aged 5 years and older, but there are also those who are not afraid of babies. Some have special education, some simply love children, and some have no other choice - for example, they don’t know the language well enough to get a job somewhere. Be that as it may, they are all, in my opinion, strong-willed people, because working with children (other people’s!) is the hardest work.

Returning to my situation. Of course, I overestimated my strength a little. First, I gave birth via planned caesarean section, and recovery from surgery took time. Secondly, 2 newborn children at the same time are 2 newborn children. I won’t go into the details of our life, but all mothers know that the babies they write about in books, who sleep 20 hours a day, if they are born, are not born to you :)

Therefore, we decided to take a nanny for half a day. I went in a simple way and placed an ad in two local communities on Facebook. The announcement was given in the morning, and an hour later I received a call from the first candidate. In the evening of the same day she came to us for an interview and a day later went to work. Given that we have twins, the nanny asked for a salary of $ 20 per hour. Thus, with the 5 charting days a week from 11: 00 to 18: 00, our nanny earned about $ 2800 per month.

Our family is complete. Photo from the personal archive of the author

I did not have any special requirements for the future nanny. And besides, the “children’s question” was new to me, and I had never hired this kind of staff in my life. Therefore, I decided to do the following. To begin with, I’ll just look at the person - after all, chemistry between people exists, and this is either your person or not. If after the first interview I want to continue communication, then there will be a couple of trial weeks - I’ll see the nanny in action. As a person who was involved in hiring personnel in a previous life, I know that in their resumes and in words everyone is an excellent specialist, but in reality everything is not so rosy.

However, we did it quickly and easily. And I think that we were very lucky, because there were only 2 calls based on my ad, and the second candidate did not suit us. By the way, our nanny brought a recommendation from a previous employer, for whom she worked for several years. And it turned out that I know this family! Which, in fact, gave me confidence - I was worried that a stranger would be in my house and with my children.

Literally after 3-4 months, I decided to slightly change the nanny’s work schedule and was forced to look for a new person, since my new schedule did not suit our nanny. But this time my idea failed - as it turned out, finding a Russian-speaking nanny in the Valley is not so easy, and the first time we were simply incredibly lucky. For 2 months I still couldn’t find a suitable nanny. The biggest difficulty was that all the candidates did not have a driver's license.

And you can’t really travel by public transport in California. A distance that can be covered in 10-15 minutes by car may be insurmountable without a car, or it will take an hour or even two to get to your destination. So it turned out that there seemed to be two and a half candidates, but none of them could go to work. At the same time, as I understand it, this is also a problem for the nannies themselves. Agree, to find a job in a neighboring house, or even at a train station, you really have to be very lucky.

Thus, I abandoned my plans to find a new nanny and stayed with the old one. By the way, it still works for me. Now it's once a week. On the weekends, my husband and I managed to take care of the children just fine. He, in fact, takes care of the children no less than I do - he gets up at night to feed one of his sons, changes their diapers, and is not afraid to be alone with them. And sometimes I ask him what formula to buy, how much porridge to dilute, when a new package of diapers will be delivered.

I repeat, but I really think that we were very lucky with the nanny, and the children love her very much. And although at times I was a little hard from her hyperactivity, it is better that the person be active than sitting and spitting on the ceiling.

Our nanny could cook for us, but mostly she worked with children. The daily routine was something like this: walk with one child, time at home, walk with the second, time at home. Yes, for all the time of work (now for 11 months children) she walked with two children at the same time only once. And only a couple of times I stayed with them alone at home for 30-40 minutes while I went to the store. Whatever one may say, I immediately trust two children only to myself and my husband.

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