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February 29, 2016 • 53 mins

By the time The Babysitters Club hit bookshelves, amateur childcare already had a buckwild history. Cristen and Caroline chart the invention, gender panic and economic boom of the babysitting industry.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline
and I'm Kristen, and we are not going to spend
the whole show talking about my babysitting experience. Yeah. I

(00:23):
know that the notes that I say you are literally
just stories about my life. Kristen, It's just copies of
your childhood diary. Um. I had this great babysitter growing up.
She was she was my neighbor actually, and I just
totally admired her. I thought she was so pretty and
so mature and I just like worshiped her. Um. But

(00:47):
she stopped babysitting for us after one particular incident. What
did you do? So? Um? She came over and as entertainment,
we were painting right well, so at one point, being silly,
she dipped her hand in the green paint. I remember
it as if it were yesterday. Dipped her hand in

(01:08):
the green paint and started chasing me around the house
with this wet paint hand, and I was like terrified.
I was seriously terrified because I was like, oh my god,
you're gonna get it on my clothes. It's so messy.
Mom is gonna be so upset that you've got paint
in the living room, And so I like ran screaming
away from and she's like, ha ha, come back. I
was so like scared and traumatized that I spent the

(01:29):
rest of the night that my parents were out, literally
sitting in front of the front door like the dog
who's waiting for the owner to return, just like staring
out the window like are they back yet? Are they
back yet? After that, she never babysat for us again.
As you were telling that story, Caroline, I was mentally

(01:51):
cataloging all of the babysitters that I had, and one
of the ones who stands out the most to me
was a babysitter who brought over a flying squirrel with her. Yeah,
and I distinctly remember being a little bit afraid of
her pet flying squirrel and also um watching her like

(02:15):
nervously trying to extract this like terrified flying squirrel from
our living room curtains. I don't think I don't think
it went as she had planned. Yeah, well, but you're
the youngest of five. Did your siblings never babysit you? Yeah?
I think they did. I mean, we got to that
age where I mean there were so many of us,

(02:36):
you know, yeah, our parents could leave us alone. But
I remember having a number of babysitters, and we had
a couple who I mean, they were like family members
and they would come over. Um. Although I do remember
one whose name was also Kristen, and I thought that
was so cool. And she had like just always wore
like really cool you know, like early nineties clothes like

(02:58):
Clarissa good, like ear rings and stuff. Um. And she
came over one time and she brought McDonald's with her
as her dinner. And I so distinctly remember sitting on
the floor of the den while we were watching television
and she was eating her McDonald's and I was just
staring at it. I'd already had dinner. And she looks

(03:18):
at me and she goes, you know, it's rude to
stare at other people's food, And I was so hurt.
I was like, just can't you tell I'm like seven,
and I just want to fry so both of us,
both of these stories and and us sitting in front
of other people like dogs. But babysitting was also an

(03:39):
aspirational job for me as the youngest of five kids,
because that's the thing. It was a very appealing prospect
to have full rain over other children. I was the opposite.
I did not because also as a child, I was
not a joiner. I never was a girl scout. I
never took ballet or horseback riding or any of that.

(04:02):
UM camp was horrible because of that time that that
one girl tried to strangle me Morgan and so babysitting
was another one of those like typical stereotypical girl activities.
It was almost a rite of passage that I opted
out of. I think I babysat for people three times,

(04:23):
two families, and I just was not interested. I was like,
I don't want this power. I don't like kids. I
don't want to be around kids. They're like fifty million things,
mostly reading a book that I would rather be doing
than taking care of children. I was all about it
because I saw it as my opportunity, as like a
twelve year old to eat some free food. Because usually

(04:46):
they'd have good snacks. My mom was like super healthy.
We never had exciting snacks, so you get the cool snacks.
Usually the parents would buy pizza. I could make some
cash and again the kid around. So it was ideal
and it, and it fit into this image I had
in my mind of what like a cool thirteen year

(05:09):
old like tween ager would look like. And uh, she
had like pink glasses and braces, and she was a
babysitter and that's like who I really wanted to be. Um,
now that I am half blind, I don't care for
that so much. But also too is from the influence
of my older sister who was obsessed with The Babysitters Club.

(05:32):
You know, I never read them. I think I just
heard gasps from the audience. But like, I never read
The Babysitters Club. As soon as I could, I remember
it was it was kind of a write of passage
for me to be allowed to read The Babysitters Club.
Not because there was anything scandalous in it at all,
but it was like one of those things like getting
my ears here. So it was like, once you were

(05:52):
of age, you can you can read this story. Well,
so you read The Babysitters Club and became a babysitter.
I read The Box Card Shoulder and then became a hobo.
I read The Box Car Children too, and also tried
to play Orphan in the Backyard so many times. Um,
but just a quick note in the process of researching
for this episode, which is not going to be about

(06:12):
the Babysits Club fortunately, but That's serious has sold one
hundred seventies six million copies and that crazy. Yeah, and
there are like a bajillion books written by just two people.
There are bajillion books, um. And and this will relate
to our conversation though about sort of the sociology and
gender of babysitting because it was launched during a time

(06:37):
when babysitting had fallen out of popularity with young girls
and the Babysitters Club in away. It was kind of
like propaganda to get more girls into babysitting and listen,
it totally worked on yours truly. Well, I mean, thank
god it came along because, as we're going to get
into here in just a second, like the image of

(06:59):
babysitters in pop culture was horrifying. It's still kind of
is it gets gross real fast? Yeah, not least of
all because of the connection with porn. Yeah. Yeah, I mean,
if you google, don't don't google it, don't don't google it.
But I was looking for an article, uh, talking about

(07:22):
whether it was a news item or just like maybe
a think piece on cultural fears about dad's and babysitters,
like whether it's dad's praying on babysitters or girls whatever,
all of that stuff. But when you google dad babysitter,
you just get nothing but porn, and I mean a
lot of it. And I didn't click on any link

(07:46):
because hello, that's disturbing, and also I'm on my work computer.
But um there. It just reflects this like super deeply
ingrained cultural ick factor that people have around teen girls
in babysitting. Yeah. I mean, it's just a sexualization of
teen girls and the whole like quote unquote like virgin factor.

(08:08):
There's all sorts of stuff wrapped up in it. But
we also see this reflected in a different sort of
way in our celebrity tabloid culture, because I mean, how
many stories do we have to hear about the nanny,
like in trapping the celebrity husband. I mean, most recently

(08:28):
there was Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale divorcing allegedly because
he had an extensive fare with their nanny. Ditto with
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, Ditto with Jude Law. Oh yeah,
that the little with the terminator A k A. Schwarzenegger.
But I mean, there were literally just so many. But

(08:49):
we should note too that the whole nanny thing and
governess is distinct from adolescent babysitter that we're going to
focus on in this podcast. Yeah, because that is a
separate issue where we're definitely talking about the sexualization and
sort of uncomfortable nous that people have with teenage girls.

(09:11):
And this basically stretches back too when we first got
the teenager. I mean, and that sounds silly, like, what
do you mean when we first got teenagers? They've always
been teenagers? No. No, the teenager as we think of her,
really was an invention of the early twentieth century. That culture. Yeah,

(09:32):
it really emerged after World War One, where you have
this sort of distinct phase of life and culture building
up around that. You have the automobile, which the automobile
which whisks kids out of the home and also gives
them a place to make out away from their parents
watchful eye, and very quickly with the emergence of the teenager,

(09:56):
we get a lot of a lot of concerns about
those teenage girls. Yeah, So the literature around babysitters basically
is parallel two stories of how important they are. They
are critical to people being able to work and go
out and enjoy their lives. Um, but what their importance

(10:17):
means for our families and societies, and then the fears
over their behavior. There's a lot of anxiety wrapped up
in well, why do you need a babysitter? Can you
not provide for your family? Can you not take care
of your family? Oh? Oh, it means that the woman
is working. How how dare you have a woman working
outside of the home. And before we get too far
into it, I want to give a shout out to

(10:39):
the source for the bulk of this material of what
we're talking about today, and that's author Miriam Foreman Brunel,
who I feel like we just should have called her
up and had her on because the thing is, I
was reading her book about babysitting in America, and as
I went to find additional information to pull to to
supplement the stuff that we're talking about, I was I

(11:02):
was reading this source and I was like, Okay, well,
you know, let me get who's the author of this.
Let me appropriately side it. Oh, it's it's Miriam Foreman
and Brunelle again, And then I went to a third
source and was reading and reading and reading again. Miriam
Foreman Brunell, she's like the queen of academic literature about
babysitters well, and just more broadly to girlhood culture in America.

(11:26):
And as she notes, there has been so little scholarship
on babysitters in particular, even though they do play such
a central role in our nation's economy and also in
our home lives, and again our perceptions of teen girls
in particular. Although we're gonna talk about boys too, Yeah,

(11:47):
and so you know, I mean, we've always had children
watching children in this country. I mean it's not like
children were just either abandoned or with mom. There was
no in between. I mean, whether it was puritan girls
helping their mothers in colonial times or immigrant children called
little mothers during the progressive era, you've always had older

(12:08):
siblings who were expected to help out and take care
of the kids. And in the South before the Civil War,
you had slave children who were expected to watch the
children of white families, and sometimes too, you would have
the white slave owner's wife watching over the slave children.
Strange like not good relationships. There lots of dynamics at

(12:31):
play when we get into the Victorian era, you've got
young women working as governesses, and again like christ And said,
we're not going to go into that per se, but
trust me, there was also plenty of sex and class
related fears around governesses too. And during the Progressive era,
you've got these young preteen girls called baby tenders who

(12:52):
would help well off mothers by pushing strollers. And they
were eventually though, phased out when these notions of childhood
being precious caught on, Like, oh, suddenly, I guess I
can't employ this, this you know, eleven year old to
push my stroller around a baby tender, And that just
makes me think about chicken tenders and be I would
like a baby tender just for like my um, like

(13:15):
my work bag, like my my my laptop and all
my other my other things. Well, we have colleagues with children,
so there we go. Yeah, I have a lot of
nieces and nephew. I wonder, I wonder if our producer null, like,
if his daughter needs anything to do, she can come
in and be our baby tender. A Craigslist ad for
a baby tender that won't get flagged. Um. During the
Progressive era, though there were new laws enacted that prevented

(13:38):
girls from working in what they called street trades like
selling newspapers or shining shoes, and obviously prostitution. Um but
a few older girls also received allowances from their parents.
So babysitting becomes something that in uh these in a
number of states where these laws were passed, that was

(14:00):
legal a for them to do, but also a way
for them to earn money. And also hence why delivering
newspapers became something that boys would do. The newspaper boy
and the babysitter girl. You've got to have all those
laws protecting girls even though it prevents them from doing
cool things and making money, watch out for the street trades. Well.
Uh So, as society is changing, we get the development

(14:23):
of the babysitter and the teen girl at the same time.
And Farm and Brunel writes that what adults enduring anxieties
about babysitters reveal is unease about the far reaching gender
and generational changes that give rise to the modern American
teen girl, whose emergence coincided with the creation of the
babysitter in the nineteen twenties. So she talked about how,

(14:47):
starting around this point, you've got this highly charged position
of a youthful stranger in your home, overseeing your children,
and how she became a lightning rod for our anxiety. Yeah,
I mean pretty much ever since the babysitter was invented

(15:07):
in the nineteen twenties. Although at that time we weren't
yet calling them babysitters, we immediately began throwing shade at
these teen girls. For instance, one nineteen twenties parenting guide
urged moms not to hire high school girls who trundled
quote babies about to hockey games, basketball practice, and engaged

(15:29):
in street corner flirtation um. And they were also concerned
about teens who had quote unquote modern behaviors i e.
Interests in clothes, boys, and sports. This is like happening
for the first time outside of the home. So there's
just like all sorts of anxiety. I mean, watch out
for your child, don't you know. Make sure no one

(15:51):
takes it to a hockey game. Put the kid in
a backpack and dip it up, put some maybe put
some snacks in there, like actually that someone's really great.
If anybody wants to put me in a backpack with
snacks and carry me around, I think you need a
Caroline Tender. Yes, I do again Nol's daughter. Um, but
babysitting was was a compromise because with this emerging teen culture,

(16:15):
you have all of these girls with this desire for
freedom and an expectation of freedom, but you have adults
expectations that girls not only stay close to home, but
that they stay in more feminine pursuits. You're not to
sell newspapers on the street corners, so babysitting was a compromise,
and that you get to earn money and be somewhat independent,

(16:38):
but you're still doing something maternal like taking care of children. Yeah.
And it's worth remembering too that this is right after
women had finally won the right to vote in nineteen twenty,
and we're working more than ever before. I mean, things
were kind of topsy turvy in terms of gender roles.

(16:58):
This is the era the new woman transitioning into the
flapper era to where the ladies were just like, I
don't give a hoot, scan but it's funny how things work,
and it's funny how our culture works because as more
women are leaving the home, not that they were locked up,
but you know, kind of they were socially um more

(17:21):
and more, you have this idea of traditional motherhood being
emphasized by everybody, from experts who were writing books to
this new, strong and high powered advertising industry who were painting,
literally painting pictures of mothers with their children, saying this

(17:41):
is the kind of parent you have to be. Well,
and that also points to the class issues tied up
in all of this as well, because it seems like
the invention and necessity of a babysitter is a product
of like higher socio economic status. Is because there were
always working class women who had to leave the home

(18:03):
and had to have like probably their kids watching after
their kids in unpaid circumstances. You certainly had that existing
for women of color from the get go. Um, So
that's also something to keep in the back of your
mind of how how very white and middle upper class
all this is. Yeah, and you were sort of damned
if you do, damned if you don't, because while hiring

(18:26):
a babysitter was a necessity if you were going to
as a parent leave the house, whether it was for
work or just to go to a movie, you were
also criticized by parenting experts who were saying, oh, well,
you're leaving your children with this flippant teenage girl. So,
not surprisingly, once we get to the thirties and the

(18:49):
term babysitter is coined, you start to see more formal
babysitting training. I do remember that in my babysitting days,
Caroline having to take that CPR course. But back to
the thirties, in an effort to make sure that these
unbridled girls would adhere to standards acceptable to grown ups

(19:10):
rather than their friends at hockey games. Yeah, so instead
of encouraging young girls to put babies in backpacks and
go flirt on street corners, having them go to these
training classes was a way to standardize this quote unquote profession,
and it was a way to ensure that these girls
were still feminine despite this independence. And similarly, in the

(19:32):
nineteen fifties, I know we're jumping forward, but you see
babysitting training starting to get stuck into home at courses,
which does closely maintain its alignment with that traditional caregiving femininity.
But you know who was also in quite high demand
for babysitting back in the forties fifties. We're boys. Yeah,

(19:55):
there's like so much like squick factor these days of
oh a male babysitter. I mean it's like a whole
like side joke on Modern Family and like other like
so many other sitcoms of a teen boy watching children,
something must be off. But teen boys were considered excellent

(20:16):
babysitters basically because, um, they were considered more level headed
than wild girls, and also they could model masculinity to
the boys they might be babysitting because dad was out
of the home, so there were concerns that like, oh,
you know, our little little Johnny is gonna get too soft,
so bringing the male babysitter who can teach them how

(20:38):
to be a man, Well, that was definitely a way,
I mean, that was how a lot of people felt.
But that was also a way that parenting and childcare
experts tried to sell male babysitters to people, because there's
this weird push and pull around having male babysitters. Like, yes,
they were in high demand because they were considered more

(20:58):
in control of themselves than those like flippant, crazy flapper girls. Um,
but mothers at this time, even then, had a degree
of discomfort around like, oh, well, this isn't like a
feminine pursuit. He's uh, you know, he's a boy, what
does he want to do watching children? And so experts

(21:19):
sort of backed these boys up, saying like, no, no, no, Um,
they're capable of having this gentle determination, which is what
one of the manuals said in order to be like, oh,
he's not too masculine, but don't worry, he's not too
feminine either, because the thing is, by the late nineteen thirties,
teen boys had established informal childcare networks, and you had

(21:41):
vocational training programs targeting them to turn them into their
own standardized army of sitters. Caroline, this means that boys
were the original babysitters club. And that was the sound
of my mind exploding, my mind and my childhood exploding. Um.
But I love all of these anecdotes that Miriam Foreman

(22:04):
Brunnell weaves in of these college guys at the time
who were also super into babysitting. I don't have the
exact name in front of me, but she mentions this
one group of guys at Princeton who formed their own
their own babysitters club. I'm realizing that all of these
are just like babysitters clubs. And they called it something

(22:24):
like tiny tot time or something like that, a lot
of like t alliteration, and it was I think specifically
for Princeton's faculties kids to to go to. But then
there was also over at Harvard athletes college athletes, UM,
and specifically football players who would babysit as kind of

(22:45):
part of the athletic program. There was one football coach
he was like, I'm was proud of these boys and
the babysitting skills as I am of their football skills. Yeah.
Their their motto was when parents step out, a Harvard
athletes steps and oh my gosh, why is no one
made that into a movie? Um. But by the mid fifties,

(23:06):
apparently a quarter of teen boys worked as babysitters. And
again they were especially popular among you know, moms and
parents who were just like a little nervous about teen
girls and their and their crushes. And you mentioned that
by the mid fifties they were about a quarter of

(23:26):
teen boys who worked as sitters. But around this time
nearly half of teen girls who are working as sitters.
And when you get into World War two, a lot
of those girls believed that by watching children, they were
helping the war effort because they were allowing more moms
to work and leave the home, which meant that, hey,
the more you help moms work and you help the

(23:47):
war effort, the sooner that men can come home and
this war will be over. But despite the fact that
they might have felt like they had this greater calling
during the war, it still wasn't always a great deal.
You were expected to help out with the housework. You
wouldn't always make appropriate wages according to these young girls,
and you might have to watch five or twenty kids

(24:09):
at the same time and work late, just wait for
these parents to come home from their shifts. And so
you start to see the origins of girls being like, hey,
wait a second, we need to we need to come
together and figure out how to improve babysitting conditions. Really
interesting stuff, little girls unionizing. All right, Well, we're gonna

(24:32):
get into that when we come right back from a
quick break. So we're picking up our babysitting timeline after

(24:52):
World War Two, and before we dig into all of
the the anxiety, the growing inks around team girls, and
also the expansion though at the same time of the
babysitting sector. I would like to note Caroline Um one
of the most surprising babysitters we ran across in our

(25:12):
research one Sylvia Plath. Oh God, I know, I so
badly want a daria esque cartoon featuring Sylvia Platha's a babysitter.
So in nine one she writes a column for Christian
Science Monitor called as a Babysitter Sees It. And this

(25:33):
was all based on her experience as a live in
nanny for a wealthy family. And if her Sylvia Plath
talking about babysitting sounds familiar, she would later write a
poem called The Babysitters based off of this summer babysitting
as well. But listen, Sylvia Plath was one of those
girls who was like, um, there is so much hidden

(25:54):
labor in this job. This is not okay. So she
in her column As a Baby Sitter Sees It, Plath
emphasizes the importance of parents outlining the precise job description
otherwise you will end up washing those dishes, baking and ironing.
In other words, Plath was not a fan of babysitting. Well, no,

(26:16):
I mean also keep in mind the cultural shift, and
I mean this is massively condensing things and glossing over
a bunch of stuff. But you once had live in help.
Families had a maid or a butler or a cook,
someone in the home helping out, or or a live
in nanny. But when you move into the depression and afterward,

(26:38):
suddenly we're moving away from live and help being as commons.
So you have to hire babysitters. You have to hire
this outside help. And a lot of times what came
along with that was the expectation that the girl or
the boy would be washing your dishes. Yeah, and pop
culture was aware of babysit very much. By the Saturday

(27:03):
Evening Post declared it a key industry. Yeah. Again, you
see a lot of push and pull between the need
for babysitters and the fear of them. So after the war,
obviously we get the baby booms. You have more children,
but in terms of population, relatively fewer twains because there
had been that drop off in births during the depression.

(27:25):
You also have the factor of families moving away from
all those ants and granny's in urban centers to get
a house in the suburbs. So suddenly you're away from
all of your childcare. Not only have you left behind
a culture of having live and help, but you've also
left behind any potential family help too. Again though, with
the culture of live and help that is exclusive from

(27:48):
middle and upper class people. Right, yes, yes, yes, yes, um,
But so balanced against that need to support your family
by getting a babysitter, you've also got fears that they're
somehow going to destroy families, or that they indicate that
somehow parents can't do it all themselves. Um, you've also

(28:10):
got fears, a lot of fears that teen girls are
exploiting a paternal obligation to financially provide for the family
and pay for the sitter. So there's this anger over
young girls like conning men out of their hard earned
money and commercializing maternal virtue. But in reality, most of

(28:31):
these sitters weren't even earning enough to go on like
a spending spree or go see all the movies one Saturday.
But rather you had a culture of a lot of
girls saving their money up to get special clothes or
to eventually one day get a car, go to school.
They gotta get that cashmere sweat a set caroline. But
you know, but they were making between thirty five cents

(28:52):
in fifty five cents an hour, which translates I know,
I know, I know, inflation, but even with inflation, that
only translates to believe between like three dollars and four
fifty an hour. So yeah, they were not raking in
the dough. Um. But I think that like adults were
completely taking advantage of them. And it also speaks to

(29:13):
how we totally marginalize domestic work and childcare. In the
same year that Saturday Evening post is all like babysitting
such a big industry, you also have the film Sitting
Pretty come out, and it's about a Bobby Stocks or
babysitter who throws parties at the house where she's babysitting

(29:35):
and she gets fresh with the father. And this crystallizes
what's all happening in the background of this masculinity crisis
going on again, playing on those anxieties around team girls.
There's so many layers to this right because this form

(29:55):
and Brunell points out who's writing the TV shows, film
scripts and novels that we're reading at this time. Who
wrote Sitting Pretty. It's dudes. Not to give too much
of a spoiler, um, but it's you know, they are
fueling these weird pop cultural based fears about teen girls

(30:16):
and teen babysitters. And why why is that? And she
talks about how there is this masculinity crisis that arose
out of the depression in World War Two. It's this
convergence of changing ideals about womanhood and adolescents. And so
Foreman Brunell goes into pretty great detail about the sort
of cynical portrayals of women in general and babysitters specifically

(30:39):
that conveyed all of these anxieties men were feeling about
women pushing their claims for independence, all of those women
who during the war while the men were away had
to hold down the fort and get jobs or just
otherwise in some way deal with men not being able
to bring home the bacon. And then Foreman Brunell goes
on to write about how American men, not in general,

(31:03):
but specifically men creating the pop culture that we consumed,
cultivated this perception of teensitters as militants and miscreants during
the late forties and fifties, and she says that this
is all tied into fears about the decline of paternal
authority with the aim of reasserting patriarchal power. Well, so,

(31:23):
where did all of this talk of militancy come from? Unions.
These these girls formed unions. Kristen, Yeah, so in as
babysitting had become one of the fastest growing service industries.
By the way, team girls in New Jersey, Massachusetts, in

(31:46):
Michigan essentially caught the labor activism bug and organized babysitter
unions because as forem and Brunell writes, they sought to
reshape the babysitting industry, eliminate exploitation, and assert their rights
as workers. Because they also do they wanted standardized wages um.

(32:07):
And she writes, the teenage girls in at least three
states laid down the rules for parents. That's right, and
I love it, and I don't want to come off
with condescending. But some of these agreements that were worked
out are kind of amazing. Sitters in New Jersey, for instance,
demanded adequate heat, which is like serious, you should not
freeze your sitter to death or your children. What's going on? Um.

(32:29):
But they also demanded refreshments and free use of the phone, radio,
and desk. That's what I'm talking about. Get those snacks.
Get those snacks, whether you're in a backpack or not. Um.
Massachusetts girls wrote into their contracts visits from friends and boyfriends.
But New Jersey girls agreed no friends or boyfriends would

(32:50):
come over because that was a huge fear that the
bobby socks in babysitter was just going to have parties.
That's what the films Sitting Pretty was about. That Like,
after the babysitter got fresh with the father and he
like spurns her advances, she just invites all of her
crazy bobby socks or friends over to party. I like
the idea of her inviting all of her flapper friends

(33:11):
over because it's just like older ladies in their their
old flapper clothes. Um. But I like the approach that
girls in Newton, Massachusetts took um when they won a
contract with the Auburn Dale Women's Club. So what they
did they created like a sliding scale. They demanded an
hourly rate of twenty cents before midnight and thirty five

(33:35):
cents after midnight, and in fifty cents per hour for
over time. In other words, of the parents said they
were going to be home by ten, but they come
home at twelve. Well, you gotta pay up. That's a
that's gonna be a dollar. Well and at the time
Men and Matt magazines with male audiences were lamenting that

(33:55):
these militant teens would not lift a finger outside of
their basic childcare responsibilities and that they were like resting
money from powerless couples. There was a lot of anxiety
over like who exactly is in charge here? Uh. The
Saturday Evening Post, for instance, reported that sitters everywhere are
united in their verdict against housework. A New Jersey union

(34:18):
explicitly said, for instance, no housework unless by special arrangement.
This was a huge concern among girls that you're just
gonna show up and suddenly you're gonna be eld elbow
deep in dishes, and that was not part of the agreement. Yeah,
that doesn't sound fun. Uh, And that certainly did not
sound fun to the Michigan Babysitters Union, which was called
one of the most militant of the sitters unions. Um.

(34:42):
And I wonder though, if this was not helped by
the press, like the popular press at the time, because
there was even a ninety seven Life magazine cover story
all about babysitting, and it hailed the six any million
dollar babysitting industry. So I'm sure that adults at the

(35:05):
time saw that figure. And we're like, oh, whoa, we're
being bamboozled. Yeah, there was an article not even too
long ago, anither Time or Newsweek that talked about the
you know whatever. It was like the one billion dollar
night out or something, and it's the same thing. It's like,
it's not that these girls are making so much money
at each past, it's just that babysitters are in such

(35:26):
high demand that they end up getting paid on. So
you have a lot of a lot of grumpy people
in the popular press being like, uh, you know, it
costs me a million dollars to go see a movie
because you get the five dollar tickets and some popcorn,
but then you've got to pay the babysitter so much,
ra ra ra, and because if we were back in
ninety seven, it would be like we have to pay

(35:48):
the babysitter thirty five cents an hour. But meanwhile, you
had mentioned how men's magazines we're we're none too pleased
about this. But meanwhile Women's Magaze scenes stressed how sitters
were working with mothers to develop the union's method of operations,
rules and work standards, and it pleasantly described these babysitters

(36:12):
unions as a cross between a woman's club and a sorority,
so they seemed somewhat supportive of this enterprising young women. Well,
because the women people are in cahoots all those women folk. Well,
why do you think we started this podcast because we're
in cahoots? Skidoo um. But unfortunately, the unions were short lived.

(36:32):
They ended up, as you might imagine, dying out amid
larger cultural fears about communists, a version and labor union radicalism.
So just like a larger environment of labor activism had
given birth to these young girls unions, the fight against
them also killed their unions too. I bet none of
our listeners predicted that in our episode on babysitters we

(36:54):
would somehow get around to communism six degrees of separation.
But if we dip our toes back in pop culture
things things get the stranger and stranger. In the nineties sixties,
of course, with the sexual Revolution, you have babysitters becoming

(37:16):
the objects of masculine desire and so many magazines and movies.
This is also when, too, you have the rise of
babysitter urban legends like LSD taking sitters. That sounds like
a nightmare, by the way, just like a baby's face
swirling in front of you. Can you imagine like changing
a baby's diaper on acid. I'm just saying that that

(37:38):
sounds horrifying. Um. And then you also have slasher films
with lunatics coming in killing the sitters. Yeah. And you
also have because more and more people at this point
are moving to the suburbs, you've got all of this
like stranger danger on the rise, and fears about strangers
in our suburban midst and oh well, it's okay, the

(38:00):
dads can just take you home and drive you home.
Oh no, But then we've got more fears about the
teen girls seducing the father or vice versa, right, exactly. Yeah.
And so in nineteen sixty nine, amid these changing sexual
immoral standards, you get the film The Babysitter clever title,

(38:21):
which features exaggerated fantasies about a team girl and foreman.
Brunelle talks about how it emerges from the quote new
erotic possibilities for American men excited by the sexual freedom
of teenage girls. And that just makes me want to
lie down and cover my head with a pillow. Yeah.
That's uh, that's a lot, and it really, I mean,
it just doesn't stop there. I mean, we see the

(38:41):
cycle over and over again in the sixties, seventies, and
early eighties, with social concern fuels pop culture, which perpetuates
our anxieties about now like feminism, girlhood, and sexuality, which
leads to more like slasher films and stranger danger and

(39:02):
pretty much from the late sixties through the eighties, these
are the portrayals of babysitters that we see. Either they
are doing something to endanger your kids, or their lives
are being endangered because the call is coming from inside
the house um. Or they are an object of like

(39:24):
the husband's sexual fantasies. So by the time we get
to the eighties, there is no shortage of out of
control sitters on TV, which is reflecting ambivalence and anxiety
about challenges that girls and women pose to traditional social order.
Because I mean, by this time, too, second way feminism

(39:46):
has come and now come to a close second way feminism,
but also divorce rates skyrocketing, lots of again family based anxiety. Um.
Nearly half of all moms of preschool kids had jobs
at this point. Um. But it's funny though, that like
against this backdrop of like society is becoming more liberal,
sexual mores are becoming more liberal. You've got even more

(40:08):
more than ever babysitting training classes and manuals to ensure
the safety and femininity and heteronormativity of this of this industry,
so to speak basically, by you have more than eight
hundred safe sitter teaching sites in all fifty states, and
their motto was better sitters today, better parents tomorrow. So

(40:33):
in that way, you're almost talking to mom, like encouraging
her to encourage her daughter to become a babysitter. But
I mean, on the other hand, at the same time,
you've still got anxieties about teen girls. Those never go away.
Teen girls never stop being a source of like fear
and anxiety for parents. I just think it's fascinating that
we're on the one hand encouraging girls to pursue this
like very heteronormative, feminine pursuit if they want to make money,

(40:57):
but on the other hand being like, oh, but don't
be a slut. Well, I mean, and that's why it's
notable that in the eighties you do have the launch
of the Babysitters Club series, because it's such a positive
and aspirational representation of babysitting. And this is also a
good point to note how completely white this entire podcast

(41:23):
has been. I mean it's been like nothing but white,
middle class and that is something that Foreman Brunell addresses
briefly in her book. I mean she acknowledges like, yeah,
I mean a lot of this is is just focused
on white girls. I mean, babysitting was very much like
a white job. And even if you look at the
Babysitters Club the original for well, you have Um Claudia

(41:47):
I believe, who is Japanese American Um, But it's not
until the later series that you finally get Jesse, who
is the first and only African American UH babysitter in
the club. And I think because of that that it
was a huge deal and people were very appreciative of
her being in there. But in terms of the whole

(42:09):
overwhelming whiteness of babysitting, Foreman Brunell writes, the iconic sitters
whiteness mirrored the reality of the historical labor force, where
other than caring for kin for no pay, babysitting among Hispanic, African,
American and Asian girls was limited. And I think that
that ties to as well to the whole class issue

(42:31):
of it. You know, you need to have that disposal
income to even be able to employ a babysitter. Yeah,
it's interesting that the babysitter that arose in popular culture,
the image was of a white girl, but she also
was the recipient of all of the anxiety. You didn't
have similar anxieties that I'm aware of about black or

(42:52):
Hispanic babysitters. For instance. It was like they're at once
lauding and celebrating the white virginal babies that are but
on the other hand having all this anxiety about what
she could potentially mean for their families. Well, I think
you don't hear that about like babysitters of color because
they probably weren't being hired by like all these white
suburban families um as form and Bernel also writes. She says,

(43:16):
as a quintessence of female adolescence of that kind of rhymes.
The babysitter acted out the struggle between normalizing American girlhood
as white, middle class and suburban and pathologizing it. So
it is like all of both of those things wrapped
up together. And I love though that in the nineties,
um just like how uh. During the labor movement, you

(43:39):
have teen girls reflecting the larger social movements in the
nineties with like You've got you start, You're starting to
get riot girl feminism, third wave feminism. You start to
see again a bunch of young babysitters UM starting to
internalize notions about feminism and saying that they want to

(43:59):
be paid the same wage for similarly value jobs that
boys do. That there were a lot of girls at
the time complaining that, like, oh, well, you know, boys
are gonna get paid the same amount that I'm getting
paid for a night of babysitting just for mowing the
lawn for an hour. I can attest to that. I
also mode some lawns back in my day. You can
make some good cash, and I have never mowed a lawn. Oh, Caroline,

(44:21):
it's a listen if I'm like in the mood for it,
it's very satisfying, kind of like loading the dishwasher. Anyway,
back to babysitting UM today, though there are still those
gender issues and a gender wage kept talking about like
equal pay. While boys make up less than three percent
of all babysitters, no surprise, they still make more than girls. Granted,

(44:46):
it's only fifty cents an hour more than girls, but still,
that's it's astonishing to me. Yeah. The Prisonomics blog speculates
that perhaps boys are confident asking for more um or
maybe because they're so a few the ones who do
end up babysitting might have some special child care skill
or qualification in some way um or maybe it does

(45:07):
go back to that nineteen thirties anxiety about girls being
out of control and boys being more, you know, quietly
masculine and in control. I don't, I don't know, um.
But somebody who's horrified by this is Katie Donovan, who's
an equal pay consultant. She was writing for Elevate Network.
She was horrified to learn that a lot of girls
don't have steady rates, but they just accept whatever the

(45:30):
parents are willing to pay, and she stresses the importance
of showing girls that they should know their value so
that they can fight and rage against that pay gap
later in life. But the thing is, though, especially if
we look at where we were in the depths of
the recession, babysitting was booming. You can make some pretty

(45:52):
great money these days as a babysitter in the Boston
Globe reported that our rates are soaring because in Boston
teen sitters got an average of ten dollars an hour,
which they note is a wage that's risen nine times
faster than inflation since the early eighties. Yeah, it's also

(46:16):
worth noting that that's Massachusetts minimum wage. It's ten dollars um.
In New York the going rate to seventeen fifty an hour,
which is crazy, but I guess reflects the cost of
living UM. And it's interesting to look at articles about
the babysitting economy. There's a lot of different things affecting it.
You've got Craigslist, Urban sitter dot com, and other sites

(46:40):
that allow sitters to see the competitions going rates. So
that's a way, despite not having a babysitters union like
fifteen year olds did in the in the forties and fifties,
bring back the babysitters unions. It's still yeah, that could
be the next step in the babysitters club series, but
it's it's still a way to almost standardized wages UM.
But you've also got issues around the recession and the

(47:02):
weak job market, meaning that more college students in college
grads are seeking the work of babysitting because at least
you know, babysitting is never going anywhere. People are always
going to need some degree of childcare. And so when
you are as that Boston Globe article noted, when you
are more qualified, maybe you can speak another language, maybe

(47:24):
you do have specific psychological or childcare skills because you
have gone to college and you're not a fifteen year
old girl. Um, you can end up charging more. Well.
In speaking of those fifteen year old girls, I think
that they are just less likely to seek out babysitting
jobs because so many teens today are slammed with extracurriculars.

(47:44):
You have sat preparation, I mean they're scheduled, you know,
from from dawn till dusk so often. Um, and you
have these dual earner families. That leads to increased demand
for sitters and all so a willingness to pay higher rates.
And I think also on top of that our culture

(48:05):
of helicopter parenting, where oh, you will pay top dollar
to make sure that your babysitter can speak Mandarin and
has a doctorate in child psychology, even though your baby
can't speak Mandarin, even though your baby is just a baby,
even though you don't have a child, She's just hanging
out at your house for two hours. For Yeah, you're predicting,
and with the aging up of the babysitter population, at

(48:30):
least it seems like because you're probably likelier to hire
a college student than you might be the girl next door.
I will be curious to see if that trend continues
as time goes on, or if we ever will see
a resurgence of you know, kind of the neighborhood babysitters.
I mean, I think this also reflects just like the

(48:51):
changing patterns of how we're living these days too. We're
moving out of suburbia, and then are we just gonna
get more and heightened fears about older babysitter that melds
with our fears about nanny's blinking Gavin Rossdale? You know, like,
are we ever going to get away from having cultural
fears around women in sexuality? And I mean, if if

(49:12):
history is any guide, I would submit that that we
are not going to move away from that. And so
we just threw a lot at you. But I'm really
interested to hear from listeners about their babysitting experiences. I'm
interested to hear from parents. Do you have maybe some
subconscious fears about your babysitter, or have you experienced parents

(49:34):
fears around teenage girls taking care of their kids? Also
listeners any weird babysitter stories that you have, either as
the babysitter or the child being babysitt definitely want to
hear those. And guys, have you babysat? I know a
lot of you have. I mean, it's like so common
for boys to babysit. It's ridiculous that we have strange
hang ups around that. But Mom Steph at how stuff

(49:56):
Works dot com is where you can send us all
your letters. You can all so tweet us at mom
Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook. And we've got a
couple of messages to share with you when we come
right back from a quick break. Okay, So I have
a letter here from Elizabeth in response to our cuddling episode.

(50:18):
She says, Ladies, I was so happy to hear you
call out the a sexual a romantic community on your
cuddling podcast. Just hearing you say my sexual orientation as
a community to want information from was so gratifying. I
got giddy. Anyway you wanted information on ace cuddling, let
me tell you. Myself and my straight boyfriend are champion cuddlers.
We've been together almost six years, and since I have

(50:38):
a lot of trauma around sex, we don't have sex.
A lot of people might think that we therefore have
no physical intimacy, but nothing could be farther from the truth.
We use cuddling all the time as verification of our
closeness and just to feel really good. It is comforting
and fun and relaxing to do with a devoted partner.
You asked about how this is not misleading to a partner,
and we work that out with just communicating about it. Sure,

(51:00):
sometimes he gets really turned on by a particular excellent
bout of cuddles, but he's happy to just keep such
things low key and may slip off to take care
of it later. He said multiple times how important the
cuddling is to him and reaffirming our relationship and to
helping him have nice brain chemicals too. I think we
use it a lot like sex, expressing our love and
desire to be near each other with our bodies. To
add another wrinkle, I have anxiety and things can get

(51:23):
pretty bad sometimes if we're at home. I asked for
cuddles to help calm my frantic brain, but that's not
always where things get bad if we're out in public. Though,
we don't need to launch into full body cuddles in
order for me to get relief from my brain. Foot
cuttles or pinky cuddles have become sufficient to slow things
down enough to deal with the situation. Hooray for the
good cuddling brain chemicals. Thanks for the fantastic podcast, and

(51:43):
thanks again for including the ACE and a ROW community
in your discussion. Personally, I find being acknowledged as real
as one of the most important things I could hear
from you, and hopefully other media will pick up from
your lead. Well, thank you, Elizabeth and Elizabeth you might
be interested to head over to the Stuff I'll Never
Told YouTube channel and watched the video The A B
S The s of a Sexuality. Alicia also wrote us

(52:06):
about our cuddling episode, and she writes, the subject of
cuddling is a particularly interesting one for me because of
the way I was raised. I'm the oldest of three
siblings in my family of five. Practice family bed until
I was twelve years old, not out of necessity, we
all had our own rooms with our own beds, but
because we enjoyed spending time and cuddling together. I have
so many fond memories of Saturday morning spent cuddling, playing,

(52:29):
and even eating all in the family bed, and that
to this day we're still incredibly close, even now that
all of us are adults and out of the house,
and I credit much of that closeness to the time
spent in the family bed. The downside of this wonderful experience, however,
are the reactions I get when I tell people about it.
I get reactions from mild confusion, to disbelief or discussed.

(52:50):
I often avoid telling the story because I rarely get
a positive response, and especially when I revealed that the
family bed was my dad's idea, people have an especially
hard time coming to terms with the idea of a
grown man wanting to cuddle and spend time with his
children without it being creepy or sexual, and I always
feel like I have to close out the story with
the line and we all grew up to be totally normal,
well adjusted adults. Looking forward to listening to more of

(53:13):
your podcasts. Well. Thanks Alicia, and thanks everybody who's written
into us. Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com
is our email address and for links to all of
our social media, videos, blogs, and podcasts, including our sources.
So you can learn more about babysitting. Head on over
to Stuff I've Never Told You dot com for more

(53:37):
on this and thousands of other topics because it how
stuff works dot com

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