Mom Posts Job Ad For Full-Time Nanny Who Wants To Make 'Fun Fund' Money — Because She's Only Paying $2 An Hour
Childcare is expensive, but this is just ridiculous.
Reddit, Twitter, Canva Childcare has become so absurdly expensive that for many couples, it ends up being cheaper for one parent to simply quit their job and stay home. Parents who do opt for childcare have to go to great lengths to afford a babysitter or nanny.
But one mom's solution is so extreme others are calling her "delusional."
A mom posted a job ad for a nanny willing to take care of her child for about $2 an hour.
The ad, which reportedly comes from a Facebook group for parents looking to hire babysitters and nannies, comes from a mom looking for a full-time childcare professional for her seven-year-old home-schooled son. But the terms of what she's looking for coupled with the money she's offering is nothing short of jaw-dropping.
Photo: Twitter
The mom wants someone to work nine hours per day, five days a week—for $410 per month.
The mom writes in her ad that "this is not something that would work for you if you are the main earner in your household." Yeah, no kidding. She goes on to say, "This would be for someone who is looking for a fun fund."
But it gets worse from there. "Full-time" is really a misnomer here, because it's actually a 45-hour per week job — the mom lists the hours as "7am-4pm," Monday through Friday. And while the job comes with "no weekends" and benefits like paid holiday breaks, it pays a measly $102.50 per week, or $410 per month.
If you're keeping track, that comes out to a whopping $2.28 per hour, nearly $5 less per hour than the federal minimum wage of $7.25. Except, it doesn't even come to that, because the job only runs from "mid August to mid May." So, that $410 month is actually more like $1.71 per hour once you factor in the summer break, just shy of the 1975 minimum wage of $1.80.
People online called the mom 'delusional,' and held up the $2 an hour nanny job as an example of just how totally under-valued work primarily done by women really is.
It’s not exactly surprising that this job ad didn't go over well at all online. The pay is egregious enough, but other requirements make it even more unhinged, like requiring applicants to pass a background check and drug screening. For a job paying $2 an hour?
But as the person who posted the ad to Reddit pointed out, the job also comes with a commute of 30 minutes each way. "They posted this in a babysitters group that was a 30 minute drive from her house," a Redditor who posted the ad in the r/ChoosingBeggars subReddit wrote. "So let's add the time and the cost of driving to that as well! But ya, it's just for fun money," they snarked.
Some wondered if perhaps the ad was posted by a low-income mom desperate for an affordable childcare option. After all, childcare in the United States comes at a staggering cost.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, even in the USA's cheapest state, Mississippi, childcare costs an average of $5,436 per year, which the Institute notes is only about $2,500 less than tuition at a public college in the state. It's no wonder many parents nowadays decide it just isn't worth it.
But others weren't buying that this was some cash-strapped single mom desperate for cheap childcare.
"The person who wrote this does not work minimum wage," a person on Twitter wrote. "They are fishing for an undocumented immigrant who will accept whatever under the table pay they’re offered."
Photo: Twitter
Many agreed, including journalist Erin Gloria Ryan, who chalked the ad up to an age-old problem — the ways our society continually devalues the work of women, especially when it has to do with childcare or other domestic tasks.
Photo: Twitter
Sure, everything's expensive nowadays, the government and politicians of both parties simply refuse to provide any kind of meaningful social safety net for struggling parents of small children, and a staggering number of us are in real financial binds nowadays, to say nothing of many parents.
But as several people on Twitter pointed out, free public schools exist for a reason, and home-schooling is a choice. Asking a babysitter to subsidize that choice by making $2 an hour? "Delusional" is probably the only word for it.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.