Don't Tell America the Babysitter's Dead

March 19, 2024 2:40 PM

For decades, babysitting was both a job and a rite of passage. Now it feels more like a symbol of a bygone American era. (SL Atlantic / Archive)
posted by DirtyOldTown (59 comments total)

Alternate hypothesis from one of MeFi's resident horror movie nerds:

They were hunted to extinction.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:41 PM on March 19 [58 favorites]

Came in here to make the obligatory "this is the masked killers' fault" joke, I was not disappointed.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:51 PM on March 19 [2 favorites]

Yep. Nothing else to say just yep.

1) kids in general don't work anymore because they do educational activities
2) a babysitter costs too much for lower/middle income earners, so a sibling watches, they don't get watched, or parents just don't go out
3) parents are less trusting
4) family sizes are smaller, so the statistical likelihood of knowing a teen who can babysit are lower
5) formalized childcare professionals (and churches) (like kid gyms) are opting into the space.
6) IMO, the stereotypes popularized by movies and media (hard partying, abusive, vulnerable to serial killers) have possibly had some effect.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:52 PM on March 19 [24 favorites]

There were lots of babies and toddlers in my neighborhood, and few teen or tween girls, so my sister and I (we went out as a team) were able to call the tune, as it were. No kids in diapers, and they’d better be asleep when we get there! We didn’t rake money in, but we had fun.
posted by BostonTerrier at 2:53 PM on March 19 [8 favorites]

I think declining wages have left young working class folks perpetually looking for side hustles and they take a lot of the gigs.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:58 PM on March 19 [6 favorites]

Teens don't have time to babysit anymore; they are too busy pulling 12 hr shifts down at the meat packing facility.
posted by Saxon Kane at 3:04 PM on March 19 [39 favorites]

Sad to think of kids not getting that relationship, which isn’t a friendship necessarily but can be really valuable. I adored the teen girls who looked after me. I looked forward to doing it myself, but by the time I was old enough I was in a neighborhood without enough casual relationships between young families with kids, and it just never came up unless I was looking after kids at a gathering or something.

I’m reminded of how parents are also turning away from sleepovers, which too are historically associated with cheap horror movies. (As well as with abuse between minors.) It’s depressing, but I can entirely understand the decision.
posted by Countess Elena at 3:07 PM on March 19 [8 favorites]

I started babysitting within the family when I was either five or six. I started getting loaned out for babysitting other people's kids at about seven. It was a different era for sure -- these days, would you be risking a call to child services for letting an untrained seven year old babysit your infant and toddler all evening?

I recall maxing out my hourly wage at about $2/hr in my teens, which seemed like great money to me at the time given how easy the work was but was also well below the minimum wage. My understanding is that babysitters now tend to get above minimum wage, and are also often expected to have child CPR training, both of which seem like excellent ideas.
posted by Dip Flash at 3:11 PM on March 19 [7 favorites]

Fascinating article, but for those of us that were latchkey kids it's always been something viewed through the lens of pop culture. Since pop culture is always changing seeing this change as well didn't seem like a huge thing but for the people who include it in their lived experience I can see that being different.

Also: The dishes are done, man. And I'm glad you went with Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead instead of Adventures in Babysitting because otherwise I would have had nothing.
posted by howbigisthistextfield at 3:13 PM on March 19 [7 favorites]

Eh, it was gendered labor, always underpaid, that sometimes also put teenage girls at risk for exploitation by adult men. I'm not sure we should be sad it's gone?
posted by MiraK at 3:28 PM on March 19 [10 favorites]

my first paying job!

I'd get off the bus with the two boys, I inherited the gig from an older sister

2 misadventures stick out:
1) boys forget key to get into the home, out comes the extendable ladder, one of the boys climbs up to gain access via 2nd floor bedroom window. Picture grinning idiot (me) down below thinking "great problem solving!" and pulling the ladder in over-zealously, it comes off the second story eave and falls into the picture window of the dining room and SMASH. the look on my face was most likely exquisite, I'm pretty sure the blood just rushed out for a moment in sheer horror
2) snow day: school is cancelled, I take them out sledding, and determined to show them some really good sledding we walked a little too far into the hills let's say. we weren't technically lost but we were momentarily unsure of our whereabouts let's say. There may have been a flurry that obscured things further, the boys were flagging, I'm glad we got our bearings let's say
posted by elkevelvet at 3:31 PM on March 19 [19 favorites]

Eh, it was gendered labor, always underpaid, that sometimes also put teenage girls at risk for exploitation by adult men. I'm not sure we should be sad it's gone?

I was wondering about sort of the reverse of this. I'm male and always had lots of babysitting opportunities to pick and choose from; if there were ever any fears about me being a potential abuser, they were never relayed to me. These days, would parents be equally as comfortable with a young man doing that work? I'd hope so, but I have my doubts.

Certainly no one expressed any concerns about me being vulnerable, which also seems obvious in hindsight.
posted by Dip Flash at 3:37 PM on March 19 [9 favorites]

My sister and I were mostly taken care of by family members.
I do remember a neighbor friend's daughter babysitting us a couple times when we were little.

I had a friend in school who babysat pretty much from junior high on. She took a course offered by a local hospital. From what I understand she's a Nurse now.
posted by luckynerd at 3:37 PM on March 19

I think declining wages have left young working class folks perpetually looking for side hustles and they take a lot of the gigs.

We're not big user of babysitters, but when we need one these days its almost always an adult aged person who does it, booked through a website or referred by someone who probably found them through a website.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 3:58 PM on March 19 [3 favorites]

Fascinating article, but for those of us that were latchkey kids it's always been something viewed through the lens of pop culture.

Agreed. When you're already babysitting yourself for 2 or 3 hours every afternoon, being by yourself for a few hours at night isn't that much different.

In the past, parents didn't bring their kids with because they didn't want to have to entertain them the whole time. Today, they bring the kids because with mobile electronics, the kids entertain themselves.
posted by ensign_ricky at 4:00 PM on March 19 [6 favorites]

Isn't it just that IRS limits didn't keep pace with inflation? If you babysit for the same family one night a week for a year you're likely over the $2700 limit for withholding. Yea, it probably won't happen but people update their actions based on stories they hear about and I recall there were a few political scandals over improper withholding that made the news.
posted by hermanubis at 4:02 PM on March 19

My sister--herself a former babysitter, now mother of two teenage kids--has said, "Oh yeah, no one babysits anymore. It's just weird now."

I think it's more weird to think babysitting's too weird now, but what are you gonna do?
posted by Kitteh at 4:21 PM on March 19 [2 favorites]

I’m reminded of how parents are also turning away from sleepovers

At least for us it's certainly not that we don't want to have them, more that we barely have enough room for our own kids, let alone spare room for kids' friends...
posted by Jon Mitchell at 4:23 PM on March 19 [1 favorite]

OOPS SORRY METAFILTER

I double checked with my sister about the babysitting thing and she said her oldest daughter does but not often as it is OTHER parents that think it is weird. So yeah, I know one willing babysitter.

My bad.
posted by Kitteh at 4:40 PM on March 19 [3 favorites]

7??? Ok that is too young, holy moly. I started age 11-12ish, charged a dollar an hour per kid but almost never had more than two.

But it was always people from church who knew my parents and so presumably found me trustworthy.

One couple never used me again because apparently their daughter's bedtime was not a rule but something I was supposed to let her argue her way out of, a very foreign concept to teenage me, and not something they told me. Said daughter (4-ish) proceeded to tantrum in her bed for two hours straight while I sat on the floor nearby and made sure she was ok. I was impressed with her stamina but not with her parents.
posted by emjaybee at 5:01 PM on March 19 [7 favorites]

I was 12 or 13 the first time I babysat. Two sets of siblings: twin 7 year old boys, a 4 year old girl and an infant who screamed the whole time. Someone smashed a marble chess set.

I’ve always been good with kids, but my babysitting career was short-lived.
posted by syzygy at 5:08 PM on March 19 [4 favorites]

At the risk of sounding soppy, in hindsight I'm really grateful for all the time I spent babysitting. Boys and young men aren't always given a lot of opportunities to be nurturing, and I was kind of a fuck-up at life at that age and wasn't otherwise always getting a lot of external positive reinforcement. So people trusting me with their very precious kids was kind of awesome and I loved it. Reading bed-time books, helping with baths and pajamas, making snacks, it was all so different from the middle- and high schools I went to and the general social environment, which were more like Lord of the Flies crossed with the bad parts of Heathers.

So I think it's kind of sad that fewer kids are getting to do this, though I understand why that has happened.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:29 PM on March 19 [26 favorites]

My only recollection of being babysat included us leaving to play on the neighborhood swings at night with another age 4 kid and their babysitter. I think that’s why my foreign-born parents never got one again? I feel like this robbed me of some real GenX/hosewater experiences.
posted by migurski at 5:44 PM on March 19

Oh gosh! I normally do not go in for nostalgia, but this article gave it to me, big time -- nostalgia for a world I think was already gone when I got here. Thanks for sharing.

Little eirias is right at that cuspy babysitter age from days of yore. In practice, I don't think she's ready to tend to another kid, which of course is itself not only cause but consequence, specifically of the way we raise children now. I appreciated the comments (were they here, or in the article?) about the importance of early jobs for building confidence. I can tell Little e is itchy to prove she can handle responsibility, but doesn't yet know how to do that.

We didn't make much use of babysitters when she was younger. They were hard to find, to be honest. We're not well connected in our town, and then of course for a few years there we didn't have the time or inclination to go anywhere anyhow. Whenever we managed to find someone, Little e loved the individual attention. But those relationships were always short-lived and, yes, always young women -- not the teens that are the subject of this piece.

I never had a teen babysitter myself either, come to think of it -- my parents had the benefit of nearby relatives, my aunts and uncles and grandparents. I have so many happy memories of weekend nights with my closest cousin that doubled as date nights for our parents. But this too is an avenue that was not open to us as parents.

I agree with the thesis here, I think: something valuable has been lost.
posted by eirias at 5:56 PM on March 19 [1 favorite]

My mother was a college professor. So my babysitters usually ended up being former college students of hers. Mostly one college student, who also helped out as a classroom aid at my elementary school. She was great.

It's funny, because at the time, she seemed so mature! A college student. Now, in my mid thirties, and I'm also in higher ed, and those undergrads seem so young!

When I was a teenager, in late 90s/early 00s, I never did babysitting. I did do petsitting/housesitting. Part of that may have been that I was an only child with cousins who lived far away so I barely saw. So I never had that opportunity for doing "starter babysitting" with younger siblings/cousins. But I had lots of pets. I also did office job stuff during the summer (filing, mostly), once I got to high school.

In retrospect, I would have been a good babysitter, I think. I was the most hyper responsible kid ever (sadly, mostly because of a super fucked up childhood where I took on a lot of parental responsibilities). And since I never had kids, and don't have close friends with kids, I still don't know how to deal with babies/young children.
posted by litera scripta manet at 6:23 PM on March 19 [3 favorites]

Small town PA checking in: used babysitters quite a bit for our kids, who are now babysitting themselves, though so far only my daughter. We’ve had high school and college age kids, mostly people we know through friends and acquaintances. It was great when we had some “regulars” lined up so we could have a sitter every few weeks. It wasn’t prohibitively expensive but again: we live in the sticks.

One thing we noticed during this time in our lives: few other parents used sitters as often as we did. Thus when they needed one they often had trouble finding one. They always said that X, Y or Z wasn’t “sitter-worthy.” But then eventually nothing is and you spend the first ten years of your kid’s life never getting out on your own for a bit of adult time away from the kids.

Just some random thoughts but without babysitting I don’t know how anyone gets adult time without their children unless they are lucky enough to have relatives living nearby.
posted by dellsolace at 6:24 PM on March 19 [6 favorites]

I didn't RTFA, but I was just thinking about this randomly today, and how unfathomable all of the logistics (and potential safety concerns are now) of when I regularly worked as a babysitter:
-I babysat from roughly age 11-15. None of my regular families were in my neighborhood.
-Since I (obvy) couldn't drive, usually the wife would pick me up at my house and drive me to their house. One of my best-paying clients was like 35 minutes away, mostly highway driving. The husband would take me home at the end of the night.
-In the stone age without cell phones, there was absolutely no way for my parents to know where I was while I was in transit. I would have usually only a rough idea of where the parents were and a rough ETA of their return. I don't think I ever recall getting a call on the landline from them if plans changed.

So today I was wondering if anyone would even let an under-16 babysit, if they'd be expected to Uber to the client's house, how often they would have to text the clients and their own parents with updates about how things were going... What a different world.
posted by TwoStride at 7:11 PM on March 19 [3 favorites]

Elsewhere, I’m living in a culture where extended families tend to stay near to each other and the young people have seen paid babysitters on American television but don’t really understand why they exist. There’s always somewhere to drop the kids.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:22 PM on March 19 [4 favorites]

Man, this bums me out and makes me feel old AF and I am only in my late 30s. I grew up in lower middle class white Midwest suburbia. My mom is a musician and all her high school private lesson music students were my babysitters growing up. I was an only child so I really enjoyed hanging out with my babysitters because it kind of felt like having an older sister for the night. Also, my generation was very into The Babysitters Club book series, and I guess those are probably not a thing anymore.

We have some friends who literally live two blocks from us and who have a great only child. My spouse and I babysat her once and we loved it, and even though I've repeatedly offered to babysit my friends kid again, they've never taken us up again on it. I think they think we think it's an imposition but it's really not and I'm kind of bummed we don't get to play more of that temporary caregiver role in her life.
posted by mostly vowels at 7:29 PM on March 19 [4 favorites]

As a proud Gen X'er, I made a bit of spending money babysitting during junior high and high school. Most memorably, one night, when I was 16 or 17, I had to call my mom to come over when a baby wouldn't stop crying. She did and got the baby to calm down pretty straight away. Mostly I had bigger kids (anywhere between 5 and 10) who were already in bed or almost in bed.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 7:34 PM on March 19 [2 favorites]

... in hindsight I'm really grateful for all the time I spent babysitting. Boys and young men aren't always given a lot of opportunities to be nurturing, and I was kind of a fuck-up at life at that age and wasn't otherwise always getting a lot of external positive reinforcement. ..it was all so different from the middle- and high schools I went to and the general social environment, which were more like Lord of the Flies crossed with the bad parts of Heathers.
Seems like we had a similar childhood, although Heathers sounds a bit too friendly to describe the experience of my school years - more like A Clockwork Orange.

It's certainly true that people just don't use babysitters any more and I think our 'loss of innocence' as a society is largely to blame. We 'know' so much about the risks posed by strangers and we 'know' only bad parents let their children be cared for by anyone but their parents and we 'know' that we just have to make our kids spend every waking moment learning something that will look good on their resume, so we can't possibly leave them for a minute. If we think society is going to be better from the rise of helicopter parenting and wrapping kids up in cotton wool, we're kidding ourselves. Babysitting was always a safe way for young teens (particularly female teens) to make their first foray into the working world, but young teens don't seem to be considered capable of doing much these days - perhaps they aren't capable due to having been parented out of any initiative or courage or ability to figure things out by themselves by those same helicopter parents.

Of course, young girls as babysitters were vulnerable to all sorts of abuse, not the least of which was during that trip home with the father, likely several drinks under his belt because drink-driving then was an achievement, not a crime. But, naturally, we didn't talk about that and mostly still don't.

Keeping kids safe while letting them stumble their way into adulthood is tough.
posted by dg at 9:32 PM on March 19 [5 favorites]

I’m genuinely shocked the entire article was written without explaining the economic issues, because I think that is entirely the explanation.

I had a kid twenty years ago, and babysitting cost me between 20$ and 35$ for an all-nighter. So, at absolute maximum, 5$ an hour, and usually 3-4$ an hour, which was a fairly reasonable expense for a couple nights a month - literally about 1% of my wages at the time for the month.

If I had a baby today. I could not afford to pay minimum wage for an evening babysitter. It would be, taking state minimum wage, 115$ for the same night, 140$ for the same night at city minimum wage. My wages haven’t increased significantly in twenty years either, so what was previously 1% of my income would now be about 10% of my income. And that’s not adding in the cost for the actual night out.

And yes - if you’re paying minimum wage, then why wouldn’t you pay an adult? The point of paying preteens and teens was that you could pay them significantly less because they had no real bills and were doing it for shopping money. And whether or not that was literally illegal at the time - I genuinely don’t know - it was so socially normative that everyone did it.

I don’t know how teens can compete if they can’t compete on price. And thus the death of babysitting. It’s not about studying - people can study at someone else’s house just as much as their own.
posted by corb at 10:13 PM on March 19 [14 favorites]

Wait, what, babysitters got minimum wage?! Someone would legit pay a teen $115 to babysit all night?
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:25 PM on March 19 [2 favorites]

Someone might, but not me. That sort of money would have been the whole budget for a night out and then some at any time when I had kids young enough to need babysitting.
posted by dg at 10:40 PM on March 19 [2 favorites]

I do pay that, but it's my friends who are underpaid teachers, and need supplemental income for rent, not teens.
posted by eustatic at 12:17 AM on March 20 [1 favorite]

4) family sizes are smaller, so the statistical likelihood of knowing a teen who can babysit are lower

Not just family size but also shrinking demographics. If the border was as closed as politicians expect it to be the US would probably be in population decline. As it is, from 2000 to 2020 the total population under 18 went from 25% to 22%, and that is with places like Utah and Texas bringing the average up. Places like the Boston metro are below 20% and dropping dramatically. This factors into that statistical likelihood -- there's probably fewer teenagers on your block, and for teenagers, fewer families in their circle of overlapping trust.

Right now it's just a cute thinkpiece, but COVID granted universities a sneak preview of what was coming with the demographic cliff and it's not shaping up to be a fun ride. High school graduation is expected to peak next year, after which I expect the directional universities will basically unravel and the flagships may have a tough choice between declining enrollment or lowering selectivity.

House does sometimes have trouble connecting her sitters to parents. Recently, she tried to do a meet and greet at the local library, and she remembers that only a couple of adults showed up.

Well, not a surprise. Corvallis is a college town, and without OSU Corvallis would be wishing it was Albany. It's demographics are unsurprisingly spiked by this reality, with the added pressure of housing being extremely scarce (and almost burned down once or twice). Cheap labor is so scarce there are literal food delivery robots there.
posted by pwnguin at 1:10 AM on March 20 [4 favorites]

No small part of this in my neck of the woods is that any teenager responsible enough to look after kids has a better paying job. We had a teen living with us for a bit, and she'd babysit in small bursts when she was 12 -14, but as soon as she could legally get a job, she did, and that put an end to that. She just didn't have time to babysit, and certainly not for the money I could manage. I had another responsible teenager queued up for it and then she got a job, too. Busy all weekend, so that's that.

The other factor I suspect is the smaller family sizes. I am the eldest of six, and by the time I started babysitting at like, age 12 I already knew how to change nappies, warm bottles, bathe a toddler and get them to bed. The works. But most families I know are very one and done. These only children might be sensible, upstanding young people but they just don't know how to deal with small children as a whole. It's like watching them interact with a mammal from a distant continent.
posted by Jilder at 1:12 AM on March 20 [6 favorites]

My kingdom for a babysitter!
posted by chillmost at 2:19 AM on March 20 [1 favorite]

Wait, what, babysitters got minimum wage?! Someone would legit pay a teen $115 to babysit all night?

In my neighbourhood the going rate is between $17 & $20/hr. Hence “Netflix and appetizers after the kids are in bed” dates. We hired a sitter maybe…6? Times when my kids were little. But my friends and I did drop our kids at each others’ houses, trading off sitting for each other. Once my oldest was 15–5 we left him in charge of his brother from time to time. But mostly we went out a lot less than my parents, or did things as families with other families..

I babysat a lot. One of the dads would drive me home with his hand on my leg, and one would drive me home drunk. Both colleagues of my dad’s. Babysitting is also where I checked out porn (Hustler etc.)

However, I had a regular Friday night gig with a couple, one kid, whose home and way of living still stays with me as kind and - whole.

My kids work (the younger volunteers) at martial arts and summer camps. They’re both boys and haven’t been in demand for sitting - but see above, not that many people hire sitters.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:15 AM on March 20 [4 favorites]

As a bookish, introverted teen, I was a popular pick for neighbors needing a sitter during the 1970s. My small family lived modestly, but there were wealthy folks nearby with young kids.

I spent one entire summer’s weekdays watching three well-behaved kids at their grandmother’s place—which had a spectacular pool, horses, lots of land and a greenhouse full of orchids. Adventures every day!

Another regular client was an artist who collected art, and I had a great time exploring and discussing it with his bright, funny children.

Word of mouth kept me in demand, and though I didn’t get rich, I was given wonderful opportunities to appreciate others’ lives, and enjoy some great kids. It was a terrific gig while it lasted, and a good introduction to simple concepts like organization and responsibility. Sad to learn that this is no longer a thing.
posted by kinnakeet at 4:35 AM on March 20 [8 favorites]

As a kid, I remember having a babysitter maybe once, but then, we were a multi-generational house, so my grandmother was usually available to watch us and if not her, an older cousin (and there were lots of those locally) would do it.

I babysat some from when I was about 11 onwards in the 90s. I inherited two neighborhood sitting jobs from my older sister, a kindergartener and his little brother through school, and I did full time summers with a kid when I was in high school (after my retail job fired me because the boss's (adult) kid took over and decided she hated me and my sister). I didn't particularly love any of those jobs and none of them paid as well as a regular job would have. But I preferred the freedom of taking a kid to the playground or movies or beach or just plain playing legos to the few tastes of office work I'd had, despite the better pay. And I think it was better than retail.

As a parent now? I couldn't stay awake for an evening date if my life depended on it. We've used a babysitter a bit on Sundays -- a friend's kid who's in high school--but we had to schedule around their other job and, yeah, we paid minimum wage or better, so it felt like we really had to make that time count. We have some adult friends who do some childcare for us. As for dates, we each get okay PTO, so instead we take half a day or a full day off together once a month or so and send our kid to preschool. We (morning people) get a daytime date and we're paying for school anyway, so it feels like a win.
posted by carrioncomfort at 4:42 AM on March 20 [3 favorites]

I was surprised that the story touched on babysitting courses and CPR like they were a relatively new phenomenon. Taking the Red Cross babysitting course was an absolute right of passage for girls when I was a kid in the 80s.

Babysitting was largely the province of the 12-14 year old set when I was a kid, because older girls could get real jobs at the restaurant or the store or even the mill. They would still babysit on big nights like when our town had a dance, though, because you could get $50 just for that night and $50 was big money.

Now, I can hardly imagine my 11 year old niece being left home alone for more than an hour, never mind taking a babysitting course and being left in charge of other tiny people.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:18 AM on March 20 [6 favorites]

Yeah, sitters around here run $30-35 an hour, and we don't know any teenagers, let alone teenagers interested in a periodic sitting gig. I would very happily hire a teenager to sit if they seemed reasonably responsible and wanted the job. We've hired one a few times in the 1.5 years since mini bowties was born, but it just doesn't feel worth the expense at all, so we just don't get out unless it's either one at a time alone, or with other families of toddlers. Daycare eats all our money, and commuting/work/home management logistics eats all our time and energy. The only parents I know who have regular dates are those with local family, which we also don't have.

I'm hoping to set up a sitting swap system with a couple of women from my mom group now that our kids are less terrifyingly small, but that also requires time and energy to get going so it's very much a "maybe sometime this year" goal.

Even actively trying to meet neighbors, form community with other parents, build a "village," push back against overscheduled hyper-cultivated upper middle class notions of childhood, and foster self-reliance for kids...most families with small children are really just isolated on our own out there, and without a LOT of money, like way more than even I had truly wrapped my head around, and a fair amount of luck, we can't really approximate anything for ourselves like the parenting experience our parents had. I love my kid and I'm grateful for the time I get to spend with him because I know he'll be grown and gone in a blink but wow is it an unrelenting lot.
posted by bowtiesarecool at 5:19 AM on March 20 [7 favorites]

I first babysat other people's kids for money when I was 11 (in 1970). My first full time job was the summer I was 15 and took care of three little girls every weekday. I loved the kids but hated being stuck out in the middle of nowhere all day.

Forty years later, my kid got her first full time babysitting job at 16 and then spent a year as an au pair. She was sought out because she drove, and took the kids all kinds of places. That gave me pause, as I wouldn't have trusted my kids to a new teenage driver. She was a good driver, but the parents didn't know that!

I never hired a sitter, since we didn't go anywhere without the kids. With two grandmas nearby, we got more downtime than we needed.
posted by Miss Cellania at 7:01 AM on March 20 [1 favorite]

I started babysitting young -- I couldn't have been more than 11 years old when I started babysitting my parents' friends 3- and 6- year olds. Looking back on that now, I'm appalled -- I was a late-blooming, sheltered, naive kid who was definitely not mature enough for that responsibility. The kids were generally good, but it would be for hours, sometimes well into evening, and I was in no way equipped to handle emergencies. Then, once I was 13-17 or so, I babysat for the families of various people in our church, and then for their friends' kids, even though I absolutely hated it -- the problem was, people would ask my mom if I would sit for them, and my mom would say yes without asking me. So I never really had a choice. I ended up in one situation where the husband of the family began behaving extremely creepily toward me, and I consider it somewhat of a miracle that I wasn't assaulted on one of the late evenings he would drive me home from babysitting very late at night, in the back woods of Vermont, down rural roads with no one else around. My mom did let me stop babysitting for THAT family, but it felt like it was more because they always stayed out much, much later than they'd said they were going to, and thus my schoolwork was suffering because I was sleep-deprived, and less because I told her about the guy putting his hand on my knee and grilling me about boys I liked, etc. Which... yeah.

I was finally able to stop babysitting when I got an actual part-time job, and never did it again. I never missed it.
posted by maryellenreads at 8:09 AM on March 20 [3 favorites]

babysitters got minimum wage?! Someone would legit pay a teen $115 to babysit all night?

No, what I’m saying is that the cultural norm used to be to pay under minimum wage, but now the social requirement is to pay minimum wage and not to use preteens.

But also I’ve noticed what I can only call a prolonging of childhood and adolescence. When my kid was 11 she could cook, but other parents - at least the whiter and wealthier ones - considered me as a monster for letting her do so on the stove. And if you can’t cook, that makes babysitting harder as well. Same with transportation. When I was 13-14 I rode public transportation all around NYC. Now I feel like that’s unusual at least in the PNW.
posted by corb at 8:24 AM on March 20 [3 favorites]

Of course, young girls as babysitters were vulnerable to all sorts of abuse, not the least of which was during that trip home with the father,

My sister had a creepy experience with a dad taking her home after a babysitting gig.

I didn't have that experience luckily but my own babysitting was something I thought I'd mention cause I don't see it here - I was horribly anxious about it! My mom thought it was great experience and money but I NEVER would have wanted to do it at the ages I did, she always signed me up for it. I hated the responsibility, and fretted over the rules and the kids. Culminating in one bratty kid who bossed me into taking her for a walk and then when I suggested a route, ran away from me, in a neighborhood I wasn't familiar with. I finally caught up with her and we got back to her house. But I was so upset at this incident and my lack of authority and ability to control this situation that I was in tears when the parents got home. I explained to my mom later as well but the parents all didn't seem to get why this was so upsetting or something I couldn't handle. Maybe they couldn't imagine how my anxious brain was imagining this child lost forever and its my fault kind of terror, but I was DONE with sitting after that. No amount of cash, microwaved chicken pot pie, and free soda was gonna get me there again.
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:21 AM on March 20 [5 favorites]

We've mixed up morality with parenting to the point the whole thing is a no go.

I thought there would be a village. We are all islands.
posted by bindr at 9:22 AM on March 20 [8 favorites]

babysitters got minimum wage?! Someone would legit pay a teen $115 to babysit all night?

Back when I was babysitting, I maxed out at about $2/hr (which was always a bit variable, sometimes people would round up and sometimes round down). At the time, I believe minimum wage was just over $3/hr, so I was earning a bit less than 2/3 of minimum wage (but in cash, with no reporting or taxes).

I don't know rates around here but what I've been told by friends with kids, and also mentioned in comments above, is that babysitters now typically get over minimum wage (and are older and much more qualified than I was). So the economics are definitely different now for parents.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:32 AM on March 20 [2 favorites]

I never got the creepy dad when I was babysitting - possibly because all the dads knew each other in my small town and you didn't creep on your friend's daughters, possibly I was just lucky.

Driven home by a drunk dad happened more than once but home was never more than 3 blocks away so that was less of a problem then it might be in most places.

Did have one stoned dad threaten me with a gun, though, so even in a small town where everyone knew each other there were risks.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:38 AM on March 20 [2 favorites]

Early Boomer, here.

Boomer parents liked to go out a lot! Dinner parties; cocktail parties! When I was about 10 the folks gave up the babysitter who who would just tell my sister & me to go stay upstairs & watch horror movies all night & then she would immediately call her greaser boyfriend to come over for some covert liquor-cabinet-fueled-couch action. (Greatest babysitter ever. Thanks to her, I really got into Hitchcock.)

When I started babysitting myself, I had a regular gig with people I liked, & we lived in a rural area from which I could walk home in the dark, it was so close. This family also had me look after their mama Labrador when she had (12!) puppies!

Watched a lot of "Odd Couple", "Mary Tyler Moore" and "Love American Style" during these gigs. It was a way to spend a Saturday night if you were of a certain in-between age. It wasn't bad at all. I liked being alone (kids went to sleep early) & imaging my OWN place someday.

(Sorry that "kids these days" don't get to have this experience and the $2.00 per hour.)
posted by Wylie Kyoto at 11:47 AM on March 20 [3 favorites]

In addition to a little teen babysitting, I babysat for one of my professors when I was an undergrad. They paid me $10 an hour at first and went uo to around $15 per hour by the end. This was in the late 90s. I was always kindnof awed thatbthey could affordbto do that without a thought. One time I even babysat WHILE THEY WERE HOME! they were having a dinner party and just wanted the toddler enterrained. After he went to sleep they invited me to join them for dessert and wine. I felt welcome but also very out of place.

My parents never left me with babysitters. Honestly I always found the idea kind of perplexing...where would theh go thatbthey wouldn't take me? They didn't really go anywhere I didn't go.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 12:13 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]

I've known an upper middle class mother who hired a babysitter during the 2000s, not sure exact rates, but her babysitter was also her weed dealer, so the scale works better finacially: You're buying more weed if you only buy when the babysitter comes. The babysitter has their transport & planning expenses covered by two trips. I've no idea if weed legalizataion killed this optimization.
posted by jeffburdges at 12:42 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]

Whoa, shouting in from Sydney, my daughter at 15 certified in first aid for a competitive edge in baby sitting. Depending on the person her price ranged from zero to $15. She got no takers unless I arranged it. But yeah, I really don't see babysitting around here.
posted by jadepearl at 10:27 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]

I never babysat but I was an only child and had 0 experience with little kids. As a child of the right age, I was babySAT, though, and sometimes by my father's secretary! Not for general party stuff, but for business outings where he was entertaining on the company dime, which happened a lot (he had a sales job). This would have been in the late 60s and early 70s when that kind of out-of-work-hours personal work for a boss was just part of a secretary's job occasionally. That's another piece of babysitting nostalgia that nobody would let fly now.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 10:37 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]

I babysat all the time between the ages of 11 and about 15. In retrospect, it is wild that anyone left extremely small children in my care. I was a good kid, I enjoyed hanging out with small children, and I really wanted to be responsible and do a good job, but I have ADHD, and I don't think that I would trust 11-year-old me to take care of a toddler. I also was, in retrospect, ridiculously underpaid, although I was delighted with the money. Having said that, I loved babysitting. I loved getting a glimpse of other families' lives. My family didn't have cable TV or good snacks, so I had a blast once the kids went to bed and I could watch MTV and eat junk food. I had some weird experiences, but I don't remember ever getting hit on by a creepy dad or anything like that.

I never had any trouble getting babysitting gigs. I think that once I established myself as a responsible babysitter, word got out through parent networks, and I had more offers of work than I could handle. I also had a summer nannying (we called it "mother's helper", which probably justified the ridiculously low pay) gig the summer I was 14, which I got because there was a block party in my neighborhood, and the parents saw me playing with some little kids and asked if I would like to come look after their three-year-old three days a week. Which again, is wild, because I don't think they had time to check references or make sure I wasn't a heroin addict before making the offer. (And I was a punk kid with wildly dyed hair, and they turned out to be reasonably prominent Republicans. They must have been really desperate.)

So yeah, I have fond memories of babysitting, but I understand why it's not really a thing anymore.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:47 AM on March 21 [1 favorite]

In 1994 the Washington state minimum wage was $4.90. If you paid a babysitter $5 then you were paying minimum wage, if you went out for 4 hours you paid $20 total. Adjusted for inflation that’s $42 today.

Today the Washington state minimum wage is $16.28. Four hours costs you $65.12. Cost went up about 50%. I found some numbers of total costs of dates and they were similar, about 50% higher in inflation adjusted terms.
posted by bq at 8:15 AM on March 21 [1 favorite]

Isn’t this just a subset of the “the childcare economy is broken” conversation? Childcare workers don’t make a living wage because middle-class families can’t even swing a low wage? Childcare in
previous generations was low paid or unpaid labor performed by mothers, underpaid workers, female teenagers, and grandmothers. Now it’s professionalized, as it should be, and no one can afford it.
posted by Ollie at 11:03 AM on March 21 [6 favorites]

I babysat EXTENSIVELY from the ages of 12-25; this was in the 90s and early 2000s. Sometimes I'd sit 4 or 5 nights a week. By the time I stopped, I think my rate was $12/hour.

I had well-meaning but hands-off parents who provided very few rules and boundaries, and I was an anxious kid who REALLY needed those. So in retrospect, I think it was soothing to be in house where I had rules to follow and enforce, and I was providing the kids the structure, routine, and attention that I didn't get at home. I was also naturally good with kids, and a huge people pleaser -- after the kids went to bed, I would do all the dishes and clean up all the toys, which parents LOVED.

Baby-sitting was a super positive experience for me, but I can understand why it's less common and more fraught nowadays. I have a 5 year old nephew, and the few times his parents have tried to find teenaged babysitters, they are totally underprepared for and overwhelmed by childcare. (Like, no idea how to change a diaper, how to calm a crying child, etc.) He is mostly babysat by his aunties and the occasional paid sitter, who is typically enrolled in a child development major at one of the mom's alma mater.
posted by leftover_scrabble_rack at 2:37 PM on March 21 [2 favorites]