The Nanny: The Perfect Stranger: The Truth about Mothers and Nannies by Lucy Kaylin

The very word nanny conjures up less than reassuring images, what with overdressed tv sitcom nannies, scary horror movie nannies, and take-charge reality show nannies who whip whole dysfunctional families into shape on a weekly basis. Lucy Kaylin, editor of Marie Claire describes them all in her new book The Perfect Stranger: The Truth about Mothers and Nannies. Kaylin recounts her own ambiguity about handing her newborn over to surrogate care:

"I said, 'No stranger can watch my baby....' Then about two weeks later, I was like, okay, we've got to start interviewing people."

Out of her own experience, Kaylin was led to interview working mothers and nanny/babysitters and found much ambivalence on both sides about the process of giving over children to another person's keeping for a significant part of the child's life. Yet she suggests that the mother-nanny relationship is often as important as the nanny-child relationship. Kaylin takes a clear-eyed look through the magnifying glass (and sometimes through the video cam) at the bad and the beautiful of the relationship between mothers and the women who take their place daily in the raising of their children.

Kaylin's book is less a how-to on hiring and keeping good caretakers than it is a respectful but reporterly look at the feelings and assessments of professional nannies and the women they work for. Finding and keeping that "perfect stranger," that Mary Poppins, apparently is not always an easy or comfortable process for either woman, but it is the most important job a working mother may ever have. Kaylin's book is, as one reviewer has said, "a valuable resource to any mother facing the challenge of hiring, well, herself."

A book with similar scope is Jessica Auerbach's And Nanny Makes Three: Mothers and Nannies Tell the Truth About Work, Love, Money, and Each Other, which features interviews with parents and caretakers, anecdotes, and some analysis of the difficulties and potential problems and exploitations between the two in dealing with the push and pull of daily life. Other books include Susan Carleon's The Nanny Book: The Smart Parent's Guide to Hiring, Firing, and Every Sticky Situation In Between, a guidebook to the whole process, from hiring to grocery shopping to handling the flirtatious sitter; and Searching for Mary Poppins: Women Write about the Intense Relationship between Mothers and Nannies a collection of twenty-four women's essays on hiring, working with, and keeping their children's caretakers.