Is a sexy au pair a fate worse than death?

It’s so predictable. Mention you’re interviewing au pairs and the first thing people say is “Get an ugly one”.

Well, they don’t say it actually. They snigger it. Blame it on the age-old reputation of men – although undoubtedly Jude Law and Ethan Hawke haven’t helped matters with their high-profile getting-it-on with their nannies. Get an attractive 20something around a man and, so the thinking goes, he’s unable to contain himself.

Frankly, this is the least of my worries. I need a young woman (or man) who’s responsible enough to look after my daughter, engaged enough to make her after school hours fun, cool headed enough to deal with any emergencies that come up, yet with modest enough expectations that we can actually afford him or her. And I need to be able to live with them in my house. If Scarlett Johansson fit the criteria, I’d hire her.

I figure if my husband’s susceptible to an affair, he’s more likely to a tasty tidbit among the intelligent and attractive women he works with in the City. Besides, as anyone who’s married knows, familiarity breeds contempt. And if you’re paying someone to live with you yet they still leave pans with caked-on baked beans in the sink, it’s hardly conducive to romance. That’s one thing I know from experience.

Picture: Scarlett Johansson in the Nanny Diaries

Comments

[LUCY]

hola! espero que alguien entienda mi comentario. En realidad se usar el ingles pero tengo ganas de hacer este comentario en mi idioma.
Estuve pensando en inscribirme en una agencia de au pair pero la verdad que ustedes hablan un poco mal de ellas y eso esta haciendo que revea las cosas.
De todas formas gracias por sus datos!
Adios!!

[Namy]

Course of a discussion is one thing. Course of 3 sentences, uttered by me seems a little flighty! :-) Not really.
Can you tell it's too sunny to be concentrating too hard on complicated documents? Will be disappearing now to get three useful things done before attempting to leave work sneekily early.

[mmmm]

"Okay, yes, I see how I've started this post on one side of the argument and ended on another. I do this a lot."

NAMY - there's nothing wrong with that! It should happen to people often - if I never changed my mind during the course of a discussion I'd consider I was wasting my time here.

[Namy]

Are there really that many (married) men who are that lechy that this is an issue? I find that so depressing. I always hope that books and movies depicting this stuff are interesting because they're unusual. Although admittedly, I did have a man 20 years older than me offer to take me away once which was just icky. What was he thinking?! And he was married.

Okay, yes, I see how I've started this post on one side of the argument and ended on another. I do this a lot.

[j]

Jarrad, agree on both points- but I still worry about the effect on the girl herself.

I dont know any man who would do that but I am always tripping over (not literally, thankfully) men sleeping with their secretarial staff. The effect on them is never good.

But the men who are my friends are normal humans and dont behave that way. I still think the assumption that male au pairs are bound to be weird is fundamentally wrong, too. Albert did nothing to persuade me there.

[Jarrad]

If your husband is the sort to sleep with someone hired to look after his own children, in your own house, then there are deeper problems here. you'd be better off knowing and getting rid.

Not all men are sex-crazed imbeciles just as not all are the crude, oafish cretins certain posts here may imply.

[Ad-Mum]

I love the assumption here that the au-pair will WANT to sleep with your husband!

I have friends who have been au pairs and nannies who have been hit on by the Dads and they were all HORRIFIED that some old crusty (late 30's Dad) would do such a thing.

If my husband made a move on my (gorgeous 27 year old) nanny she'd give him very short shrift indeed - and then, I would imagine, grass him up to me. Not that he would, of course...

[Rishabh]

Well, there is one thing a man can do to preserve his marriage and still feel sexually satiated at the same time : masturbation.
Yup, it works.

[M]

Oops! Sorry grouchy old bat still feminist after all these years, I was having a little mouse trouble!!! Cutting and pasting out of commission!

[grouchy old bat still feminist after all these years]

Thank you M - I think I might have to rethink a pseudonym - GOBSFATY!
Priceless! ;D

[M]

GOBSFATY, you have summed this up so eloquently! £60-75 a week ad get your shirts ironed the wife's housework done and get laid, quite a deal.
Thanks for marching for us all! Anyone qualifies though, to post here :)

[grouchy old bat still feminist after all these years]

DJ and J - a man who has an affair with his au pair might be putting his marriage, his relationship with his children, even his extended family in danger. He might also be putting in danger, in a foreign country, a vulnerable young woman, likely inexperienced with predatory older men. (At 18 or 19, the usual sort of age for an au pair girl, they can look like experienced young women, but looks can be deceptive - and anyway this isn't an excuse - there is never an excuse for coercion.)
In this situation, the au pair girl will lose out in more ways than one. Should the wife/mother find out, she will be shown the door, no messing, no reference.
With an au pair, the man of the house is in a position of power, even if his wife "employed" the girl in the first place. He can say she led him on, or she wandered around in shorty nighties - we all know the sort of thing that could be said - the au pair girl can easily be made to look bad, she might have felt pressured into something she didn't want, and the loss of her situation - either way she's on a hiding to nothing.

On the other hand, a man who chooses to have an affair in the workplace (assuming the swine doesn't use his position of authority to harrass more junior women :)) risks the effects of his affair on his promotion possibilities, on being "overtaken" possibly by his lover. (Hah! Perish the thort!)
Nah, in the workplace, the stakes are way too high. In the home the au pair girl is fair game for a "safe-until-you-get-caught" affair. You can always get another . . .
And in the home, he will always think he has a possibility of sweet-talking his way out of it.
Whichever way you approach this, the au pair girl is a loser - a lot because of the loser who seduces her.
Indeed, everyone could lose out, but does the sort of man who would betray this kind of trust think that far ahead? I think probably not.

BTW I stroll over to this blog to read through from time to time - I don't qualify for it, but I like it - I know I was right to march all those years ago.

[j]

DJ, spot on.

[DJ]

Uhm, living with a person can actually be a big aphrodisiac, regardless of any baked beans in the sink. It depends on the personality of the people and the situation they are in while doing so. But being under the same roof really can create closeness of one kind or another- whether that be sibling-like or lover-like.
So, I would say that if your husband is going to cheat with anyone, why not the hot young woman right under his nose who is becoming more and more familiar to him while still being naughtily out of reach and sexily risky? It's silly to think he'd choose his coworkers and "equals" for an affair because if it's with someone he has to actually respect then there is a much, much greater chance of the situation becoming quickly disastrous for his marriage. An underling who is disconnected from his professional peers, attractive, nurturing towards children, and probably not expecting any kind of long term commitment is a much better choice for a man who is going to cheat than an equal who may at some point use the affair to ruin him.

[Albert]

While I'm stumbling round in the LPR groping for the exit (Oops, sorry), there are just one or two things...

Gipsy, thanx for appreciating my superdry humour. I take the point abt blogs.
BTW, pls go easy on EXAUPAIR, English is not her native language, and she makes a valid point.

J, I think for a male au pair the problem would be the (self) selection process and motivation. If the boy were on German national service, pas de problème. His motivations would be (probably) above reproach. Maybe you should suggest an EU au pair option to the Bundeswehr, or whomever is i/c.

BTW, Is that an invitation? You can't be serious...
I will be in the UK in September.

Right, found the exit. I'm outa here!

[J]

I think Albert is saying that most young men dont want to look after children. I am sure thats true, but young people need to learn English somehow. I dont see any reason why the boys who think childcare is more fun than macdonalds or whatever are necessary dim, sexual predators or unbalanced.

I worked in a Steiner home in Germany where half of us were male and half female, all on National service in the case of the germans. The boys seemed perfectly normal to me.

Maybe Albert needs to get out a bit more.

[Gipsy]

Did they not teach spelling on your MA course then exaupair? :)

Albert - Ladies powder room *snort*. I like it. Incidently, this is a blog, not a newspaper article. There's plenty of those on the Times site too :)

[exaupair]

Why you 'alpha mummy' think that au pair can't be as intelligent and sexy as City co-workers of you hubby?They are very often students ar graduates with MA degrees so assuning they not as good affair material as colleagues at work is a huge mistake.Take my advice - hire an ugly one.

[Albert]

Sorry J,

Not all men are potential au pairs, but we can imagine what kind of motivations might make a male au pair. I wouldn't employ one.

If you take your PC spectacles off, you'll see more of what is, rather than what you would like to imagine things should be like.

My apologies for stumbling into the ladies' powder room. I came in through a link to the Times, which I thought was a newspaper.

[j]

So, Albert, which would you go after? the man or the little girl?

or are au pairs different from you?

[Albert]

You imagine your husband wants an intelligent sex partner, and you "need a young woman (or man)" to look after your daughter.

Oh dear. You've got PC disease bad.

So you think you want a male au pair for your little girl.

You should worry about 2 possibilities:

1. He's queer and he'll go after your husband.

2. He's not and he'll go after your daughter.

Don't worry about yourself. Odds are you'll be quite safe. Unless of course.....

PS. It's not pots & pans that kill libido, its marriage.

[Lazy Mummy]

Btw, I actually was an au pair, aeons ago for a bizarre family. No details because everyone would be instantly recognisable; suffice it to say that at 4-6 months' tenure, I was their longest-lived au pair in several years.

It wasn't the way they treated me in terms of hours - I had to look after children before/after school but the rest of the time was my own - it was their snobbery, in particular the grandmother's. I think I lasted longer than the previous incumbents by virtue of my background: I did it when in my early 20s, after Uni & travelling, while waiting for a "proper job". That & the fact that they couldn't actually find fault with my middle class background (education, parental jobs, etc). Apparently they were horrid to all their au pairs but I was the first one to not collapse under the weight of it all. I heard from others that they'd made a previous girl (19, English, never been abroad before) cry with their horrid questions & insults about her working-class background.

I actually really enjoyed the job & it did wonders for my rusty French (I'd been living in Asia) but it was not easy living with them.

I've had nannies so far but could see having an au pair in the future; not with a small child though (for me); with an older one in the 6-10 range.

[Lazy Mummy]

Virginia,

Please stick around and join in some other conversations; I hope you'll realise that we're not all spoiled rich trophy wives/mothers because that's the implication of your comments.

Most of us - pretty much all of us who comment on AM are working very hard - either in a job, or in the home full-time, or a combination of both. We're probably all working as hard as you, albeit with different emphases or requirements (eg: I don't have to worry about teenagers but life as a FTWM with a preschooler is exhausting).

[Diana Groves]

I have had a few au pairs over the years good and not so good. Odd and ecentric. Pretty and well not that pretty. I think finding a really good agency really helps not one that is going to palm you off with someone who is not suitable for your circumstances.
And that has happened to me. It left me feeling really bad at the time. A failure because I could not make our family situation work. (her english was zero and my 9 and 10 year old were nannying her not the other way round. Now looking at it backwards I did the right thing.
As for my husband having an affair with the au pair - well I would definitely kick him out if he stooped to such depths -and of course if I caught him. Surely if you are going to have an affair at least keep it away from your home!

[J]

Jay, thank you, that was interesting.