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Most of us, during our adolescent years, put in some hours baby-sitting—diapering and feeding little screamers for meager pay just short of minimum wage, and maybe the chance to watch something illicit on Cinemax. How times have changed. We don’t have any stats to prove it, but if message-board postings are any indication, New York currently suffers from a serious teen sitter shortage. From Flushing to Fort Greene to the Flatiron District, parents often find themselves on Saturday nights with nary an eager 14-year-old in sight. And in this seller’s market, the ones you do find don’t come cheap. What’s up with that? Does working at the Gap pay that well?
Nancy Rosenthal, staff nurse at Park Slope’s Berkeley Carroll School and instructor of an intensive 16-hour Safe Sitters course for teenagers, says teens haven’t lost interest in sitting, necessarily—but the culture of what’s expected of a sitter has dramatically changed in the past few decades. “When I was baby-sitting, we didn’t have childproofing and baby monitors. And we weren’t certified; we just did what our mothers did,” she says. “Everything is much more child-centered now, and more importance is placed on safety.” As a result, Rosenthal’s young students are trained in CPR, first aid and injury prevention. And—ahem—making baby-watching profitable. “We cover things like how to conduct yourself professionally, how to market yourself and how much to charge, which for most high-schoolers is about $10 an hour,” Rosenthal explains.
But even parents willing to shell out $10 an hour (and that number can climb much higher) have learned it’s tough to find an available teen. And apparently, you can blame the admissions staff at the Ivies for that. “The older we get, the more concerned we are with building up our résumés [for college],” says Rosenthal’s 15-year-old daughter, Chandler, who says she’s had to beg off baby-sitting jobs in favor of extracurriculars. Instead of sophomores, Chandler says, parents should consider hiring seventh- and eighth-graders (a.k.a. “rising baby-sitters”), since they’re not yet inundated with SATs or Advanced Placement Physics.
If you do find a teen who can free up a few hours to watch your little ones, though, $10 per hour may be the best rate on the market. Most twentysomething sitters will demand carfare home, which can run you a pretty penny, and hiring an emergency baby-sitting service like Pinch Sitters can cost $16 or more per hour. “Yes, teenagers can be a little screwy, and sometimes they put the diapers on backwards,” observes Park Slope dad Greg Koehlert. “But they’re definitely responsible enough to handle a crisis.” And there’s a potential added benefit to hiring them, says Koehlert. “If you’re lucky, their dad will come to pick them up when the night’s over.”
For more information on finding a responsible teen sitter in NYC, visit safesitter.org or sittercity.com.
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