When my daughter was about two months old, I was pushing her around in the stroller and an anonymous nanny stopped me on the street and said, “I can take care of her better than you.”
I have to admit, over a year later, I’m still not quite sure how I feel about this.
Would anyone ever dare say this to a woman, to a mother, to a momma bear?
I think not.
But it wasn’t said to a woman. Or to a mother. Or even a momma bear. It was said to me.
So, what did the anonymous nanny mean? Was she a savant of childrearing unparalleled by the likes of mere mortal parents like myself? Was she intimating that, as a woman, she was more of a natural care-giver (an intimation that would surely spark debate)? Or did the anonymous nanny mean that, as a man, I must be utterly inept around children and therefore, I, the aforementioned bungling father, surely must be in over my head, surely must be an incompetent child rearer, and surely must be in need of some professional full-time assistance?
And was this her typical salesperson technique? Excuse me sir or madam—you look like you probably suck at this, so you should consider hiring me, because I could not possibly be worse at this than you.
But what do I know? Maybe this works. Maybe this was how the anonymous nanny landed her gig rearing the kid in that stroller she was pushing when she’d called out to me that she essentially couldn’t do worse than I was doing.
So the real question I must ask myself is: Should I be offended?
Well, for one, this all happened almost a year ago, so, on that count, probably not.
But what about all the other counts inherent within her query? Well…probably, possibly, maybe, but, quite honestly, I don’t have all that much time to analyze it at the moment, due to the fact that the charge for whom I am responsible for is currently letting me know that she is done with her afternoon nap, which doesn’t leave me all that much time to ponder what an anonymous nanny had to say a goddamn year ago about this topic or, frankly, any other.
Every Wednesday, Jason brings us stories from the frontline of Manhattan childrearing. Hungry for more parenting adventures? Check out Jason’s blog The Recent Paterfamilias. Have a question or a topic you’d like to ask a New York stay-at-home dad? Email it to emily@askanewyorker.com.
