Was Amanda Seyfried Smart to Hire Her Mom as Nanny?
For plenty of parents, heading back to work after maternity leave means getting a nanny to care for the kid. Of course, daily personal childcare is not cheap; not everyone who might like to hire a nanny can afford to. And even if they can, it can be difficult to find the right fit and relinquish all that responsibility to somebody else when you’re not around.
But while many parents — including our favorite celebrities, like Gwyneth Paltrow and Chrisy Teigen — rely on hired, paid help in the nanny department, some folks prefer to find a childcare workaround. Amanda Seyfriend, for example, revealed on an episode of Molner’s Table that instead of searching Care.com and the like for the perfect nanny, she invited her mother to move in and take on that role for her 3-year-old daughter, Nina.
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“My mom lives with us — she’s our nanny,” Seyfried said on the podcast.
Talk about nice work if you can get it. But is hiring a parent to be your nanny really a good idea? Plenty of potential mom-hiring parents have turned to Reddit to crowdsource answers on this particular topic.
A post shared by Amanda Seyfried?? (@mingey) on Jul 15, 2020 at 2:20pm PDT
“The benefits of a nanny are that you’re not risking a working relationship with your family, you’re keeping your family just family,” wrote user turtlehana in favor of outsourcing this particular role. “However the nanny will be like family and an extension of you. A nanny will be younger with possibly more energy and more current on cpr training, parenting methods, she will more recently have provided childcare, etc.”
“I personally wouldn’t do it because it could potentially strain things, like she could get tired of doing it but not want to hurt your feelings, or feel like she can do things her own way since it’s her grandkid even though she’s being paid,” wrote another user, Bluesnowman.
Of course, possibly the best reason for hiring a grandparent as caregiver for your child is that they’re more likely to do it at a discounted rate, or even for free. User LBluth21 wrote, “We have my mom do one day a week so that our nanny only has to work 4 days/40 hours. If your mom’s current job pays less than what you would pay a nanny, it’s definitely worth considering.”
As for Seyfried, the Hollywood elite aren’t exactly strapped for cash, and it sounds like she’s truly made the decision based on her (seemingly fantastic) relationship with her mom.
“My life is awesome because she is the third parent for us,” Seyfried gushed on the podcast. “I am so lucky — I know I am.”
“So when my daughter gets up, she either comes in our room or she goes downstairs,” Seyfried told host John Molner. “And if we’re still sleeping it’s great, ’cause she can hang out with my mom. She wakes up early.”
A few minutes of extra sleep knowing your kid is in good hands? Sounds like a win all around — and exactly the right choice for Seyfried’s family.
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