Nannies Not Quite Gone Wild
Helaine Olen writes about her nanny's blog in The New York Times:
OUR former nanny, a 26-year-old former teacher with excellent references, liked to touch her breasts while reading The New Yorker and often woke her lovers in the night by biting them. She took sleeping pills, joked about offbeat erotic fantasies involving Tucker Carlson and determined she'd had more female sexual partners than her boyfriend.How do I know these things? I read her blog.
She hadn't been with us long when we found out about her online diary. All she'd revealed previously about her private life were the bare-bones details of the occasional date or argument with her landlord and her hopes of attending graduate school in the fall.
Yet within two months of my starting to read her entries our entire relationship unraveled. Not only were there things I didn't want to know about the person who was watching my children, it turned out her online revelations brought feelings of mine to the surface I'd just as soon not have to face as well.
I hadn't exactly been a stranger to the sexual shenanigans of our previous baby sitters. One got pregnant accidentally by her longtime boyfriend and asked me for advice. Another was involved in a mostly off-again relationship with a fidelity-challenged college football player. Yet those were problems I could feel superior to and that made me grateful for the steady routine of marriage and children.
Her nanny blogs about Ms. Olen's New York Times piece:
If you have come to this little blog today looking for prurient details of a "nanny gone wild" and another "nanny diary" detailing the sordid life of a family she works for, I am very sorry to disappoint you. Contrary to an essay published in the Style section of the NYTIMES, I am not a pill popping alcoholic who has promiscuous sex and cares nothing for the children for whom she works with. Nope. If you look carefully through my archives, instead you will find a young woman in her mid-twenties who decided to work as a nanny for a year while she prepared to enter the next phase of her professional life; namely the life of an academic pursuing a PhD in English Literature specifically focusing on the Late Victorian novel. But for those of you who dont want to comb through the archives, I will offer a refutation of the salacious, malicious, and really quite silly essay written by Ms. Olen.Ms. Olen opens her essay with eye catching details designed to paint the picture of a prurient pill popper. She notes I mention biting my lovers, having sexual thoughts about Tucker Carlson, and taking sleeping pills. So, lets revisit those entries and see if they are really so titillating.
Inexcusable Crush Post
Yes, I mention that I want to do "dirty dirty" things to Tucker Carlson. I dont offer details. So, I am assuming that Ms. Olen's imagination ran away with her and she decided that it was very sordid. But on a closer reading of this post you will find I use Tucker Carlson, a noted conservative pundidt, as an example of how opposites attract. How intellectual tensions between two people can actually fuel romantic desire. And then I do something really really deviant. I compare my crush on him to the romantic tensions in Jane Austen's famous Pride and Prejudice. Yep, my version of the erotic has more to do with long walks and serious conversations. Of course, Ms. Olen does not point that out in her essay. My interest in literature and how I weave it through more common daily reflections would probably detract from her intent to show me as an irresponsible party girl. But there it is, on the blog she so strenuously objects to.
As for the sleeping pills. Yep, I take them. But before any addicts come banging down my door looking for prescription Ambien or the like, again, I am sorry to disappoint you. I do take over the counter, Target brand sleep aids. I have a sleeping disorder which causes me to wake up repeatedly through the night due to fluxes in my body temperature. I basically deal with this by making sure I actually go to bed early so I will get enough sleep. I havent had a cup of coffee in years, crack a window in the heart of winter, and blare an air conditioner in the summer. But sometimes, I take sleep aids as well, in case I need to ensure rest. Also, funny fact about me that I have blogged about, I cant even swallow pills. Yep, I have to crush them and put them in apple sauce or pudding. So, imagine me, in my sweats, before bed, crushing sleep aids and putting them in pudding. Its a lot less glamorous, isnt it?
Let's pretend this is a popularity contest. Who wins in your book? It seems Ms. Olen has learned an important lesson -- live by the blog, die by the blog. (Die of embarrassment, in her case -- or so one hopes -- and it wasn't even her blog.)
I'd have fired that nanny immediately. Her defense just makes her seem even that much more immature and filled with bad judgment. Not who you want taking care of kids.
Cathy Seipp at July 19, 2005 10:54 AM
Cathy, how wonderful to read your comment. I've been reading this story on many blogs and almost everyone is defending the nanny. I read "Tessa's" blog and it only solidified my sympathetic response to Ms. Olen's predicament.
Claire at July 19, 2005 11:16 AM
Yeah, but you've got to admit the nanny has a great prose style.
modestproposal at July 19, 2005 12:07 PM
Is the 2nd link broken? To the nannies blog?
So far it sounds like the mother/employer wanted it both ways, professional and familial. The nanny was decidely unprofessional when she wrote about her employers, though it appears she did not name actual names. (Sounds like someone else in the news.)
Classic case of familiarity breeds contempt.
eric at July 19, 2005 12:21 PM
If anyone else is having problems getting to the nanny's response, here is the address...
http://subvic.blogspot.com/2005/07/sorry-to-disappoint-you.html
eric at July 19, 2005 12:40 PM
It does illustrate that you'd better be prepared to live with your various postings in perpetuity if you keep a personal blog. Some employers are already screening potential applicants to find out if they've kept web diaries in the past. Wonder what Amy thinks about the ethics of that development.
Dmac at July 19, 2005 2:36 PM
Did I read right that this nanny was only doing this for a year? As a mother, I'm not sure I'd hire a nanny who had decided to do this just for a year. But that's just me. It's a personal decision, but I'm not sure she should be lashing out at someone who obviously had a life before nannyhood and will likely have one during and after. It's not as if being a nanny was a career choice...it obviously wasn't.
Aside from that, I also know that when people want to, they can read into other people's blogs just "looking" for excuses to be pissed at the blogger. I've had it happen before. Someone came there insisting that I was writing about her several times when in fact I had never written about her there at all. So, I think it is entirely possible that Ms. Olen might have read into it more than was actually there.
In addition, it seems like Ms. Olen refers to this woman as if she were a mass murderer. The nanny is young and has had events happen which most of us go through and has made decisions which were difficult to make and shared all of them openly on her blog. Though, because she chose not to share them directly with Ms. Olen, like some of the others, she is the "bad" one. It appears as though Ms. Olen felt thwarted in some way, as if she's punishing this woman for keeping her private things private.
Linda at July 19, 2005 2:42 PM
If I need to get "employed" -- and by somebody who cares about something like that, I have more problems than just being a blogger. I stand behind everything I say here, and in my column.
Amy Alkon at July 19, 2005 4:01 PM
I thought this was a very unfair move on Olen's part. There was no link to the nanny's blog on her site; simply her word that did make the nanny seem like a pill-popping slut (not that I have a problem with pill-popping sluts!)
Amy Alkon at July 19, 2005 4:02 PM
> (Sounds like someone else in the news.)
Mr Wilson, the NYT editorialist, we presume?
Cridland at July 19, 2005 4:28 PM
I'm with Olen. A blog is not a private diary, it's on the INTERNET fer chrissakes. I didn;t follow the links Amy provided, but the nanny's defense seems to go along the lines of "Everybody poops, and mine's not any stinkier than most people's."
Which makes you wonder why she blogged about it anyway. The world wide web is almost by definition the most traceable realm of data in human invention. What is the nanny trying to prove here?
> I stand behind everything I say here, and
> in my column.
Yes, and there's a vast ocean of personal data that you DON'T try to share with us. Which is good! It's why we keep coming back! There are details about every human life that we just don't need to know.
Cridland at July 19, 2005 4:30 PM
It would be interesting to hear from a legal expert on this termination...
eric at July 19, 2005 5:52 PM
"Dooced": to lose one’s job because of one’s website.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dooce
Claire at July 19, 2005 6:28 PM
Like Jude Law, I'm for the nanny all the way!
Jeff R at July 19, 2005 9:39 PM
Why did the nanny feel a need to defend herself in the first place? Is there anything wrong with taking sleeping pills or fantasizing about Tucker Carlson? Stupidity on both sides.
Cosmo at July 20, 2005 12:50 AM
I'm not a member of the nanny-owning classes, and never have been, but I do have child-raising credentials so perhaps I can comment briefly. Nothing in the nanny's blogrevelations would disqualify her from taking charge of my brats.
Stu "El Inglés" Harris at July 20, 2005 6:46 AM
From the nytimes piece:
"
Yet I did not confront her. In part I felt empathy and sadness for this younger version of myself. But I also feared she would judge my life and find it wanting.
"
A subtext I see as Olen writes the column is that she is identifying with the nanny as herself at a younger age, and is watching as this younger self stands in judgement of her current self. I wonder if this is a reason why Olen wanted to fire the nanny, as a proxy for her own self-judgement.
On the other hand. I'm sure everyone wants to have their kids watched by beatific eunichs. Seeing clearly that isn't the case has to also be unnerving.
Sometimes it is better not to know. For instance, I like bratwurst. But, I certainly don't want to see how they make the sausage. Or, how many times my nanny has sex (if I had a nanny, or kids for that matter).
Chris at July 20, 2005 11:54 AM
Evenyone who is all up in arms about this please read! I used to live with this blogger. Yes, the boss is a bitch, but the nanny is a psycho. A psycho that killed her cat and who has major major problems. Yes, killed her cat. This girl has problems. I moved out very early on the request of my friends and family who were afraid for my safety. This girl did not give her boss her blog address out of stupidity or just so she could read a little poem about kids. She wanted to be caught. She loves that becuase it makes her feel important. Most of the things on her blog are false except for watching Gilmore Girls. She has supposed relationships with men, who in reality she was stalking and it got very bad and they have cut off all contact with her. This girl is well educated and may sound intelligent, and she is, but she is also very very deeply troubled. Perhaps the bitch boss picked up on this but is too full of her own craziness to see the situations for what it is. This is not about sex or liberalism or classism. It is about a sad sick dillutional girl and her bitchy boss. I'm sad it has gone this far.
aw;eo at July 22, 2005 6:07 AM
So, I understand why the Nanny was fired -- first of all, how stupid do you have to be to TELL your boss about your BLOG? Completely deserved...
...however I would clearly HATE the woman she worked for. Reading that Times article made my skin crawl.
ps Amy - hope you're having fun in Paris! We've been incommunicado -- glad to know you're overseas! ;)
Michelle at July 22, 2005 7:10 PM
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