New book shines light on relationships between mothers, nannies

The most popular portrayals of the relationship between mothers and nannies are often extremes — think “The Nanny Diaries” or “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle.”

In her new book, “Shadow Mothers: Nannies, Au Pairs, and the Micropolitics of Mothering,” Cameron Macdonald shows the reality is much more complex and what makes these relationships difficult is how tough American cultural norms are on working mothers.

Macdonald, an assistant professor of sociology, says it is “literally impossible” for mothers to work outside of the home and meet contemporary ideals of good mothering. At the core of it is the idea that kids’ outcomes are entirely contingent on their mothers’ parenting, “especially during that critical birth-to- three period, after which, if you believe the advice books, screw up and your child’s an ax murderer,” she says.

And it’s those beliefs about the role of mothers, along with the serious economic pressures facing most families, that result in controversies such as that ignited by Amy Chua’s recent memoir, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.”

“You can’t say ‘motherhood’ these days in this country without starting a riot,” she says.

Q: What factors contribute to this controversy?
A: The “tiger mom” or “helicopter mom” is really a feature of our times, in terms of tremendous economic insecurity that has reached all the way up to everyone except for the top 1 percent of earners, demanding jobs with long hours, and the fact that we still expect mothers to be responsible for everything in a child’s life, including the outcome of that child’s adulthood, regardless of who is responsible for their day-to-day care. So you take all of these external factors together, you get people who are very reactive to every bit of advice that comes down the pike, whether it’s coddle your children or scream at your children or swaddle your children or don’t swaddle your children. It’s not that the women who engage in this are neurotic at all, it’s that they’re responding to very real cultural and economic pressures and that’s the point I wanted to get across in the book.

Q: You’d said we live in a competitive mothering culture — how does that contribute to the difficulties in the relationships between moms and nannies/caregivers?
A: For the mothers that I interviewed — because they worked such demanding jobs — it was even more difficult to deal in any kind of realistic way with these pressures because they were competing with an ideal. At least stay-at-home moms or moms who work part time or moms who have flex-time jobs can go to the playground and see what other people’s kids are like. The mothers I interviewed tended to either be in competition with an idealized version of their own mother, who for a lot of them was an at-home mom, or an idealized version of the contemporary stay-at-home mom who does everything right. … Because the mothers are under so much pressure, they’re trying to use their child care provider as an instrument, an extension of themselves, not as a partner. And that’s really where most of the tensions come in.

Q: How do class and culture play a role?
A: The nanny is likely to have her own class- and culturally based ideas about how mothering should be done and how children should be raised, and so things like arranging play dates for toddlers and having all these structured activities seems just silly to a nanny who’s coming from a working-class background, or a background from another country. … The moms have an idea that the kids need to be not necessarily entertained, but be stimulated and be developing their gifts all the time.

Q: Why do you use the term “shadow mother”?
A: Mothers expect the nanny to be simultaneously present and absent, to form a healthy bond with the children, but not get too attached. Mothers were very concerned that the children not become too attached to the nanny, and nannies reported being fired if a child accidentally called them “Mommy.” … It’s an unrealistic set of expectations that make even the most thoughtful employer begin to seem irrational and unreasonable.

Q: How hard was it to get people to talk openly about this? It’s a research book, but it’s also deeply personal.
A: Certainly the nannies were more eager, because they felt that no one ever listened to them. … I think for the moms it was more difficult, because these were women who were highly successful and this was one area of tremendous vulnerability. But I think too much writing about this has tended to demonize both sets of women. … I went in assuming that these were well-intentioned women on both sides of this relationship who were trying really hard to make a tough situation work, and that they also were under tremendous pressures from outside forces, be they cultural or workplace or the fact that there’s very little support for working families. … Even though there are places in the book where I’m critical, I’m not critical of them as people, but of the situation that they’re in and how that then causes both sets of women to be less engaged with each other, less respectful of each other and to have distorted communication.

Q: What do you hope that people get from the book?
A: I want people to understand that the problems that are present in these relationships stem from these outside forces and that it’s possible to move past them. Not easy, but possible. I don’t think that having more loving adults in a child’s life is a bad thing. … But if we believe it’s a bad thing, and moms feel guilty about it, and nannies or other child care providers feel undervalued, then that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy where kids will feel that they’re being cheated or that the person who’s caring for them is somehow worth less than the mother’s time. And that’s simply not true.