The New Trophy Nanny
You’ve spied them tending children at the playground at the park: elegantly coiffed women wearing clothes that must have run as much as the average mortgage payment, yet too young to be their frolicking charges’ mothers.
A recent New York Times Magazine story cleared up the mystery with a story on elite nannies, who command salaries in the mid-six figures, not counting the Christmas bonus or the rent for a Central Park West apartment.
For that kind of money, Adam Davidson of NPR’s Planet Money reports, the modern Mary Poppins is expected to bring a serious bag of tricks: Proficiency in Mandarin, gourmet cooking, and horse grooming are among the skills likely to bump up the compensation package.
An elite nanny knows how to work a jungle gym, too. “A lot of families, especially new money, are really concerned about their children getting close to other very affluent children,” Cliff Greenhouse, president of the high-end nanny agency Pavilion, tells Davidson. “They find a superstar nanny who already has lots of contacts, lots of other nanny friends who work with other high-profile families.”
In Greenhouse’s stable is a “drop-dead beautiful” nanny whose “presentation is such that you’re proud to have her by your children’s side at the most high-profile events.”
Read “The Best Nanny Money Can Buy.”
