au pair lyfe!
One alternative childcare option is the Au Pair Program. Thanks to one of our great friends who took the time to write this wonderful article. He requested to remain anonymous, but if you have follow-up questions, comment below or send an email to momgouge@gmail.com and I’ll do my best to get them answered for you!
High Points followed by the longer version below:
High Points:
What: Live in exchange program that gives you 45 hours of flexible childcare/week (limit 10 hrs/day and 45 total/week and 1 weekend guaranteed off/month)
Cost: ~35k/year (20K outright/10-15K intangibles).
Agency/Oversight: US Department of State and overseen by Privatized Agencies
Longer version:
Overall: The program is great. My wife and I (Dual Mil Pilots) are, as of this writing, hosting our 5th Au Pair. It’s been a phenomenal, and flexible, source of childcare that allowed us to both pursue Squadron Command and keep up with a volatile flying schedule. With a live-in care provider, you have a back up option to CDC closures, school shutdowns or even just day-to-day kiddo sickness. Some of the realities of the program are below but the good definitely outweighs the challenges.
Cost-
For a year-
Placement fees: ~10k up front (or 3k with a $500/mo payment plan). This is slightly dependent on Agency and Location (most offer a small military discount).
Stipend: 196/week (unless negotiated higher): ~10k
Intangibles: We leased a third car, got a house with a 5th bedroom/bathroom (so we still had a guest room for family), take care of all her room and board, phone, gas (see below).
Total: Arguably it rounds out to about $30k/year with the indirect costs. The rules of the program mandates she have her own room with access to a bathroom (and you’ll probably want that separation sometimes too).
Call it $30k/year at 45 hours/week (and they get two paid vacation weeks) and your hourly rate comes out to: 13 bucks an hour (8 bucks with just the 20k dedicated to Au Pair fees). But it’s flexible, you have a built-in babysitter for date nights, and the experience is fun. Ours have been from Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Germany, and France this year. And it’s one-on-one care. Military CDCs are based on rank, and the hourly rates range from $3 to $7 an hour, but the ratios can be as high as 1:8-12. So, all things considered, we found this worked for our family.
We also give our Au Pairs access to absolutely everything in our house, cover all groceries, give her a family credit card, cover in-city gas, her cell phone bill and all tickets and meals whenever she joins us for anything. We fully embrace the host family side of the program and make sure they don’t ever have to stress about money if they come with us. We’ve seen other Au Pairs have a tough experience when host families nickel and dime them for absolutely everything.
Our Au Pairs’ stipend covers her incidentals (toiletries for instance) and any gas outside of city limits. We’ve got the rest. This year alone we’ve traveled to 6 different states and 3 trips were via plane. The intangibles add up, but they’re worth it!
The Agencies
We went through Au Pair Care for the first two years (we were in a big city) and Cultural Care for the last two years (we moved to a smaller city—this agency is a LOT bigger). Both are great, and we’ve come to enjoy working with the Local Care Consultant (LCC) from Cultural Care, but the state department dictates services, so they’re about the same in terms of what to expect. They sponsor the visa and handle all the necessary paperwork. They’ll provide training for who you select and take care of the majority of the high-level admin. The program has an area director, (the LCC), for your city, and it is a fantastic resource. We had the luxury of having the best area director in America (literally, she won an award), so we were spoiled when we were in a bigger city. But we bounced a lot off of her and found her to be extremely valuable.
The most significant difference between the two agencies we’ve worked with is that APC had a single point of contact for everything. Cultural Care has different reps depending on what you need help with (money, matching, in-program help, emergencies during travel, etc). Once you figure out the architecture and different phone numbers, it’s all about the same.
The Agency also facilitates matching. Once you sign up on the site, you’ll have access to all the profiles, and you can review profiles for what makes sense for you. We were initially timid, but overcame that quickly and became very direct during the interviews. We had to be honest with what we wanted in the house, too. We realized one candidate was going to be completely reliant on us for all social interaction at night, which sounded very emotionally draining to us. Instead we matched with a candidate who was much more introverted and appreciated alone time in the evening. We hired her, and all appreciate our introvert time in the evening so we can all decompress. Much better dynamic. Just had to be honest with ourselves. More on matching below.
Lastly, by participating in a program, you are supported by an organization in case your match does not work out. They can replace your au pair rapidly, if need be, with someone already in the country. The agencies have processes and personnel to navigate everything related to that occurrence should it happen. For instance, one year, our Au Pair’s Visa was denied 2 weeks before she traveled, and we had to enter the ‘in country rematch’ pool and the agency helped with all of it.
Schedule:
I write our Au Pair’s schedule for about 3-4 months at a time, down to the hour each week. This takes me 1-2 dedicated scheduling hours to write out every month or two. We had a steady school schedule from 2021-2023 (we were in IDE), but since returning to ops, our schedule is volatile with two flying schedules. My goal is to give them a ‘standard’ week and then adjust as needed. Our Au Pair’s standard week is Mon-Fri 0630-0930 and 1400-1900; colloquially referred to as a ‘split schedule.’ Au Pairs can only work a maximum of 10 hours a day and 45 hours a week, and must have one whole weekend off per month. ‘Weekend’ (depending on the agency) is two consecutive days off. Things happen, we have to fly sometimes at all hours of the night, but one of us is normally able to be home. When we come to deployments or big trips, we still have to bring in the grandmas/family. Our Au Pair also cooks for the family twice a week. It’s so great not having to worry about that during the week as much. Also, there are exceptions to everything.
Overall Commentary:
Good: Flexible/Reliable/In-home care. Not subjected to CDC/Daycare schedules, and it’s nice not dragging kiddos outta bed every morning to make a normal work drop off schedule (our Au Pair does all drop off and pickup for school/care). The program director is awesome. We also take our Au Pair with us on vacation and put her on the clock. We’re aware that it's a cultural exchange and try to give her opportunities in the towns we visit (this increases your intangible costs as you book plane tickets throughout the year). Additionally, we use our Au Pair as supplemental care (in addition to Pre-K/School). This is the model we’ve had the most success with (instead of using the Au Pair for sole source of care)…once again, increases costs.
Bad: Just like hiring young employees in any career-field, experience and maturity ranges the full spectrum. I had to run a driving school with our first au pair when she arrived, and had to adjust to the cultural norms of what being ‘on time’ means. We have house rules (some extracted below), and when she breaks them (which has happened a few times with a few au pairs), I get annoyed and have to sit them down to ensure what we expect is clear. Cultural differences are real-e.g., don’t put raw chicken in the fridge unless it’s sealed. Our 2nd Au Pair was a lot better on this front and was a phenomenal addition to our family. There were really no bad sides that year, and she was great. Personality dependent, but if you get someone who needs a little more coaching, realize you may have to be very direct at times. Our Au Pair one year was German, and I was glad we had lived in Germany to understand the cultural subtleties. Germans are very direct, and thankfully, we knew how to communicate within that cultural norm. We also normally hire older Au Pairs (25 y/o or older), but our German was 20 when she arrived, and we had to adjust our expectations of a 20-year-old compared to a more self-assured 26-year-old. Our current Au Pair, from France, is an absolutely phenomenal addition to our family and fits in so well. She loves our kids, has the energy for the two of them and it's wonderful having someone with so much initiative. We’ve gotten to know her the best of all our Au Pairs and can’t wait to visit her in France!
Good definitely outweighs the bad. I recommend joining Facebook Groups (I'm in one called Cultural Care Host Parents). They're a great resource...but realize most posts in there are the absolutely worst stories of entitlement, problems, and just general horror stories. But when it comes to tax questions, random program rules, and general parental camaraderie...they're great. Just put your mental filter on!
House Rules:
Each house has their own feel and it’s easily communicated via these rules. We tried to keep it to 2-3 pages cuz I felt like if we pushed the rules a mile long, they’d run away! I had two other friends send me theirs, and they all seem similar. I also attached our Infant Rules we had in place when one of our kids was a baby. I rewrite/edit these every year.
(Some of our Rules):
House Rules
Curfew
1. We will not have a curfew on weekends but ask that you are in the house 8 hours prior to
beginning work.
Visitors
1. Please do not bring any romantic interests to the house.
General House Guidelines
Exploring
1. For Safety, on non-work nights please keep us informed of your whereabouts. Additionally, if
you don’t plan on returning for the evening please let us know.
2. Anytime you aren’t doing something in the evenings or on the weekends, join us for dinner, an
adventure, etc if you would like! We would love to spend time with you.
Household duties (Shared by all of us)
1. Please do not leave dirty dishes in the sink. Load them into the dishwasher or hand wash. We
have several dishes that are hand wash only (mainly nice knives, pans, and certain cups!)
2. If you eat a meal with us, please contribute to the clean up process by washing dishes, clearing
the table, sweeping, or wiping down surfaces.
3. If the trash is full, please empty it by placing it in the large trashcan outside with the green lid;
replacement bags are built into the trashcan.
4. Please recycle. The recycling is in the pantry and we can throw any “1” or “2” plastics, glass, and
any paper recycling into it. There is a separate bag for plastic bags (like from the grocery store).
5. Help keep common areas somewhat tidy
We have several more but they fall under the following categories:
Expectations when we work from home
Bedroom/Bathroom
Cleaning the house
Laundry
Cell Phone Use
Car
Kids expectations (Rooms, Electronics, Play Dates, communication, Meals, discipline, potty)
Schedule
Matching and Interviewing:
Interviewing, we were pretty timid (it being our first time around), but the next time we were a lot more assertive. Some of the questions we used are below, and we used them purely as a guide (I think most of this list is right from the website, if I remember right). We tried to cap the interviews at 30 minutes. If you go through every question and you’re using Google Translate for most of it, it could easily run 2 hours long.
We made it pretty clear you’ll be vaccinated the day you arrive. They all had no problem.
Our non-negotiable is you have to be a good driver. We've had the best luck with our European Au Pairs. We realized the culture of our family meshes very well with European cultures (but our Brazilian is still one of our 'unicorn' Au Pairs! aka one of the best!)
Read their profiles closely. On one of the health screeners, one Au Pair had tested positive for Hep B. Not the end of the world, but a deal breaker for us with a newborn without full immunity.
Be prepared for extremely broken English. We had Google Translate up and used the Chat box a bit—especially for the Latin American countries.
As an aside, you will be responsible for $500 worth of education for them when they get here. Our first Au Pair went through UCLA and got her credits knocked out quick. We saw a marked improvement on her English and she’s fully conversational (from using Google translate on the reg).
We dug into driving quite a bit. Our Colombian had very little experience, but I effectively put her through driving school. She’s still not the best driver, but she’s safe. She wasn’t used to driving an SUV and had never driven an automatic. She actually had no idea how to use it… Our 2nd Au pair arrived from Brazil, and after driving with her once, she was good to go. Our German used to drive ambulances on the Autobahn and was phenomenal...but then got into the worst fender bender ever by reversing into a hitch and caused $10k of damage (Insurance covered it). Just happens. The upside of European drivers is that most states have reciprocity with EU Drivers' Licenses... no tests...just an appointment to get a license.
Another thing if you go with a Spanish speaker, is most driving tests/study guides for states are in Spanish too and you can send them a study guide so they can test right when they get here.
Random aside - USAA will insure your Au Pair on all of your vehicles.
Discipline:
We send our AU Pairs our book that we like on discipline. Keep in mind she won’t be able to be as forceful etc, as parents would be, but we gave them the book ‘No Drama Discipline’ as a starting point. They published it in Spanish, so we got it for the Spanish speakers to read.
Parting Shots/Horror Stories
There’s a few of them out there (be cautious on facebook groups…that’s where all the random one-off stories are and the um…vocal host families and au pairs). But if you’re backed by a program (aupaircare or cultural care) they can replace an au pair…FAST. Just be up front, and if you see it going awry, get on the radar early. One of our first Au Pair’s friends actually got removed because the family didn’t mesh with her/didn’t like her level of English so they had her replaced within two weeks. Some Au Pairs like to party (a group here all got COVID cuz they all partied together)…thankfully, ours isn’t in that scene much. She’s also 27. Our first au pair broke our 8-hour curfew rule, but she only broke that once, and I was pretty clear with her that it won’t happen again. Our biggest factors when we interview now are age/maturity (we normally don’t even interview below 24 years old) and driving skills.
Lastly, we just had a dual-mil family register their Bro Pair (Male Au Pair!) in DEERS and they have base access to go to and from the CDC and use the Gym.
And not having to navigate the logistics of CDC drop offs and respond to center closures (bit of a problem during COVID) gave us peace that our family was safe, cared for and loved while we navigated stressful jobs. Au Pairs are great. Especially coupled with daycare. We ended up interviewing 7 the first time and a dozen the second time. And it’s super easy if you dedicate a few weeks to it and knock it out a few months before you need them to arrive.
One final note, the Au Pair program is always up for review in Congress, rules consistently change (we haven’t seen many BIG changes, but nuanced adjustments throughout the years). This is our last year with Au Pairs as we get ready to transition into staff life, our kids are older and one of us begins to transition out of the flying world. We’re thankful we had the program when we needed it most.
