The Over-Qualified Babysitter

The first time I hired a babysitter, I went through a childcare agency. If your mind immediately pictured Kristy, Claudia, and the other Stoneybrook tweens of The Baby-Sitters Club (books and movie) meeting after school to decide who would show up at my door, you could not be more wrong.

After providing the agency details about the job and my requirements for a suitable candidate, a 30-something-year-old Montessori teaching assistant with a Masters degree came to put my 11-month old to bed while my husband and I were out for dinner for a few hours. Everything went smoothly, my anxious mama heart felt relatively at ease leaving my firstborn with this stranger, and I forked over $150 at the end of the night.

The thing is, this babysitter’s age and qualifications have been the norm, and not the exception, for all of the people we’ve hired to watch our kids since. Are Millennials that reluctant to leave their children with the tween babysitters we once were?

The Days of Kids Minding Kids

I was 11 years old when my mom signed me up for a Red Cross Babysitting course, which I took at our nearby community centre. Over eight weeks, I learned some basic first aid, as well as how to change diapers, spoonfeed a baby, play with a toddler, and make “safe choices.”

When I passed the course and received my very official certification card with my name on it, my mom put me to work – looking after my younger sisters, ordering us pizza for dinner, and instructing them to “turn off the TV and go upstairs to bed” at 8pm – while she and my dad went out for dinner, movies, and the odd concert. I loved the power and responsibility bestowed upon me and receiving a $10 bill the next morning. Most of all, I loved that I was just like one of the girls in The Baby-Sitters Club.

Before I had joined the ranks as a certified tween babysitter, my mom would hire teenage sisters living across the street to come watch us eat dinner and tuck us into bed. I thought they were impossibly cool and fun, and loved having our babysitters over.

The Older and Wiser Babysitter of Today

Nowadays, I wouldn't think to leave the care of my cat, much less my kids, to an 11 year old, and it seems that most Millennial parents feel the same. According to a Kidsit survey, the average age of a babysitter today is 23 years old. All of the women we’ve hired to babysit our kids have been fellow Millennials, and the ones who aren’t have been older not younger.

I think part of our collective anxiety about leaving our kids in the care of just slightly older kids is that life feels more complicated now – most of us don’t own home phones, so any babysitter would need to have their own cellphone for emergencies, or even just to send parents updates. And while the teens of today seem older than their ‘90s counterparts in the way that they act, dress and speak, they also seem less trustworthy – but is that them or us?

Still, I wonder if there’s a day in the not-too-distant future when I might welcome a tween or teen babysitter to my home. A lot of teens are very responsible and would likely engage in more active, “fun” play. And a teen who’s interested in taking on the challenges of babysitting could end up being a pretty good role model to my kids. Plus, I’m sure that teen babysitters still charge a whole lot less than grown adults. Maybe I’ll reconsider when they’re closer to being tweens themselves.