The manny myth

Tibetan nannies are so last year. So what’s the latest caregiving craze? Recent media accounts contend that everyone in NYC and its surrounding areas wants a “manny” (that’s a male caregiver, if you’ve been under a rock since the publication of Holly Peterson’s best-selling novel The Manny). But is this really a movement? And if so, why didn’t it start, say, during the heyday of Scott Baio’s Charles in Charge?

One and a half men What’s wrong with this scene? Nothing—but you’re more likely to see it here than on your street.

Photo: Sarma Ozols / Getty Images

The truth is that although there has been a slight surge in Craigslist postings for male caregivers, this so-called trend is a nonstarter. Of the 5,000 people in the database at Absolute Best Care, Inc., one of the city’s largest nanny agencies, only about 250 are men. (The numbers aren’t much higher at day-care centers: According to the nonprofit referral service Child Care, Inc., men make up a mere 10 percent of staffers citywide.) Some clients do request men, says Absolute’s president, Douglas Kozinn—usually single moms seeking a male influence for their sons, or parents looking for a “glorified camp counselor.”

Jennie Dunham, 38, a literary agent who lives in North Salem, New York, has had to brush off plenty of Britney Spears cracks about the male au pairs she’s hired to care for her two sons, ages three years and 16 months—even though she has preferred male caregivers (she’s had a couple of short-term female au pairs) since well before Spears became a mom and her manny a constant companion.

“The men are just as loving and caring,” Dunham says. “And they’re more straightforward about the fact that they’re working for you. The women want to be your friend more than they realize that it’s a job.”

One reason the child-care workforce doesn’t have a better gender balance may simply be limited male interest. Jorge Sanez de Viteri, executive director of the Bronx Community College Child Development Center, a day-care facility, says male staff members are very hard to come by, especially for little ones. “We like having a male role model in the classroom,” he says. “But when I’m recruiting staff, I’ll typically get only one or two résumés from men.”

Yet there’s also a darker aspect to the manny matter: how parents, especially those of young children and girls, perceive male caregivers. Elise Perlmutter, 38, an advertising sales executive and mother of three who lives on the Upper West Side, says she can understand the appeal of male caregivers or baby-sitters for older kids. But she’s not interested in hiring a manny for her two young sons and daughter. “It would be strange for me to have a guy help my four-year-old daughter in the bathroom, because of the sexual unfamiliarity,” she says. Warren Boyd, 44, currently the only male caregiver at the Bronx facility, knows that concern all too well. He says that a number of parents whose kids attend the center are initially hesitant about him because he’s male and African-American. But he’s usually able to win their trust over time. “More men are needed in child care,” he says. “It creates a balance for kids, especially those from single-parent homes.”

He’s right, but preconceptions and stereotypes still need to be broken down. For three years, singer-songwriter and novelist Stewart Lewis, 37, worked as a nanny for two families, both with school-age boys. Though he loved the job and the “positive influence” he had in the boys’ lives, he still remembers the job he didn’t get: working for a family with two boys and an eight-year-old girl who had a mild form of autism. The mom backed out, he says, after her pediatrician told her the girl “shouldn’t have that kind of attention” from a male caregiver. “I was really bummed,” says Lewis. “Why should it matter? I think that some males are just as trustworthy and nurturing as any female. It’s reverse sexism.”