Paying family for childcare - Advice needed!
Hey everyone,
The quick of it is a family member will be coming from another country to help us out for 3mo and we need help making sure things go smoothly.
Baby is 9mo and we’ve been taking care of her under the table while both holding down FT jobs and managing a remodel of our house that’s been going on for 15mo. Terrible planning, I know. She’s coming to free us up so my partner can finish the house and we can take better care of ourselves. I love this aunt that’s coming, she has two adult kids and is an amazing homemaker. She will be taking care of the baby and helping with two meals a day for us all. We are paying her salary, flights, and food (and half of the house, guest room, bathroom, dining room, and kitchen, will be finished by the time she gets here- we’ll be staying in the basement).
I want to make sure the quality of caregiving is more than when family is just helping out without compensation (I let everything go out of deep gratitude to just have some help- usually that means baby watches a lot of TV).
For this scenario, I’m wondering if we should have a scope of work delineated so everyone feels good about it. Has anyone done this before? Do you have examples or things we should make sure to include?
Also in case anyone is wondering, we’re choosing this option bc its about the same as daycare in our area but much less than what nanny’s here charge and we can’t really deal w all the sickness that comes from daycare right now- our cups are already at the brim.
TYIA!
Parent Replies
Just want to flag for you that if this family member is not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident, there are immigration laws prohibiting working for pay while on a tourist visa. Please look into this so your family member's ability to come back to the U.S. is not jeopardized in the future! Wishing you good luck!
Wow, that sounds really difficult. Having family come help should be a huge improvement to your quality of life.
With both of our kids, after my wife and I went back to work my mother-in-law lived with us and spent several months as the primary caregiver. I'm very glad we did. As with many things clear communication and setting expectations were important. Some examples of things that we agreed on in writing before starting were
We had some conflicts, both related to sharing space and to parenting style. But overall it was great -- she and our kids got to bond with each other, and we got high-quality in-home child care. Good luck!