Here's what you very often don't see in pics of celebrity parents with their offspring: the teams of nannies that actually do the heavy lifting of parenthood for said celebrity parents.
I don't have any issues with parents who employ nannies. My daughter has a nanny. The thing is, our nanny takes care of our daughter when my husband and I are both working, and cannot take care of her ourselves. You would never see us out and about on an afternoon stroll, sipping our lattes while the nanny pushed the stroller. Our hipster parent street cred would go, like, waaay down. And if we had more than one child? We would not employ separate nannies for each child. Even Mary Poppins worked one-for-three, and paying for three-for-three just strikes me as a bad deal.
Bitch Magazine recently featured an article that was originally posted on Glossedover.com, in which the author railed against certain 'Park Avenue moms' who were quoted in W magazine bitching about their nannies (it also featured a piece on the insidious effects of - ahem - celebrity baby gossip, but that's another story). I usually love Bitch Magazine, but when I read this particular piece, I thought, whaddup with the hate on moms who work and pay for childcare? Classist much? Sure, Park Avenue moms are easy to hate on, but please. It's not just social x-rays who employ nannies, and it seemed to me that the author had a bug up her ass about working moms in general ("We aren't suggesting that these women give up their careers and stay home with kids. In fact, quite the contrary - we're thinking that the less influence these women have on their children, the better." WTF?)
Then I saw the above pic of Heidi Klum and Seal out strolling with their THREE FREAKIN' NANNIES, and I was forced to admit that there is such a thing as conspicuous consumption in the arena of childcare, and that it's a little bit ugly. Because after all, if Heidi and Seal start hogging all the child-care workers, who are the rest of us going to exploit?
