Mary Poppins Goes Slam Dancing

After seeing Walt Disney's Mary Poppins for the first time, every American child between the ages of three and ten wants a nanny. Someone who doesn't need public transportation because she had her umbrella. Someone who hangs out with chimney sweeps. Someone who breaks into song every five minutes. Someone, in other words, who is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Here in America it's not easy to find a nanny like Miss Poppins. For one thing, British accents are hard to come by. And no one seems to have that good, old-fashioned Mary Poppins common sense and stability.

Perhaps Boston-area parents of the 90s need to look further for such wholesomeness--not necessarily across the Atlantic, but in the other direction--out West. Perhaps more parents should be checking out Nannies From Utah.

Nannies From Utah, says President Judi M. Rogers, "places full-time nannies mostly on the east coast." Rogers advertises in the yellow pages of Manhattan, New Jersey, Washington D.C., northern Virginia, Baltimore and Boston phone books to target families which might need an 18 to 22 years-old nanny.

But what's the Salt Lake City-East Coast connection? What is it about young female Utahans? Can they sing "A Spoonful of Sugar," too?

Perhaps. But there is definitely a "Mormon mystique," Rogers says. Although "you can't tell them from anyone else," Young Mormon women are perceived as more cleancut and all-American than their East Coast sister, according to Rogers. "Utah catches their eye," she says. "They think, `Mormon.'"

Yet Rogers says that there might be some degree of truth to Easterners' image of the typical Utah nanny.

"They raise their women to be domestic and maternal," says Rogers.

But Malena R. Turner, a 20-year-old nanny from Utah working in Phoenix, MD, says that the Mormon mystique is frequently just that--mystique.

"We're not that much different from anybody else in the country; we're not Amish or anything," she says. "I think a lot of families think we'd be offended if they drank, or swore. But the we're just like anybody else."

It's not easy to get into Rogers program: only two percent of all applicants are placed in the program.

"If they smoke we don't talk. If they have more than two moving traffic violations, we don't talk," Rogers says of the prospective nannies. "If a young woman doesn't get along with her mother, then she isn't considered. Nannies need to be able to cooperate with another mother figure."

Once women are accepted into the agency, they must take a four-week, four-hours-per-session training course so that they know what to expect and what is expected of them Rogers says.

For nannies, homesickness has to be one of those expectations. "I tell them they need at the least two weeks" to get over the yearning for Utah, says Rogers. Back East, "the air is going to feel different....they're going to the miss the mountains."

And families seeking nannies are also told what to expect. "I'm telling families that they do not clean bathrooms, do dinner dishes, or pick up their coffee cups. These aren't maids. That's why you need an agency," Rogers says. "It all needs to be on the table."

After all the paperwork is done, and the year-long contract is underway, many nannies say they can understand people's perceptions about Utah "Purity."

"The people here are very uptight and somewhat paranoid," says Jennifer Hill, a 23-year-old nanny from Salt Lake City who works in Gulf Mills, Pennsylvania. "They're afraid to extend a helping hand to people...they're afraid they'll get robbed or shot."

Utahans, on the other hand, are more trusting, says Hill. "there's an innocence about them...the people are more wholesome, more apt to trust you," she says.

"The sense of humor is a lot different," she adds. Out West, there is more of a "happy-go-lucky" attitude, while back East, she says, "Even the sense of humor here is more serious."

Rogers' predictions of the homesickness do ring true for Hill. "I miss the mountains [Utah] is an easy place to live in. Here it's just all very unsure. I'm lost everyday." But Hill says she loves the cultural opportunities of the East. "There's a lot more to see and do," she says.

When Turner tells people where she grew up, she often gets some raised eyebrows. Turner says that questions range from "Don't you people have horns?" to "Don't all the husband have tons of wives?"

Parents say that although they were aware of "the Mormon mystique," the stereotype didn't necessarily affect their decision to work with the Rogers.

Nevertheless, says Helen E. Schardt, who hired Turner, "I knew enough to know that these girls would probably be Mormon, a little more clean-cut. Possibly a little more stable than what I had been getting."

Perry Katz, the father of a 15-month-old boy, says that the agency's location in Utah didn't matter: "If Nannies From Utah was Nannies From Malaysia, and they interviewed well over the phone, it wouldn't matter where they were from," he explains. "That perception was out there but it really didn't factor into our decision."

As with any business, sometimes the match-making just doesn't work out. when a nanny seems to be a "mistake" for a particular family, says Rogers, "I drop everything else and correct it. I get another girl, and fast."

Recently, Rogers says one nanny was sent home after she was out until 4:30 a.m. the night before.

So much for the stereotype of Ivory-pure Utahans--or even the Mary Poppins ideal: this particular nanny was out until the wee hours slam dancing. With chimney sweeps, perhaps.