Guilt in Modern Parenting

I surrender. I have been doing my best to keep actively ignorant about this whole nanny--excuse me, au pair--thing and it has become impossible. People across at least two continents are obsessed with the case of Louise Woodward, the 19-year-old au pair from Elton, England who was convicted last Thursday of second-degree murder in the death of the baby she was hired to watch.

Yesterday's Boston Globe reported that the television audience viewing Tuesday's court proceedings equaled in numbers those that watched the O.J. Simpson trial. The au pair case has been front page in The New York Times and The Boston Globe for days. Even Washington has jumped onto the bandwagon. Last week, with near prescient timing, the White House sponsored child-care conference about the dearth of safe and responsible child care in this country.

Granted, the conference was planned long before Louise Woodward became a household name, but its existence points to a single trend: child care is emerging as a crucial issue. Since the nation has become obsessed with child-care, it seemed irresponsible to keep my proverbial head in the sand, so I have collected old newspapers and the most recent edition of The New Republic and am trying to piece together why nannies have taken the main stage in American political, social and legal life.

First, a quick review of the Woodward-au pair issue: a number of months ago, an eight-month-old baby boy, Matthew Eappen, died after his brain was compressed by a blood clot. Soon thereafter, Matthew's au pair, Louise Woodward, was charged with second-degree murder for purportedly beating Matthew so severely that his skull fractured, leading to the blood clot that caused his death. Last Thursday, Woodward, who was hired as Matthew's au pair through an international au pair program under the United States Information Agency that pays the au pairs room, board and stipend in America in exchange for child-care, was convicted of second-degree murder.

The reaction was explosive. Masses of protesters in England and in America held candle-light vigils in Woodward's defense. The New York Times reported one man who drove two hours from New Hampshire to stand outside the courthouse in support of Woodward.

"I've never felt this way so strongly about anything," he said. His comment underscores the way the au pair issue has crystallized serious fears in our society and quickly transcended the particulars of this case. Matthew's mother, Deborah Eappen, worried after Tuesday's proceedings that her son's death had been lost in the tumult, The Boston Globe reported yesterday. People have forgotten about this one family and their one son--a clear reminder that the tragic death of one child is not seen to be the critical issue at stake here.

And it certainly is not why the President and Hillary Clinton hosted a conference on child care. "People in this country have to be able to succeed at work and at home," the President said, explaining the need for ensuring decent, affordable child care. "If they are worried sick about their children, they fail at work."

Perhaps the President's words are more telling than he intended. It seems that Americans are not worried that they will fail at work if their home lives are not secure, but that, as a result of their focus on work, they have failed at their homes lives and failed their families.

The comparison to the O.J. Simpson trial made by The Boston Globe is revealing. Like the O.J. murder trial--with its dimensions concerning race, sex and violence in a country discomforted by any blending of these three--the dangerous au pair and the endangered children case has hit a never in our national psyche. The Woodward case is every parent's nightmare realized. Two working parents left their infant alone with a stranger, and that stranger abused and ultimately killed their child. If the Religious Right ever needs a poster-baby for its family values arguments, it doesn't have to look very far.

Given that more families have both parents of young children working than ever before, dependency on the child care system has become nearly ubiquitous. There are very few parents who do not, for some portion of the day, entrust their children to the care of strangers. For many Americans, this is not a choice: both parents have to work in order to pay the bills or keep the family out of poverty. Nonetheless, there is a lingering guilt that if women were good mothers, they wouldn't have to worry about child care at all. It is easy for that guilt to be galvanized and exacerbated by the face of a young child abused by his "care-provider."

It is easy, but it is not all that convincing. Cases of nanny abuse are much more rare than cases of parents abusing their own children. But it is easier to project our own parenting insecurities on to a stranger. And Louise Woodward was that stranger--literally a foreigner, a paid nanny living with someone else's family.

Talia Milgrom-Elcott's column appears on alternate Thursdays.