As Catrina scrolled through Facebook—bleary-eyed after spending the evening wrestling a toddler having a tantrum into bed—she saw a post that stopped her in her tracks.
“If you recognize this blonde girl with pigtails I saw yesterday afternoon around 78th and 2nd, please DM [direct message] me,” it read. “I think you will want to know what your nanny did.”
Although the accompanying photograph showed only the back of the child’s head, Catrina recognized her daughter instantly. “A mother knows every inch of her kid, every hair. It was her,” she said.
The post felt callous—cruel, even—in its withholding of details, thought Catrina, who asked that her real name not be published. She was unable to sleep that night as thoughts raced through her mind about what could have happened to her two-year-old while she had been in the care of a woman whom, it occurred to Catrina in that moment, she barely knew.
The message had been posted in the Facebook group Moms of the Upper East Side, or MUES, as it is known by its 33,000 members. It was one of many nanny-shaming posts shared in the group, which New York magazine once described as a modern-day Yellow Pages and a “source of non-stop entertainment”.
Women, often under the veil of anonymity, ask advice on everything from recommendations for private schools and breast-feeding consultants to what to do about a cheating husband. “All I see here are questions about divorce lawyers, nannies and selling houses,” one member joked in a not-so-subtle dig at the “stroller set” of New York’s wealthiest postcodes.
The complaints made in “bad nanny” posts range from a childminder scrolling too much on their phone to more serious accusations, such as smacking, withholding food or leaving children unsupervised.
Their frequency appears to have increased with the rise of what is known as “gentle parenting”, under which children are encouraged to develop through “self-regulation”.
One post was a photograph of a woman sitting next to a crawling infant while busy on her phone and wearing earbuds. “I was really mad watching the whole scene,” the poster wrote. “I’m not exaggerating, this person NEVER stopped [using] the phone during the whole class. The baby was TOTALLY ignored.”
“Stop assuming the worst about people and situations you know nothing about,” one reply read. “This is not abuse. It’s not dangerous, and it’s absolutely none of your business.”
Others saw it differently. “This makes me so upset,” wrote one mother. “If this was the nanny, she’s on her phone during working hours and that’s not OK. If this was my kid I’d be so pissed.”
Another chimed in that parents had the right to expect more, given the going rate for nannies in the Upper East Side. Some of the most highly qualified and experienced nannies can command up to $150,000 a year—though most earn below what is considered a liveable wage for the city.
A recent New Yorker cover, featuring an illustration of a black nanny and an Asian nanny watching over white children in a playground, prompted a debate about the relationship between parent and nanny, as well as a wider conversation about race, class and women’s labor.
MUES posters blur out the child’s face to protect their identity, but not always the nanny’s. Many members defend the right to share the posts, saying they encourage transparency and help form the proverbial village, or support network working mothers would otherwise lack.
Some complain that not only does the group breach people’s privacy but its members jump to judgment before knowing the facts. There are regularly replies to posts saying the subject is a matter for the police or child protection services, not fodder for the internet.
They say the page has been turned into a gossiping virtual town square encouraging the public shaming of childcare providers who are unable to defend themselves. In fact they have their own Facebook group, The Nannies of New York City, where MUES posts have become “the hot topic”, one nanny said.
Holly Flanders, whose agency, Choice Parenting, places nannies in the area, said many now feared even going to the park with children in case something was misinterpreted or misunderstood. “How are you supposed to interact with children if you’re being judged constantly?” she asked.
Christina Allen, the British mother of a three-year-old girl, Darcy, said MUES had created a culture of fear and suspicion. “I hardly ever have the chill and playful experience at our local playgrounds,” Allen said. “There’s usually some sort of drama, and I feel as though everyone is judging everything you say and do. I think this is down to our area. I’m going to put it out there that maybe the playground politics is a UES thing, in fear of being featured on the Facebook page. I can imagine Darcy getting involved in something and someone taking my photo, uploading it to this Facebook group with the caption, ‘Whose nanny is this?’”
Catrina asked the poster for details about what the nanny allegedly did. The woman claimed she handled the little girl roughly and threatened to cancel a promised trip to the zoo if she did not “shut up”.
The nanny, who had been recommended by a friend, denied the incident as it had been recounted. However, for Catrina, the trust had gone. She let the nanny go with a week’s pay and decided to put her daughter into a daycare that offered a livestream feed.
Flanders said the “vast majority” of the nannies who are identified on the Facebook “wall of shame” lose their jobs. “It’s not like there’s an HR department. If you’re a mom and you’re having to wonder, ‘Is this nanny being kind to my child? Are they hurting them?’, it’s really hard to sit at work all day with that on your conscience.
“There are definitely some nannies out there who are benignly neglectful, lazy and on their phones too much. But the sort of scary stuff you see on Lifetime [a television channel that features true crime] is not all that common.”
Many say nanny-shaming originated in the MUES group, which was founded in 2011, but the phenomenon has expanded. Another private group, Park Slope Parents (PSP), has a cautionary policy for its members on “what to do when you see someone’s nanny do something you don’t approve of”.
Brooklyn’s answer to the Upper East Side, Park Slope is a leafy, family-friendly neighborhood with some of the best and most exclusive schools in New York. Apparently trying to avoid the drama of the MUES group, PSP members are allowed to post only a brief description of the location, the caregiver and the child and it asks that “interested parties contact you without reference to an ‘upsetting incident’, ‘disturbing’ or other ‘bad nanny’ indicators”.
The policy refers to one incident in which it turned out that the “upsetting nanny” was actually the child’s grandmother. “This, as you might imagine, became a huge embarrassment to the family and was time-consuming for us behind the scenes,” the group’s administrators wrote.
An entire economy has seemingly been spawned out of parental paranoia. Diana Toyberman, a stay-at-home mother, came up with the idea for an app named Stroller Patrol after seeing a nanny leave a child unattended in a pushchair outside a shop on the Upper East Side.
Parents and nannies sign up for the free app, then nannies upload pictures of themselves. Once they do, their faces will pop up in the app, which uses GPS tracking. All Stroller Patrol users within a 300ft radius of the nanny will be able to identify them. If the nanny is “misbehaving”, bystanders can message the nanny’s boss directly.
Parents in the MUES group have admitted to hiding cameras around the house to monitor the nanny. Others had taken to sewing AirTags into the soles of their children’s shoes or in their prams so they can track their movements throughout the day.
If you can afford $125 an hour, you can even hire a private investigator to babysit your babysitter. “We’re talking about the safety of a child here,” Flanders said. “I don’t think it’s paranoia. Not at all.”
Josie Ensor is a New York–based British journalist
