My Babysitter is Getting So Rich, I’ll Never Retire
Babysitting used to be $6 an hour no matter how many kids showed up
I babysat during The Stone Age.
It wasn’t a lucrative gig. Back in the day, a high-paying babysitting job earned me $6 an hour. Or twelve rocks. No matter how many prehistoric kids lived there, or how many saber-tooth tigers I had to keep from nipping at the hems of my treebark jeans, I got paid $6 an hour. No tip.
I never complained. I never said, “Your youngest, Cumhackdach, bouldered me into the cave bathroom for two hours — again! —and wouldn’t let me out. Then one of the Smilodons chewed like two inches of treebark off my jeans. So next time, it’ll be $30 an hour.” That’s 60 rocks. You know how much you could buy with 60 rocks?
Lots of times, the parents weren’t rich and couldn’t afford to print $6 bills on mastodon parchment, so I got paid only $3 per hour. That’s one pot of dirt. Without the pot.
Babysitting wasn’t a high-skilled job so I didn’t complain. The only requirements were the kids needed to be asleep on their stone slabs when the parents got home — and, they had to retain the exact same number of limbs they started the evening with.
I didn’t have to teach the kids Latin, Yoga, or SAT Preschool Prep. There was none of this, “We only hire babysitters from Brown and Yale” shit that exists in the world now, which empowers babysitters to ask for CEO pay.
In the Stone Age, prospective employers/parents didn’t send me to the police station to be fingerprinted. I didn’t know CPR. My qualifications were — I lived in a nearby cave, I hadn’t gotten kicked out of elementary school, and I could always be called upon to babysit at the last minute because I had no social life. I wasn’t one of those sexy early daters.
Fast forward to modern times.
When my husband and I recently paid our babysitter, she charged $20 an hour. Or two princess-cut diamonds. We have one kid. He doesn’t bite. We don’t own a nippy Glyptodor or an unmedicated Chihuahua.
However, the last time we got home from a fancy night of Ghostbusters and Subway — all we could afford after paying our top-shelf babysitter — the sitter told us they’d spent the entire evening playing Grand Theft Auto. And, our son wasn’t in bed when we got home because he’d drunk 12 grape Fantas they’d charged on my DoorDash account.
Instead of being embarrassed or apologizing, Penelope, the most popular babysitter in town because her blond lockness make the neighborhood children think she’s a Disney princess, held out her greedy, underperforming little palm and informed us she needed a raise because she was saving up for a Tesla Cybertruck.
When I used to babysit, I didn’t charge for overtime when the parents were two hours late and fall-down drunk, knocking over every boulder in the cave. I didn’t think I was their superior. I didn’t act like they worked for me.
I never asked for a raise even when I was saving up for a saddle for my woolly mammoth. I took my light stack of one-dollar bills and my mammoth ride home and said, “Thank you, drunk, wage-earning adults” like the grateful indentured servant that I was.
Why is babysitting so different now?
Our era is too apologetic. Babysitters know Xanax and relentless therapy have made us unnecessarily soft, and they have our bleeding hearts by the nappies. (Yes, our hearts are so soft they have to wear nappies.)
Parents today act like babysitters are doing us a favor, not that we’re paying them for services rendered. I blame the room full of participation trophies they “earned” from wandering around the soccer field picking daisies and sucking on vapes.
Now that I’m in my Middle Ages (supposing I live to be a hundred), I’ve decided I’m done with the whole babysitter scam. I think it’s safer and cheaper to just leave my son home with the family dog. Otherwise, we’ll never be able to afford to retire. Dogs don’t price gouge.
Also, dogs don’t play video games or save up their sitter money to buy Tesla Cybertrucks. Not yet, anyway.
The rate is the same. Number of kids is the variable. Get off my lawn, boomer.