Nannies of color share how their experience is wildly different from the white nanny 'influencers' you keep seeing on TikTok

• 'Nanny TikTok' has become a popular trend on TikTok, with young nannies sharing romanticized videos of their daily routines.
• Nannies of color told Insider that experiences vary depending on the race of the nanny and the class and wealth of the family they work for.

If you scroll through TikTok, nannying can appear to be a highly romanticized low-stress, high-reward job. Hundreds of "a day in the life" videos show mostly white, young nannies portraying a life of ease — making breakfast for kids before heading to the beach or leaving notes in a playroom for kids to find.

But according to nannies of color who spoke with Insider, the expectations and overall experience vary by the race of the nanny and the class and wealth of the family they work for.

"The pay is really good, but I will say that it's hard. It's a tough job," said Kimberly Ore, a Hispanic Latino, 36-year-old nanny based in Westfield, New Jersey. "It's not like I just come here, hang out, and do fun things with the kids and then leave. It's not like a babysitting job, if that makes sense. It's actual work." Ore's daily duties include cleaning the house, doing laundry, taking children to activities, cooking, providing educational lessons, and more.

Ore, who has been a nanny for 16 years, has worked with both white families and families of color, which she describes as completely different experiences. The first family she worked with was Hispanic and Black. Ore said she felt like an extension of their family and was given more freedom to help raise their kids and has stayed in touch with the family even beyond her employment with them. Although her experience with her current family, who is white, has been positive, Ore said that some of the white families she has worked with in the past have made her feel more like an employee.

"I'm just someone who works for them. They didn't really give me any freedom to really help raise their children. There's no personal connection or anything, and once I leave, the relationship with them is over," she said.

'That made me feel like I was legitimately in a Jordan Peele movie'

"I think I had maybe a more romanticized image of what being a nanny was like," said a 27-year-old biracial former nanny in Brooklyn who asked to remain anonymous. "It's hard work and can involve navigating through a ton of microaggressions and stereotypes."

After taking on a nanny job for one week in the Hamptons, she quit the industry altogether. The idea of serving a white family, she said, drove her to her decision to leave. "I had never felt more like 'the help' in my life," she said, noting that she had worked other service jobs prior. "It was just indescribable how small I felt around these people and yet they were paying me a lot of money. And I still felt like they could literally just step on me. Even the kids were so aware of their power in the home."

During the gig, there was an unspoken expectation for her to clean up after the father, which she said wasn't discussed as a duty of the job. "There was one point where he had been eating out on the balcony and he came in and just kinda tossed his garbage towards me and expected me to take care of it," she said. "He was just so comfortable with making these demands and I just assume it was because he had the experience of people in his life who are just gonna bend over and do whatever he asks."

During an outing at the tennis courts, she saw several other Black women, for the first time while working this job. She soon realized they were the nannies of the white families vacationing as opposed to vacationers themselves. "It was just all of these things that piled up on each other that made me feel like I was legitimately in a Jordan Peele movie," she said.

'It just felt like I was part of the family'

Being the only person of color in a space is common for nannies of color working with white families. Sometimes, it can result in an uncomfortable, isolated environment with tense conversations and tongue-biting. That's why Candace Anderson, a 39-year-old, Black former nanny in Los Angeles only worked with Black families. "They were all working professionals with very demanding jobs, and so they wanted someone who would be there for their children as they would like to be, and that shared their core values," Anderson said.

Anderson's experience with the families she worked for was very personal. "I was like a niece or a daughter. I just think that's how our community is," she said, noting that the families would support her in ways beyond compensation, like paying for books or groceries or connecting her with mentors.

"You could see a stark difference between the relationships of the other kids of other races with their nannies and the relationship I had with my kids when taking them on playdates or picking them up from school. They greeted me like I was a big cousin or auntie. It just felt like I was part of the family," she said. "I was like an extended family member. Definitely did not feel like an outsider. Definitely did not feel like 'the help.'"

When it came to discipline, Anderson said it was never really a problem in her 15 years of work. She credits the tone that was set in the homes she worked in. "Nannies who experience working with children who behave badly or mistreat them are because of how the parents talk to service workers or whomever else is in their lives. The kids are just mimicking what they see and what they hear," Anderson said.

Despite her positive experience, Anderson still labels the job as demanding. During her employment, Anderson said, she took on the role of not only the nanny, but also the chef and the maid – a demand she said she mostly only witnesses of Black and brown nannies. Ultimately, Anderson said she believes how strenuous and demanding the job is depends less on the class of the family and more so on the race of the nanny they've hired.

A history of Black caregiving

Black caregiving in America started with slave labor. Enslaved African women were expected to care for the slave master's home and family, which involved cooking, cleaning, running errands, and caring for the children. When slavery in America was abolished, white families mostly in the south, who could afford it, employed Black women at low wages to continue the work that had so long been forced upon them. Meanwhile, the expectation that white women should not handle the tasks of mothering and housekeeping alone, continued with their implementation of Black "help."

"There is a racial dynamic to it and it's linked to the history of this nation – that there is an expectation embedded into the fabric of this nation that Black women's place in society is to serve," said Tracey Walters, an associate professor of Literature and Department Chair of Africana Studies at Stony Brook University, and the author of "Not Your Mother's Mammy: The Black Domestic Worker in Transatlantic Women's Media." "I think when the employee is white, because you don't have that whole history that's attached, and you don't have the racial dynamics, it leads to a very different experience."

For other marginalized groups, including some groups of immigrants, working as a nanny is often one of the few, safe jobs available to them, creating an imbalanced power relationship between the employer and the nanny.

"If they come to this work because they are immigrants, the dynamic once again changes everything. First, because for some women, this is the first available job. It is a job that often comes with housing, it is employment that often does not necessitate working papers, and, for many women, this becomes a way of life out of circumstance, not by choice," said Walters.

"With that, then comes this kind of complicated relationship between employee and employer, because from the onset, you've got that power dynamic that has actually nothing to do with the terms or the conditions of the labor arrangement, but the circumstances of how they come to be employed."

"If you are an immigrant, you're going to be reticent about speaking up for yourself in matters of exploitation because this job is everything to you – unless you have something else lined up. You're at the mercy of this employer. Meanwhile, for white women, especially if they're not immigrants, they understand or they are going to exercise their right to challenge and push back when they believe they're being exploited. They're going to demand a particular wage."

Walters said educational background is also a factor. "White nannies often get paid more because they have a college degree, or might speak another language that they learned in school. Sometimes they have taken a couple of classes in child psychology," Waters said. Meanwhile, she added, sometimes nannies who are immigrants are also educated, but their credentials from their countries of origin don't transfer over, so their background isn't regarded to be at the same degree as a white nanny educated in America. Same goes for a language they grew up speaking as opposed to choosing to study at an institution.

"The difference in the relationship comes down to a different level of respect for young white domestic workers than there is for women of color," Walters said.

Optimistically, nanny networks are creating protection for women of color and immigrants who work in the domestic service industry. Whether it be an informal Facebook group or organizations like the International Nanny Association, the sharing of experiences as a nanny has led to more transparency in rights and protections for a popular job in a shadow economy.

As Anderson said, "I think TikTok really misconstrues this job as a babysitter who comes over for a few hours, watches kids, maybe feeds them, puts them to bed, or plays with them, and then leaves. A nanny's role is way more extensive. It's essentially a secondary parent."

Editor's note, January 23, 2023: This story has been updated to include details about Kimberly Ore's current employment experience.