‘Nanny shaming’ sparks uproar with baby sitters, mommy groups

Between 11 p.m. and midnight on June 21, Randy Howk received a flurry of emails. Friends told the father of two that his family’s beloved nanny was unwittingly playing a starring role on mommy Facebook groups around the city.

A bystander had posted a photo on the page of the 18,000-member group NYC Moms — Upper East Side, showing the cellphone-toting baby sitter and Howk’s 9-month-old daughter, Alexandra, at the Asphalt Green playground. The post was subsequently shared on other groups, including the 36,000-member UES Mommas.

“This nanny … kept a baby tied in a stroller for two hours and her older sister, Aria, [sic] unattended in the playground today,” the caption read. “Please tell their family.”

What happened next is a perfect illustration of the bitter divide over the “nanny shaming” posts that are swiftly proliferating on social media. On one side stands parents — and a few nannies — who believe the call-outs are justified. On the other stands a different set of parents — and most nannies — who claim such posts are, at the very least, inflammatory and, at worst, ruining the reputation of innocent caregivers.

That night, Howk and his wife, Elle Sherman, were understandably alarmed. But since it was late, they didn’t immediately contact their sitter of more than a year, who asked to be identified by her first initial, C.

“Coincidentally, while they were at the playground, C sent us a snapshot of Alexandra asleep in her stroller, almost identical to the one [that was] posted,” Howk, a 50-year-old actor and website designer, tells The Post. “At the time, we thought, ‘It’s good that she’s taking a nap.’ She was safely harnessed, not ‘tied in.’ ”

‘Nannies are increasingly afraid in case they are going to be called out for some perceived infraction.’

A call with C the following morning dispelled any lingering doubts they might have had. Upset about the post, C insisted that Alexandra had been sleeping on and off in the stroller, while her outgoing 4-year-old sister, Ariah, ran around talking and playing. “I would never neglect your girls,” the nanny told Howk.

Meanwhile, tempers were running high in the Facebook groups where the image was posted. Many moms applauded the poster for her vigilance.

“It takes a village,” one wrote.

Some comments were just ugly: C was branded “a hood rat” by one and criticized for her long, painted, “dirty” nails by another.

Others slammed the poster, questioning why she hadn’t said anything to C about the presumed “neglect.” Nannies and moms alike defended the caregiver, saying that it was impossible to know “the full story” and that the photo-taker had invaded the privacy of both nanny and child. Couldn’t she at least have blurred their faces?

The debate equally intrigued and horrified Queens resident Grace Lee, 25, who went into full-time child care shortly after becoming a tutor following high school. Now working on the Upper West Side, she says she belongs to many Facebook groups where nanny shaming is a regular occurrence.

“It happens a lot,” Lee tells The Post. “Nannies are increasingly afraid in case they are going to be called out for some perceived infraction.”

A rash of recent posts show nannies shopping with their young charges in stores like T.J.Maxx, or sitting at the hairdresser or a nail salon, talking on their phones. Some posts have even shown them sleeping — or at least closing their eyes — on the job.

“So many assumptions are made after chance encounters,” Lee says. “How do these posters even know the woman is a nanny and not the mother? African-American and Caribbean women are more often assumed to be nannies, while white women are not.

“As an Asian, I got lucky because the last few kids I was looking after were mixed-race,” she continues. “As an American citizen, I can stand up for myself. But lots of other nannies can’t. One misunderstood post could cost them their livelihood.”

Then again, Lee says, “if there is abuse — someone is obviously hitting a child or doing something horrible — people should say something. Don’t let them out of your sight until a police officer arrives. Don’t just take a photograph and post it on social media when you get home.”

Rena, an Upper West Side mother of five, has another take. In April 2018, she spotted a toddler running around tossing books at the Barnes & Noble on West 82nd Street. Rena, who doesn’t want her last name printed for fear of retribution, spotted the child’s nanny talking on the phone while sitting with his younger brother, seemingly ignoring both children.

Rena posted the nanny’s photograph to UWS Mommas (19,000 members) with the caption: “My daughter and I were there for about a half-hour and this nanny barely looked up from her phone … I hope someone recognizes her so the parents can be alerted.”

The post drew 450 comments — some supportive, others accusing her of racism — and became so heated that site administrators pulled the plug.

“Would I do the same thing again?” Rena asks. “Absolutely, hands down. I make no apologies. We all need to look out for each other and keep our children safe.”

Nanny-shaming posts seem to be received more favorably in mommy Facebook groups whose members are mostly from Russia or Ukraine. Mother of two Yelena Pikman, 35, an events coordinator from Staten Island, says call-outs are often featured on Russian Parents, which has 20,000 members in New York. “I love the fact that a person in the community can see something wrong and post it,” says Pikman. “What better way to be able to show something than on social media, where there is a high chance the parent will be found and a disaster may be avoided?”

It was a shaming post that alerted a Brooklyn mother of two that her 2-year-old son was being abused by the sitter she’d employed for 18 months. The woman, a speech pathologist, fired her nanny within hours after another mother photographed the sitter “screaming” at the child, shaking his stroller and “shoving his pacifier into his mouth.”

“I recognized our nanny on my neighborhood Facebook group that same morning and contacted the poster,” the mom says. “What she told me was shocking. We had cameras in every room, except the bathroom, and had never seen any aggressive behavior in the past … Who knows what else she might have done to my son?”

Randy Howk and Elle Sherman took a very different course. Bent on defending their nanny, they asked the poster to delete her “wrongful” shaming photo of C. A day later, she did so — but she couldn’t remove the screenshots that had spread to other Facebook groups.

Sherman, a lawyer, retaliated by posting an open letter to the original group, describing the “hurt” the poster had caused with her “disdain and disapproval toward my black baby sitter.” Meanwhile, Howk plastered the accuser’s own headshot on several mommy Facebook groups, naming her new employer and sharing links to her social-media accounts.

Then he went further, contacting her workplace “to let them know that their new employee tried to sabotage the career of a young woman.”

His message received no response, but Howk is still satisfied.

“She got a taste of her own medicine,” says Howk.

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