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Stephanie Kiser's childhood in a financially strapped family in North Providence, Rhode Island was a far cry from the lives of the privileged children she cared for as a nanny. In this memoir, Kiser alternates anecdotes about her impoverished young years with stories about the mega-rich families she worked for, who resided in Manhattan, and vacationed in places like the Hamptons and Florida.
Author Stephanie Kiser
An apartment building in North Providence, Rhode Island
Apartment buildings on the Upper East Side, New York
Rich kids going to school
When Kiser majored in 'Writing for Film and Television' at Boston's Emerson College, she had no intention of being a nanny. However Stephanie's HUGE student loan, which required monthly payments of $1000 (almost entirely for the interest) gave her little choice about employment. Stephanie had to make enough money to pay her rent, take care of her bills, commute around the city, occasionally lend money to her parents, and service her student loan - and nannying was the only job that paid enough. (In some ways, this book is a cautionary tale about student loans, as Kiser wonders if her 'good education' was worth the box it put it her in employment-wise.)
Stephanie Kiser
To contrast her own life with that of the rich kids she minded, Kiser compares her childhood to that of her 5-year-old charge Ruby, who attended an Episcopal school with the children of Drew Barrymore, Robert De Niro, Steve Martin, and other celebrities.
Drew Barrymore and her children
Robert De Niro and his daughter
Steve Martin with his wife and daughter
In the after school hours, Ruby might play in Central Park, get mint chocolate chip ice cream, and be treated to random indulgences on the way back to her family's luxurious Upper East Side apartment. Stephanie writes, "With Ruby I eat gourmet sandwiches from Dean & Deluca and take Ubers across town to celebrated museums."
Stephanie Kiser
About her own childhood, Stephanie remembers growing up in a run-down apartment with young parents who had too little maturity and too much responsibility. She notes, "My own childhood was calls from debt collectors, pets that never lasted longer than a few months, and [during hard times] strict portion control that often sent my sisters and me to bed hungry."
Stephanie was employed by a number of families during her seven-year-stint as a child-minder, and some jobs were better than others. Among Kiser's favorite nanny jobs was her first, working for a woman called Sasha and her husband. In this home, Kiser looked after three children: the above-mentioned Ruby, Ruby's little brother Hunter, and a baby (when he came along).
Stephanie's employer Sasha was 35-years-old, came from a wealthy family, graduated from Yale, and did not work, but was on the board of myriad fundraising committees. Kiser says, "It's part of a strange phenomenon on the Upper East Side, where women of great means spend decades preparing to attend prestigious schools like Princeton and Stanford, only to obtain degrees they never apply to a career....The working mom is a rarity - and, in many instances, the least respected on the totem pole of motherhood." (Note: This lack of ambition seems very strange to me.)
Upper East Side moms
Nannies in Central Park with their charges
In any case, though Kiser was a full-time nanny, Sasha was still a hands on mother to her children. Sasha would be dressed and ready when Stephanie arrived to work each morning, and Sasha would prepare food; play with the kids; shower them with affection; and often take them to activities herself.
Kiser worked for Sasha's family for several years, and has many stories about her employment there, including visiting the Florida mansion of Sasha's wealthy parents. The vacation home, on an island near Palm Beach, is a nine-bedroom, eleven bathroom estate, large enough to house twenty people comfortably. There are palm trees and a running trail, golf carts to drive from one part of the yard to another, a putting green, a hot tub, a pool, a fountain, a private beach, and more.
Example of a Florida estate
Stephanie compares this to her family vacations when she was a child. Once, the Kisers went to a Howard Johnsons beachside motel in the dead of winter, when rates were affordable; another 'vacation' was a trip to Pennsylvania for Stephanie's basketball tournament, where the hotel was so gnarly that Stephanie's mother developed impetigo from the 'hot tub', and Stephanie played the last two days with strep throat.
Example of a Howard Johnsons Motel
One of Kiser's less fun jobs was working for a woman called Stefany and her husband, whose children were a 6-year-old boy named Digby and his baby brother Sampson. Digby would call his brother "stupid ugly baby"; scream at Stephanie, "Don't talk to me! I hate you! Dumb fat, Stephanie!"; and call Stephanie "stupid, foolish, and non-use." Digby's mother didn't discourage this behavior, and told Kiser, "My philosophy is no discipline. Digby is a good boy; he needs guidance, not regulation."
Kiser writes, "Digby is not a bad kid....but a 'no discipline' philosophy has taught him that being cruel is acceptable." During a group playdate, Digby acted out, sang raunchy songs, and slapped another child, but his mother didn't react. Digby also purposely soiled his pants every day, and Kiser was expected to wash his underwear after cleaning off the poop.
Kiser found Stefany difficult in many ways: Stefany was poor before marrying into her husband's rich family, and she spoke openly about her current wealth, taking every opportunity to mention something the family owned or a vacation they'd gone on.
By contrast, when Kiser mentioned moving into a new building with a terrace and a gym, Stefany responded, "A gym, huh?" Kiser observes, "There is a hostility in her voice that I have heard her use with others - waitstaff or secretaries, people with whom she has only brief interactions and whom she decides are less than her." When a worker remodeling Stefany's kitchen asked to use the bathroom, Stefany said, "I'm sorry; would you mind driving into town to use the bathroom? There's a Starbucks there. It's only ten minutes away."
When Kiser decided to quit the job with Stefany, she called her nanny agency to confirm she was leaving. Kiser's agent said she wasn't surprised; the previous nanny went to lunch one day and never returned. Stefany thought the nanny might have been murdered or kidnapped, but the girl told [the agency] she was fine; she just couldn't spend a single moment longer working for that woman.
Kiser writes much more about being a nanny, and intersperses the nanny stories with numerous tales about her past. As a kid, Kiser was a terrible student; had a hard time learning to read; was in the disabilities program for years; was overweight.....and stuffed herself with food whenever she got the chance; had an uneasy relationship with her mother; had a father who kept leaving the family for other women; etc. In short, Stephanie had a difficult time of it.
Then, when Kiser was in middle school, she showed a surprising talent as a basketball player. This led to a scholarship to a toney high school called Lincoln School for Girls. There Stephanie met her best friend Lila, and she writes a good deal about their relationship, which had highs and lows. In any case, Stephanie eventually managed to raise her grades enough to be accepted to Emerson College (which led to her humongous student debt).
Lincoln School for Girls
Kiser even ventures into politics when she admits to blindly going along with her family's staunch support for the Republicans, whose policies actually harmed people in the Kisers' socioeconomic class. Kiser was enlightened by Hillary Clinton's book, 'Hard Choices', which led to a 180 degree change in Stephanie's views. 👍
Kiser also writes about other nannies she met during her employment, and their kind of 'nanny club' that organized playdates among their charges, and gave them the chance to share concerns and advice. Some of the nannies were immigrants, well past retirement age, who still worked 12-hour-days.
Kiser was about to quit nannying when the Covid pandemic hit, and she had no choice but to move in with her employers for the duration of the crisis, for safety reasons. Some of Kiser's nanny friends, who had families of their own - and couldn't live with their employers - were summarily fired; a few nannies even showed up to work to find their employers had left New York for their vacation homes, without informing the staff. (Goes to show how some entitled rich people conduct themselves.)
Kiser makes many cogent observations about women in this memoir. In Kiser's role as a nanny, especially during the Covid pandemic, when she lived with her 'kids', Kiser was privy to the private lives of her families. Thus she notes that, "Women, regardless of their age, race, or tax bracket, were overshadowed by the men they were associated with. Whether it was a stay-at-home mother watching the children from dawn to dusk or one with a master's degree and a job at the UN, when the weekends came the story remained the same. These women would busy themselves cooking, cleaning, and caring for the children, while the men carried on with their lives."
Thinking of her own childhood, and her mother's problems, Stephanie goes on to say, "The fact was, Americans supported working wives, so long as the women still did all the things they'd done when they didn't work......Women in America were f**d. Poor, minority, and uneducated women in America were doubly f**d."
Kiser is now a writer and an executive assistant at a tech company. Who knows, maybe she'll even break into television and movies. 🙂
I became interested in Upper East Side families when I read Primates of Park Avenue by Wednesday Martin. Kiser's memoir, which addresses the topic from a different angle, is a good follow-up; it's interesting and suffused with self-deprecating humor. Highly recommended.
Stephanie Kiser
Thanks to Netgalley, Stephanie Kiser, and Sourcebooks for a copy of the book.
Rating: 4 stars
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