THE SHIT WORK.

By Lily Tuck

12 November, 2025

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6:00 p.m.
Dark, undoubtedly cold — and for a four-year-old, late.

Whichever unlucky kindergarten teacher in charge of getting the last child home was stuck with me. Often, I was the last to leave. I was being raised by a single father at the time. Busy climbing the corporate legal ladder – the senior partners weren’t all that forgiving of a hard out at 5pm. They certainly could not comprehend a father needing to leave because he had a kid at home.

Following a string of these 6pm departures and the fact the afterschool care teachers were staying far later than they had intended, my dad hired Vestavia.

Vestavia was the first nanny I ever met, she was kind, she had a boyfriend and a collection of hermit crabs (I’d help paint their shells).

But 20 years later, that’s all I can remember about her. Regardless, I feel a great deal of gratitude towards her, Vestavia helped my dad and thus helped me. 

For those raised in the noughties, the tightrope of cultural consumption was thin; were you a Foxtel kid or free-to-air? Did your parents have an iPhone? Were you allowed to rent new releases at Video Ezy? Was there a computer in the family home? Could you go on it? 

As a child of a 50/50 divorce, I played the field; half the time I was a Foxtel kid and the other half free-to-air. 

At mum’s house, 9GO! was my haven of quality television. Afternoons were filled with back-to-back marathons of The Nanny or The Brady Bunch, with special mention of any television program that ran from 65’ to the mid-seventies.

Mum would walk through the living room - her comments trailing behind along with the scent of whatever perfume Jean-Paul Gaultier was pumping out at the time.

 “Alice really does everything in that house”.

 “Look at her outfit, if only I could pull off a polka-dotted skirt suit”. 

“It won’t be long before robot Roseys are scooting around everyone’s home”

Mary Poppins was a family favourite. Emma Thompsons’ Nanny McPhee was a classic of the time. And in ‘07 I saw Scarlett Johansson took on the role of Nan in The Nanny Dairies, fired after Mrs X realises her son's bond with Nan was stronger than with her [potentially this plot went over my head].

These women, although fictional, were the icons of my adolescence.

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It’s 2023 and I’m browsing the website findababysitter.com following a recommendation from a friend who had just landed their dream job on there.

A job posting for a family with four kids comes up, they are local. I’d make more than I currently do as a check-out chick. 

Two weeks later I'm meeting the family, and two years later I am still working for them.

The only difference now, I’m in deep. 

I have become the women I grew up watching on TV, the characters who I loved for their importance in keeping the family running. 

What The Brady Bunch didn't include in the humorous storylines of Marcia’s constant annoyance with Jan was Alice’s life. 

Did Alice ever get sick and couldn't come to work?  Did she ever have to talk with Carol or Mike about a raise? Did Alice ever feel overlooked?

Nannying is the best job I've ever had, but it's also the most challenging.

Cameron Macdonald, a sociologist, spent the late nineties interviewing eighty women in the US from both sides of the employer/employee divide.

Her book Shadow Mothers isn't exactly a book I'd recommend for everyone to read, it's an academic study, and if you're not in the business of hiring a nanny or working as one it really would be a bore. 

However, to me it was the first time in the past two years I saw my feelings in print. 

Macdonald’s interviews with the women working as nannies echoed the emotions I had been struggling to grapple with for the majority of the year – how to quit your job when you are scared of losing a connection to the kids.

So often nannies find themselves in a position where their job may no longer be serving them; but walking away can be more challenging when the role is emotion driven.

Julie, a 20-year-old nanny, wanted to quit her job but stayed after the mother fell pregnant. She feared the new sibling and her departure would be too much change for the children.  

Elsa, 20, from Sweden, had stayed with a family through their divorce, so she could be available for the children. 

These nannies were constantly sacrificing something for the children. Better pay, a better job, better security and in some instances their own studies.

Despite these sacrifices, Macdonald’s findings showed that primarily, employers failed to see their nannies’ contribution as anything more than work duties.

Being a nanny is incredible; it can allow a level of flexibility other jobs simply can't offer. I study when everyone is asleep. I can take a personal call. No one is going to tell me off. 

But it's also hard, it's isolating. You have no colleagues aside from the children.

As Caitlin Flanagan put it in her 2004 Atlantic Article, How Serfdom Saved the Women’s Movement, it’s shit work. Not in the literal sense that it's shit to do the work, but in the grand scheme of parenting and child rearing, nannies do the “shit work”. 

More mannered Macdonald dubbed this “the dirty work”. Regardless of what we call it, you tackle the unpleasant elements of child raising; making food for it to be thrown on the floor, constant bench wiping, finding skiddy undies in rooms and disciplining so that the parents' time isn't tainted. 

Yes, this is what you signed up for and are paid to do, but that doesn't mean it isn't a challenge.

At 23 I’ve found myself in constant conversations that look like: 

“What do you do?” 

“I’m a nanny.” 

“Oh nice, but what do you actually do?” 

“No, that's what I do.” 

“Oh, so like a babysitter?” 

“Yeah, I guess.” 

Macdonald framed childcare as “Shadow Work”; doing what “comes naturally” to women. Requiring neither skill nor effort. Women are expected to be “naturally” empathetic; nannies are expected to “naturally” love the children. 

Families want the children to be excited you’re around which doesn’t exactly happen without emotions.

You find yourself in limbo. Do you advocate for your agreed upon hours or better pay? If doing so upsets the family, you could find yourself fired.

These children aren’t yours of course, but your emotions don’t just turn off when you leave.

When I first started, the children had acquired a Kiwi accent from their previous nanny. Now, they have -- for better or worse-- gained some of my colourful language. Overheard conversations now sound like:

“Bloody hell mate, be for real bro”

Small, maybe insignificant, but these are the little things you use to keep the bubbling resentments from seeping out. For these are the moments that validate your contributions as important.

In these moments I am Alice, I am Mary, I am Fran.

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It's midnight, I’m in an Airbnb in Hobart for my Grandma's 90th, sneaking downstairs.

I’m calling Laura Christina, a 36-year-old Peruvian woman who has worked as a nanny in Melbourne since 2023.

For Laura, it’s 8 a.m. She has returned to Peru to sort out her student visa.
The WhatsApp call lasts two hours; she speaks at length about her experiences working in Melbourne.

Our conversation is lined with the sounds of a Peruvian morning, a stark contrast to the eerie darkness of the Airbnb basement I find myself in.

Laura is kind with her time; she sends me documents and emails. I now have numerous photos, addresses, and personal numbers (just in case I might need them).

Talking to Laura was like being outside in the sun, at first her warmth and honest tone was all I felt but as the hours ticked by, I realised I’d been burnt. Her stories lingering like the residual sting of a burn.

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She got my number through Airtasker, I don't remember how, but she did. 

She explained the hours and work she needed.

“I just need you to work four hours per day, but I do need you to move to my house because you have to start at 7am to get my kid ready for school, and you will help me with a few things in the house.”

At that moment I was struggling a little with rent.

I went to her house, she introduced me to her son, he was a very good kid.

She showed me where my room would be.  

I was helping the boy get ready for school, preparing his breakfast, getting him ready for bed when he came home.

The thing is, she was in the house all day.

She was starting to ask more of me.

“Oh, can you bring me a coffee? Can you prepare me tea?”

I did everything in that house. When I’d try to have free time, she’d ask for more.

“I need you; can you check my bathroom? Can you make my bed? Oh, can you do this? Can you do that? “

It was about a week when I realised, I was really working from 7am to 9pm. 

I thought I’ll go to my room, maybe if she doesn't see me, she won't ask for things.

She started to call me.

She’d say, "Where are you?  I don't see you.” 

One day I asked permission to go to my university.

 Look, it's not like she forced me in the house. It’s not like that, but it was very difficult to leave the house, I took the bus, the closest stop was a 20 minutes’ walk.

 I didn't have a car, I didn't have a driver’s licence, and I was always in the house. 

She called me

“Where are you?”

She called again

“Where are you? What time are you coming home? I want to go on a date with my husband.”

I was very far away.

My phone was flat, I took the train, then a bus, walking the 20 minutes home. I arrived at 11pm.

The next day, she told me I would no longer be working for her.

Her husband told me not to worry, he would talk to her, I could continue my duties.

10pm, a message came through.

“Laura, can you come to the kitchen? You have to leave, do you have somewhere to go?”

I cannot leave now it's 10pm, what about my stuff?

I cannot leave now. I'll leave first thing in the morning.

They said I had to leave, or she'd call the police.

I was rushing, I wanted to leave the house. I was very scared.

I remember, I got a plastic bag, and I started trying to see where I'd left my things.

I had three days left on my old lease.

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In 2018, the Migrant Justice Institute produced a national study of Au Pairs in Australia.

Of the 1500 au pairs surveyed, a third had been terminated early with 36 per cent being given zero to one day’s notice.

Laura doesn’t use Airtasker to find nannying jobs anymore, instead opting for sites like findababysitter.com and We Need A Nanny.

She now works with a family in Moonee Ponds.

“I feel very comfortable; I feel a part of the family.”  Laura says her new boss treats her “like a friend”.

Of course, you can technically take your employer to the Fair Work Commission. But more often than not, those working in this field don’t even know they have qualified for these basic workers’ rights.

We have anywhere from 7,000 to 30,000 working nannies in Australia (according to the ABS and the Australian Nanny Association).

But given the off-the-books nature, we can assume its significantly more; and filled with stories much like Laura’s.

It took 23 years for me to realise Alices, and Marys and Frans were a thing of fiction.

The modern nanny isn’t them, and nannies never really were. Modern nannies are red socks lost in a load of whites, spinning; invisible to the naked eye, but sooner or later their remnants will become evident. Even if it’s just hermit crabs and boyfriends.