BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : SEPTEMBER 18, 2000 ISSUE
WORKING LIFE Nannies on Speed Dial There is a growing army of domestic help out there, and more and more families are picking up the phone For Dorian Mintzer, mother of a 3-year-old, having a housekeeper, a babysitter, and a grocery delivery service was no longer enough. Never able to find time to organize her office, let alone wade through old magazines and photos, the 54-year-old psychologist hired Chaos Consulting, a two-year-old Boston firm, to sort through her mess. For $40 an hour, Abby Goldenfarb, the company's self-described obsessive-compulsive owner, creates files and scrapbooks and figures out which papers to toss. Since January, Mintzer has paid her personal organizer more than $5,000, and she says she's worth every cent. ''There's only so much you can juggle,'' Mintzer says. ''This helps me feel less overwhelmed.'' Forget Superwoman. Now, many working women with children have become Superdelegators, paying people to perform all kinds of tasks they can't or don't want to fit into their frantic lives. Entrepreneurs are eager to respond to the time crunch, creating businesses unimaginable just a few years ago. These companies comprise a rapidly growing Mommy industry, filled with workers ready to do almost anything to help harried parents--even as some experts worry that parents might be delegating too much. ACCOUNTS PAYABLE. Child care is only the beginning. There are breast-feeding consultants, baby-proofing agencies, emergency babysitting services, companies specializing in paying nanny taxes, and others that install hidden cameras to spy on babysitters' behavior. People can hire bill payers, birthday party planners, kiddie taxi services, personal assistants, personal chefs, and, of course, household managers to oversee all the personnel. Sound self-indulgent? Not at all, says Monica Frei Jenkins, president of Town & Country Resources in Palo Alto, Calif., which places all sorts of household help. ''If we don't invest in taking the stress away, we do our children a disservice,'' she says, noting that too much household stress increases the potential for divorce. ''Women are beginning to realize they have choices. They don't have to do everything themselves and be ragged.'' Indeed, requests for help are skyrocketing. At Town & Country, where some of the company's nannies make as much as $60,000 annually, there were 1,200 household employees placed last year, up 35% from the year before. Demand for personal assistants and household managers was especially high, Jenkins said, with families finding that a personal assistant running errands for just five hours a week substantially reduces stress. Also popular: night baby nurses. Some new mothers back at work hire nurses for several months, says Jenkins, so they can sleep through the night, concentrate at work, and ''be sane.'' Many of these businesses flourish because already-strained family support systems are getting even weaker. Even grandparents who live nearby often can't help out these days, since they are still working themselves. ''We are frequently the gift from Grandma,'' said Barbara Marcus, president of Brookline (Mass.)-based Parents in a Pinch Inc., which provides emergency child-care services like supplying backup babysitters when the nanny calls in sick. The company, which placed caregivers in more than 7,000 jobs last year--up 25% from three years ago--can send screened, trained babysitters to parents' homes on as little as 10 minutes' notice. But the help comes at a hefty price. Parents not only pay $9 an hour to the sitter but also a $60 referral fee to the agency for every day the sitter works. For some parents, time is a lot scarcer than money. So they don't flinch at paying high fees for last-minute child care or for people to do a wide variety of menial chores. That's why Suzanne Langenwalter, a ''handy ma'am'' in New York City, can charge up to $50 an hour for her services. Langenwalter, who runs Jill of All Trades, does bookkeeping, babyproofs homes, organizes closets, plasters walls, and has even packed up the contents of entire houses in only a few days. Clients ask her to pack, vs. the movers, she says, because they trust her to sort through their belongings and throw the junk out. ''People don't have time to look at all their stuff,'' she said. ''I know what's important.'' People who work for major corporations often can get such help through their jobs. Many progressive companies now offer wide-ranging concierge services, staffed with people who will do almost anything that's legal. Circles, a Boston-based service that works with 50 companies, often plans vacations for clients' employees and finds them tickets to sold-out shows. Circles staffers have even tracked down a salad dressing from a Los Angeles restaurant that supposedly helps pregnant women go into labor. Companies are also making it easier for employees to run their own errands. At 3Com Corp. in Santa Clara, Calif., for instance, workers can get their dry cleaning picked up directly from their cubicles. They also can walk to their parking lot to go to a dentist, whose office is set up in a van. NO SUBSTITUTE. Employees certainly need this help, but they also need to know when they must focus on their families, says Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute in New York City and author of Ask the Children. ''Kids do best when it's clear they are a priority in their parents' lives,'' Galinsky says, adding that how people parent matters more than whether they work or not. Companies that provide backup child care for sick kids may ease stress for working parents, Galinsky notes, but they're not letting employees stay home with children who are ill. And those that provide sitters for parents who must work the weekend are certainly freeing employees from worrying about their children's well-being, but they're not allowing them to spend the day with their families. Sometimes mommy services can backfire. Lynn Corsiglia, a human resources executive in California, remembers the disappointment in her daughter's eyes when the girl discovered that someone had been hired to help organize her birthday party. ''I realized that I blew the boundary,'' she says. ''To her, organizing the party was part of the event.'' Corsiglia apologized, and then sat down with her daughter as she started to cry. Party planners can dredge up fears in parents, too. Liz Nagengast, co-owner of New York City-based In Tandem Productions, which plans elaborate children's parties that cost from $400 to $17,000, says she has never seen any kids upset at her events. But parents often worry about how they'll be judged by other families. ''A lot of parents call and say they don't want something to look ostentatious,'' she said. Sometimes, parents are so stressed that caregivers must spend time trying to get them to relax and focus on their children. Diane Lipton Dennis, president and CEO of Lipton Corporate Child Care Centers Inc., which offers emergency child care, says she tries to encourage parents--without insulting them--to take a minute to hear about their children's day. ''People don't have time to stop and listen and just be,'' she said. Sometimes, they don't even bother to drop their children off at her emergency center, which they have never seen, she said, recalling a child who arrived in a limousine. She winces at the taxi services that routinely ferry children to the pediatrician or shuttle children as young as eight months to the day care center. Some even pay someone else to take kids to their shrinks--a ride experts like Corsiglia believe should be handled by the family. Indeed, Corsiglia figures parents should interrupt work for anything involving their child's health, safety, and emotional well-being. Without that kind of bottom line, stressed-out parents can fall into a consumer trap, forgetting that there are some things money just shouldn't buy. By Rochelle Sharpe in Boston _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP					RELATED ITEMS The New Debate over Working Moms TABLE: What Price Success? Nannies on Speed Dial TABLE: Mommy Inc. Work at Home? First, Get Real TABLE: Advice from the Front INTERACT E-Mail to Business Week Online

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