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Chinese family cares for faithful old nanny for 42 years

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A 98-year-old woman from southwest China has been taken care for the past 42 years by the family she once served as a nanny and maid, a newspaper revealed....

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LIVERMORE - The baby-sitter accused of abusing a baby boy was caught on video by a surveillance camera in the Livermore toddler's bedroom, according to court documents.

Moriah Gonzales, 20, was arrested Feb. 19 after the 13-month-old boy's parents called Livermore police when they reviewed the Nest "nanny camera" footage showing the alleged child abuse.

The camera was hidden in the boy's room and shows Gonzales initially holding him face to face and pacing with him to try to calm him down as he cried, Livermore police Officer Taylor Burruss said in a report.

The crying could be heard in the video and Gonzales is seen placing her hands closer to the boy's face and muffling his cry, the report said. The baby began to squirm and kick and soon went limp, Burruss wrote.

Once limp, Gonzales flung him over her shoulder, with the back of his head on her shoulder but facing up, he said. Burruss further described the video: When the woman moved her hands away from the boy's face, clear whimpering could be heard, and his arms extended out, appearing limp. Then the video shows her putting him back in his crib and leaving the boy's room.

The incident reportedly occurred Feb. 18 at 10:53 a.m. One of the boy's parents discovered the footage the same day around 3 p.m., police said. The mother told Gonzales to leave and then called police.

Burruss said he contacted Gonzales the next day and said her statement about putting the boy down for his nap was inconsistent with what he saw in the video. She seemed surprised that there was a nanny camera in the room, he said, and she denied hurting the boy.

The Alameda County District Attorney's Office charged Gonzales with one count of felony child abuse on Feb. 22. She will appear in Alameda County Superior Court in Pleasanton on Friday to enter a plea.

Gonzales has advertised her services on Care.com. Livermore police ask anyone who utilized the woman's services to call 925-294-7531.

Care.com offers background check services, including criminal, for parents on request. A company spokesperson said they contacted law enforcement to see if they can provide any assistance relating to her arrest.

"We are deeply troubled by this incident and our thoughts are with the family," the statement said.

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East Bay baby-sitter arrested for child abuse was caught on 'nanny cam'

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LIVERMORE - The baby-sitter accused of abusing a baby boy was caught on video by a surveillance camera in the Livermore toddler's bedroom, according to court documents. Moriah Gonzales, 20, was arrested Feb. 19 after the 13-month-old boy's parents called Livermore police when they reviewed the Nest "nanny camera" footage showing the alleged child abuse.

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a) What is the thesis/main argument of the piece?

b) What types of evidence are used?  Statistics, interviews, pie charts, something else?

c) What piece of evidence do you think is the most effective for you as a reader?   Why do you find it to be particularly effective?

d) How do you plan to use this source in your HCP?

e) How do you know it is a scholarly source?   Look up some information about the author.  What are her/his credentials?

In this journal, Karen argues that finding an affordable facility is challenge. He indicates that full-day care for one child can often cost more than the tuition at a public university, which can show perfectly the expensive cost. More over, another evidence is the low raking of salary of child-care workers in the country, which contributes to high staff turnover and high child-staff ratios. He also attaches many graphs and pictures as evidence in the journal. The attached graph is the most effective evidence. One of these is a graph showing that, in 1994, half of the children were cared for in organized day-care facilities or by preschools and family-care providers. It is also useful for me to attach in my paper to indicate the importance of nannies and address the seriousness of the problems.

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Introduction

About 13 million children under age 6 get daily care from someone other than their parents. For many working families, finding child-care that stimulates their children's physical, emotional and intellectual development is a continuing problem. For others, simply finding an affordable facility is the challenge. Full-day care for one child can often cost more than the tuition at a public university. Still, child-care workers rank among the lowest paid in the country, which contributes to high staff turnover and high child-staff ratios. Several studies say U.S. child care is so poor it threatens children's health and development. But conservatives challenge the findings and urge Congress not to increase subsidies for child-care or set federal standards for providers.

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About 13 million children under age 6 get daily care from someone other than their parents. For many working families, finding child-care that stimulates their children's physical, emotional and intellectual development is a continuing problem. For others, simply finding an affordable facility is the challenge.

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Relationships: how to manage the nanny-child bond without feeling threatened

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I know I sound ungrateful, but my strong-willed six-year-old son has bonded with our nanny better than with me. She has been with us since my son was two months old. His twin older sisters are easy...

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Cameron Macdonald spent five years interviewing 34 professional mothers and 50 caregivers of their young children to examine the intricacies of the relationships that take place between two women who share the responsibilities of raising a child.

She calls them-the nannies and au pairs-shadow mothers. The role that working mothers expect from the shadow mothers is paradoxical: form a strong emotional bond with the children while at the same time never, ever threatening the mother's place. "To be simultaneously present and absent in the children's lives."

I spoke with Macdonald this week about her new book, Shadow Mothers, and the women who trusted her with the complex emotional territory of mothering and care-giving. Her take on the plight of the working mother? It's not her problem alone, it's the nation's.
The overwhelming idea of the "perfect mom" and the fraught relationship between mothers and nannies seem a recent phenomenon. Did previous generations have such contentious relationships, or did everyone simply "know their place?"
There have rarely been times in history when middle-class and upper-class American families didn't have someone helping them with childcare. When we look back at earlier periods of domestic work, either immigrants or slaves in the south, there was very much a separation of roles.

For example, certain aspects of mothering were attached to certain tasks. Historically it was completely acceptable to have wet nurses because that was considered a 'menial' part of mothering. The 'moral' part of mothering-where the mother felt it was her place to step in--had to do with introducing kids to society and passing on culture and heritage.

One of the crises that we see today is that the day-to-day acts of breastfeeding, diapering and creating activities for toddlers---which used to be things a mother would delegate to someone else-- psychologists and developmental experts now tell us are critical to the mother-child connection. If you're not home with your child doing these things, then you're depriving your child of something. Namely, you.

Today so much emphasis is placed on the mother-infant bond in forming secure attachments in later life and in later achievement. When you combine that with the fact that the majority of mothers of young children work outside the home-- then you have a real tension. Ed note: (66% of mothers with young children work outside the home as of 2009).
A lot of the relationships between mothers and caregivers in the book focus on jealousy over-attachment between the caregiver and the child. When an upset child reaches for a shadow mother over her real mother, what is the mother going through?
The moms went through a range of emotions. There's a sense for most women that it hurts, that their first impulse was to always want to be the one their baby sought for comfort. That's understandable.

What they did with that feeling was where mothers differed. Maybe the feeling was 'I'm a bad mom.' Or maybe, 'this is natural for a child with multiple caregivers.' There was the it hurts but I'm glad that my child has a nanny that she loves response.

On the other hand there was the mom who strategically hired au pairs only on one year contracts which, by default, makes the mother the central attachment in the child's life. And there was also the one who fired the nanny when the child would reach for her first.
What is the caregiver thinking?
The nannies tended to think that the "who does the child reach for test" was a ridiculous measure of whether that child was attached to the parent. But they also felt that it was part of their job description to make sure that didn't happen.

And so both mother and caregiver create necessary fictions, both in the way that the job is managed and also managing the appearance of their relationship. They create boundaries around certain "mother-only tasks," symbolic things like who gives the bath or the use of the word mommy. These were ways of enhancing the image of the mother-child relationship while at the same time lowering the perceived intensity of the image of the nanny child relationships.
Why do some mothers desire a caregiver who has no emotion for their kids. And if they don't, why are they so upset when they see signs of it? Is it proof that working mothers are simply selfish?
On the one hand, you want a caregiver that is going to make your children happy, that they're going to love. Many mothers say "Yes, my kids love the nanny, they're so happy to see her when she comes," and in the same breath say, "but when she leaves it's no big deal" with no sense of the paradox there.

But I don't think it's selfish. Working moms are in a very untenable position. The women I interviewed were not Nanny Diaries mothers. They worked hard at work, they worked hard at parenting and they worked hard at being a good employer. They wanted their children to have a good relationship with their caregiver.

What's most poignant about the data that I found is that these are not the horror stories. These people have the best intentions, and so the problems stem from outside of their relationships: structural problems of unyielding workplaces, impossible mothering standards that are then expressed in these relationships between mother and caregiver.
Part of the perfect mother ideal of so many upper middle class women, working or not, includes the idea of preparing the perfect child-taking him to French, Tae Kwon Do and robotics classes from an extremely young age. Do you think it's mother's guilt that results in over-structuring and outlandishly high expectations of their child?
I do think that the moms, particularly the ones who worked long hours, had a fictionalized image of stay-at-home moms and also an image of what they would do "if they were home." This went along with class-based assessments of their nanny's strengths and shortcomings, and her ability to help raise a child who would grow up to be successful.

Part of the mother's job is the transmission of social class, and mothers often worried that a nanny from a different background couldn't give their children the strategic benefits that they might if they were home.

The structuring of activities also this idea of maximizing the child's potential in every way. If the nanny isn't as social as mom would like her to be, she's going to have them at art classes or dance classes. And if the nanny's not as educated, mom's going to send them to the library or the science museum.

Mothers who had more flexible work arrangements felt less of this need for control, and had more of an understanding and realistic of the expectations of their children. As their nannies said, "The kid's two. He wants to go to the same park, eat the same food, see the same kids because that's what toddlers do."
It seems that the only person in control of such a fraught relationship is the mother. So what is the solution? How can a mother change her behavior and her own sense of self-worth in order to have a healthier relationship with her children's caregiver?
I think that actually these are public problems and it would be unfair for us to argue for a private, self-help solution. I think that the structure of work needs to be more flexible to allow moms and dads to have the time they need to feel secure in their own parenting. Those parents who felt secure had a much easier time delegating to someone else.

I think we need to lightenup culturally about competitive mothering and the idea of a perfectible child. There's a lot of debate on how much our brain changes and grows throughout the life course, and how much we grow and change socially and emotionally throughout our lives. And we seem to be at a moment when we target early childhood and infancy. It's a little unreasonable and it's creating a tremendous amount of pressure.
With women now making up more than 50% of the workforce, you'd think that both men and women taking time and responsibility for their children would be equally accepted. Yet it seems the opposite is true: when a man takes time out from his workday for parenting, he's a "good dad" while a woman doing the same is considered a "bad worker." What do you make of this?
My research looked at college-educated, managerial and professional women. That's where the double standard is particularly acute. The message to women is that if you want to play with the big boys, you play by our rules.

At the same time feminism has achieved a certain victory in creating a sense that it's appropriate for men to take some role in their children's' lives. This is not to say that dads don't face a work-family strain. But research on working dads shows that the kinds of care that they do are very different from the kinds of things mom does. If someone has to stay home sick with a kid all day it's the mom. Sports events, it's dad.

Mother's tasks are often unexpected, more time intensive and more frequent-requiring more time away from the office.
There's so much attention paid to stay-at-home moms as we bolster the idea that mothering is a legitimate full time "job." But her self-empowerment seems to come at the expense of the working mother, making her feel that she will never be "as good" at home. Or, in many cases, "as good" at work. What psychological state does this leave the mother in?
I think it's important to emphasize that it's the idea of the at-home mom that's so detrimental. Not the at-home moms themselves. It's class specific too. If you're a single mom or your partner works in a blue collar job and you need to work, there's an understanding that it's tough but acceptable.

For professional women who have invested a lot in education, training and their careers, the comparison to the at-home mom is difficult. They don't want their child to be deprived because they work. Plus, there is a heightened tension because they're educated; there's a feeling that no one else can meet their children's needs the way they could, and so there's the desire to stay home.

But we also know from studies on the topic that you can't just take time off and from a demanding career expect to come back on the same rung of the ladder. It's unrealistic, and yet that's what [mothers] worry about all the time.

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Who's Your Mommy? The Secret Struggle Between Mothers And Nannies

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One of the crises that we see today is that the day-to-day acts of breastfeeding, diapering and creating activities for toddlers---which used to be things a mother would delegate to someone else-- psychologists and developmental experts now tell us are critical to the mother-child connection.

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An encounter as a baby-sitter with an incompetent mother laid the seed for Sian Heder's short film `Mother,' which confronts a female dilemma.

CANNES, France - When Sian Heder arrived in Hollywood a few years ago with dreams of becoming an actress and screenwriter, she made ends meet working for a nanny agency that provided baby-sitters for children of guests staying at four-star hotels.

"It was kind of the most perfect job for somebody who had other agendas, because they would call you and say, 'Can you be at the Beverly Hills Hotel in an hour?' " Heder said as she sat at an outdoor cafe here.

But there was one day when the door to the top suite at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills opened and what happened next would lead Heder to write and direct a 15-minute dark comedy called "Mother" that is in competition at this year's Cannes Film Festival, in the short films category. It screens today.

"Right away it was clear she was drunk or something was off, she was on pills or something," Heder recalled. "The woman had been in the room for a day and it looked trashed.

"It was almost as though this woman had been looking to hire a friend or a confidant. She had come to the hotel to have an affair. She didn't have any friends, she was hiding out from her husband, she had this toddler with her, and she had never been alone with the toddler before, she'd only had a nanny, and she wasn't able to bring the nanny because the nanny would tell the husband about the affair. She had no clue how to put a diaper on the kid."

Over the course of the night, she learned that the woman had come from no money, married a wealthy guy who wanted children and got stuck with motherhood without really knowing what to do.

"I so wanted to take the kid," Heder said. "It was the most absurd kind of abuse I had ever seen. The little kid wasn't being beaten. There was just this narcissism and neglect.... So, I left the room and went to the concierge and said, 'I'm really worried about this kid. Can you do something about it?' And he said, 'If there is no abuse taking place, we really can't do anything.' "

Heder thought of calling the county or state, but then thought, " 'I'm really in this woman's life for one night, I have no idea what her history is, maybe this is just some bad time for her.' I left the hotel, got in my car and cried the whole way home, and I thought, I should have taken that kid."

It so happened that Heder had been writing scenes and character studies about a wayward girl who lives out of her van for a possible screenplay. The idea then came to her for a short film about a young woman who sleeps in her car, eats from trays of food left outside hotel rooms and is unexpectedly thrust into baby-sitting a toddler with an irresponsible mother. The movie ends with a troubling scene that makes audiences wonder what happens next.

The script for "Mother" was one of eight chosen, out of hundreds of applicants, to be awarded a grant and a fellowship with the Directing Workshop for Women at the American Film Institute. She was given $5,000 and then three weeks to raise the rest of the money to make the film.

Heder, 28, and her boyfriend, David Newsom, 44, a fellow actor who produced the film, said they raised the additional $15,000 by writing to friends and acquaintances, and even setting up a website that solicited money for the project. Newsom said investors were told up front they wouldn't make money in return.

"I had people who sent me $10 and I had people who sent me $2,000," she said.

The film, which features Angela Featherstone as the boozy mother and Ashleigh Sumner as the reluctant baby-sitter, was filmed over five days last summer at the Loews Beverly Hills Hotel. Heder said they contacted numerous hotels before they found one that was willing to cooperate.

"We're approaching these hotels and saying, 'Hey, AFI is a nonprofit, we're poor filmmakers, we're struggling to make this film,' [and they said], 'OK, $15,000 a night.' We're going, 'That's our whole budget.' We finally found this hotel that gave us the presidential suite, the executive suite and use of the hallway for four days for $4,500."

Heder, who has worked off-Broadway as well as in TV and films, grew up in Cambridge, Mass. The daughter of artists attended the theater program at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Heder said she submitted the film to various festivals and was rejected by about a dozen of them. But after someone at AFI submitted it to Cannes on her behalf, she received a call that she initially thought was a joke: A man with "a heavy, thick French" accent called her cellphone to say she had been accepted.

"I'm like, 'Who is this really?' "

Heder said her next project is a feature-length film, a spin-off of "Mother." She already has a screenplay called "Tallulah." Now she hopes to find financing, estimating she will need $2 million to $3 million.

She said her film explores a female dilemma: Who is meant to become a mother?

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An encounter as a baby-sitter with an incompetent mother laid the seed for Sian Heder's short film `Mother,' which confronts a female dilemma. CANNES, France - When Sian Heder arrived in Hollywood a few years ago with dreams of becoming an actress and screenwriter, she made ends meet working for a nanny agency that provided baby-sitters for children of guests staying at four-star hotels.

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something good

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Copyright © Shed Media Group & Ricochet Supernanny, Jo Frost, is on a mission to help desperate parents with their challenging children. For More Supernanny, visit: http://www.supernanny.co.uk/

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1. institute moms?
2.emotional care
3.difference between children taken care by nannies and those taken care by moms
4. what about their own children