Where did all the baby sitters go?

In the endless quest for time alone, parents are poring over websites, perusing MySpace pages – and paying a premium.

from the May 16, 2007 edition

Page 1 of 3

As a new mother, Aliza Sherman-Risdahl hired her first baby sitter last fall when her daughter was 3 months old. Instead of relying on traditional word of mouth to get names, she turned to two less conventional sources: the Internet and the university newspaper in Anchorage, Alaska, where she and her husband live.

"I've found four good sitters this way," she says.

What could be called the great baby-sitter shortage is leading some parents to consider creative new ways to search for reliable help. The standard low-tech and personal connection – typically a telephone call to a neighborhood teenager – is gradually going high-tech. Using everything from Craigslist to baby-sitting websites, e-mail, and even MySpace pages, parents are going online and clicking their way to a sitter for Saturday night.

For Ms. Sherman-Risdahl, an Internet consultant, the process begins by posting a classified ad on Craigslist. "I ask for their résumé," she says. "I'm very specific in my ads that they must have experience with infants and they must have their own transportation. If their résumé looks good, I talk to them on the phone. If they sound good, I meet them at a bookstore or cafe. I meet them with my baby because I want to see how they interact. If I like that, I ask for references and call them. I have to act as fast as I can. There's such demand here."

Some desperate parents resort to other means. "There's a lot of sitter-napping and stealing top sitters [from friends]," says Bethany Sirt of SitterCity.com, an Internet baby-sitting service.

Lauren Shaham of Silver Spring, Md., who still relies on phone calls to hire baby sitters, knows all about shortages. "We often have to call as many as 10 teenagers or young adults to find a baby sitter," she says. "It's discouraging that it takes such effort to find one."

She considers the social changes contributing to the shortage. "Baby-sitting is less a rite of passage today than 25 years ago, when I used to do it," she says. "All of my friends did some amount of baby-sitting when we were in high school and appreciated the income. That was at $1.50 an hour. Now teenagers are just so busy, with rigorous academic schedules and a range of extracurricular activities. They're not all that interested in baby-sitting, and they don't need the money that much."

Page 1 | 2 | 3 | Next Page