In her work as an estate manager, Kristin Reyes often finds herself fielding client requests for a special kind of child minder. “Callers will say to me, ‘Kristin, I need a modern Mary Poppins.’ Everyone knows what that means.”
It refers, Ms. Reyes went on to explain, to that old-fashioned paragon of patience, good cheer and decorum otherwise known as a governess. And, yes, she — most always a she — is back, a plucky hybrid of tutor and life coach in rising demand among affluent families scrambling to educate their offspring in the midst of a pandemic.
School shutdowns and social limitations have lent their search a particular urgency. “For the past six or eight weeks we’ve been slammed with educator and governess requests, from all over the country,” said Anita Rogers, the founder and chief executive of British American Household, a domestic staffing agency.
Orders began doubling as families girded for a fall semester and the rigors of remote learning, Ms. Rogers said: “During the pandemic, we’ve done very well.”
April Berube, the founder and owner of the Wellington Agency, a placement firm in Palm Beach, Fla., has been similarly besieged. “We’ve had a huge increase in calls for a governess or a nanny with a background in education,” Ms. Berube said, the majority young women, generally willing to live in the home for an indefinite period and equipped to instruct their charges in subjects that may vary from math to table manners to a faultless command of Mandarin verbs.
The contemporary governess may work in a formal household, staffed with drivers, cooks, housekeepers and the like. But unlike a conventional nanny she is expected to provide a high-end version of home-schooling.
As often as not the job calls for a fancy pedigree that may include an advanced degree from an Ivy institution, a facility with languages, and manners that rival those of a marquise.
But the position has been democratized to some degree. ”It’s no longer exclusive to high-net-worth families,” Ms. Reyes said. During a health crisis that shows no signs of abating, two- career families will seek out a governess to function as a proxy parent to their toddlers or teenagers.
They may turn to a profusion of domestic staffing agencies springing up from Boston to Bahrain, placement specialists like Quality Nanny in Boulder, Colo.; Elite Nannies in Greenwich, Conn.; or Louer, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, all posting positions that may call for a blue-chip education, driver’s license, passport and a willingness to relocate.
There are families riding out the pandemic in vacation homes in Aspen or Palm Beach, Ms. Berube pointed out, and others that routinely jet to far-flung locations overseas.
Some clients specify that they are searching for a governess. The title lends an aura of prestige, Ms. Rogers said. Others inquire in a more roundabout way.
”Families will copy and paste from something they’ve seen online,” Ms. Berube said. “They will send a textbook description of what a governess is. That means someone well spoken, polished, with as master's degree in education. They may throw in other things like a background in art.” Salaries vary, from $80,000 to $150,000 a year.
The title itself is quaint, conjuring that tight-laced, lavender-scented fixture of Victorian-era fiction, a Becky Sharp (briefly) or Agnes Grey. It is also loaded, trailing more than a whiff of entitlement.
“‘Who hires a governess? It’s not me,’” Ms. Rogers said, parroting a typical client. “At this level, it is people who want a mentor for their children, like something out of a movie.”
That is an impression some agencies work to reinforce. A cut-glass British accent like Julie Andrews’s is an advantage, Duke & Duchess, an international placement service, advises in its advertising. “Many international families like their children to learn the Queen’s English, free from any accent.”
Such implicit elitism will inevitably raise eyebrows. “It seems to me to be yet another example of the way society is fragmenting into the very rich and the rest,” said Ruth Brandon, a British novelist and journalist, and the author of a 2008 history, “Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres.”
“Increasingly, the rich are opting out of paying taxes, isolating themselves in their own little walled-off bubbles of comfort,” Ms. Brandon said, “and so have no personal involvement or investment in public services, including schooling.”
The New York Times
