Q&A with a Male Au Pair in the US

Hi everyone! :-h


As many of you know, being an Au Pair is mostly common among women BUT men CAN also be Au Pairs. Yes, they can! Even though a lot of people think that Au Pairing is something that women can do better than men, many host families would disagree with you. There are some that even prefer men over women because they think their kids will be safer with them or they'll be more active and sporty. 

Here is an interview with a male Au Pair I met while we were both Au Pairs in Boston in 2009. I'm trying to get more interviews from other male Au Pairs I met so please stay tuned! B-)



Please write one or two paragraphs about your experience as an Au Pair in the US. You could start by saying why did you want to be an Au Pair and how did you get childcare experience? Was it hard to adapt to a new life? What did you study? Where did you live? What was your host family like and how many children did you take care of? What did you do in your free time? What was the best and worst experience? Etc, etc. 

 Jan Kratochvil, Czech AuPair, June 2008 to June 2009, Tewksbury, Massachusetts

I became an AuPair because it is, by far, the easiest and the best way to learn about American culture. Throughout my teenage years, I functioned as a boy-scout leader which is my only childcare experience. It wasn't hard to adapt to the life in the U.S. I was lucky having had the opportunity to live in Scotland, The Netherlands and Greece prior to my arrival to the U.S. and therefore no cultural shock happened in my case. As far as studies, I took a four-credit course "Media, Democracy and Development" at Harvard Extension School. My LCC forgave me the remaining two credits. My hosts were truly nice; there were four quadruplet boys I took care of and we got along very well. Most of my spare time was filled with travelling and parties. My best experience was sexual intercourse with a black woman. We don't have dark-skinned people back in Czech Republic and therefore I have always felt attracted by them. My dream came true once I got to the U.S. The worst experience was an arrest in New Hampshire. I was arrested for driving without a valid drivers license, spent a night in custody and had to go to the court.

1. During the matching process, was it difficult for you to find a host family that wanted a male Au Pair? Did it seem to you that girls had preference?

It wasn't difficult at all to find a host family. It is crucial to realize while the overall demand for boys is significantly smaller than for girls, at the same time the number of boys applying for this job is drastically lower than the number of girls. I actually refused two families (one in California and another in Indiana) before accepting the request from my host family in Massachusetts.

2. How did your friends and family react when you told them you were going to be an Au Pair? How did people react to it once you were in the US? Did you ever feel people thought that wasn't a job for men?

 Friends and family didn't comprehend at the beginning. They thought I was not serious, and when they realized I was serious, they thought I would not last very long. Similarly, people in the U.S. thought I was kidding once I mentioned I am a nanny. Yes, I did feel people perceive this job as a "women job" only.

3. What sort of activities did you do with the kids? Do you think that what you did was very different from what female Au Pairs did? For example, did you do more sports or were you expected to do heavier-duty housework?

 The scale of activities I did with the kids is very wide. Most of the activities were sport related. Yet, we would do other things such as arts & crafts, make believe games, reading, etc. Due to the fact I had four boys, there was no heavy duty housework required from me.

4. Regarding your social life, how easy/difficult was it for you to socialize in a female-dominant environment?

I did not have the problem of being surrounded just by females. Fortunately, I met great amount of other male AuPairs, especially from Germany, with whom I would spent a lot of time.

5. A lot of host families think twice about hiring male Au Pairs because of concerns about sexual abuse (especially when they have daughters) and other generalizations like, "men can't cook and aren't as nurturing as women." What would you say to them?

To the families who are arguing in favor of female AuPairs, I would say following: The only point I am willing to accept is that females are being more nurturing then males. I would object to all the others:
- There is a lots of girls who have no idea how to cook. Yet, plenty of males are excellent cooks. In fact, the best and most famous cooks in the world are males. This argument might have been valid 50 years ago, when men were a work force and women stayed at home, but it is no longer so.
- I have never heard of a single case of child abuse. Again, all the tragedies (nanny killing two children in New York, another nanny strangling a child in Boston etc.) were caused by females.
There is actually great amount of good reasons to hire a male AuPair. First of all, men tend to be better drivers. Then, men are more rational, flexible, easy-going and not too emotional. Finally, men are less likely to get homesick and they will more likely handle extreme situations