Leading Article

Sometimes I consider the subjects in Professional Nanny and wonder if it's all getting a bit too touchy-feely. There's such a lot of emotional content - in this issue, for example, we look at a book about a nanny-employer conflict, at coping with divorce, mothering on the job, recalling childhood, and getting stressed out! It's only natural for emotional entanglements to come into any job in the 'caring professions', of course, but in another magazine such intense feelings and relationships would be happening in people's personal lives, not their working day. Yet nannying is such personal work. Being based within the home and family, it's not surprising that people confuse it with parenting. The job has come such a full circle from the upstairs- downstairs days of servants that more formality might do some good. As the authors of The Nanny Diaries say, it would be easier for the nanny to love the child if her relationship with the mother were professionalised. Yes please - let's see nannies as professionals , not as substitute mothers or extensions of the family. Now turn to the inside back page to win a chance to get away from it all!