Wealthy Manhattan moms and their nannies are at war over a Facebook page where “tattlers” have exposed caregivers they say are “neglecting” the children in their care.
The battle was exposed in an exposition of The cut today where an anonymous mother, who goes by the pseudonym Heather, shared her experience.
The nannies are shamed by other mothers who belong to groups like “Upper West Side Mommas” and post photos of other members’ nannies on the streets of Manhattan.
The groups are closed to the public, but a similar site, I Saw Your Nanny, reveals the kind of evidence the women present.
In a post on the blog I Saw Your Nanny, a caregiver is shamed for looking at her phone and “yelling” at a child. The post is one of many that mothers are sharing on similar blogs and Facebook pages warning the nannies’ employers about their behavior
Another post claims this babysitter ‘hit’ the boy she was caring for
In another post, a babysitter was accused of picking up a boy ‘roughly’ and telling him he couldn’t watch TV if he cried
One post from August 2015 remains public. It shows a babysitter looking at her phone while a child sits in his stroller.
‘Nanny ignored the child and focused on her phone. When the child tried to get her attention, she yelled at him and then went back to her phone,” it said.
Heather told The Cut that she came across a post on Facebook in which other mothers alerted her to an incident involving her son at the public library.
Abigail Madison founder Erin Maloney was kicked out of a nanny’s Facebook group after being accused of ‘talking’ them into their employers
“If you have a babysitter who takes your child (red boy, about 2 years old) to the Riverside Library (65th and Amsterdam), she lost him in the library today,” the message read.
The tipster claimed that librarians were “about to call the police” when the babysitter – referred to as “Katie” in the article – showed up to be reunited with the child.
When her son was eventually found, he was “inexplicably” covered in paint.
She fired Katie and hired another nanny. The replacement was then confronted on the playground by other nannies – friends of Katie’s who were outraged by the way her employer had treated her.
‘It’s been tough. Some of these nannies were very, very creepy, and at one point I felt very afraid of them.
“Not only did they lash out at me, but they had so many bad things to say about his parents. It was an unpleasant feeling to be around them,” Sara said.
Another nanny, named “Isabella,” was fired after a mother took a photo during an altercation she had with a bus driver. Isabella insists that the bus driver was not compliant and that she did nothing wrong.
There are dozens of groups dedicated to exposing “bad nannies” spotted on the streets of major cities. Members must be approved by administrators
She was fired over the phone after her employer sent her a screenshot of the Stroller Patrol Facebook post.
Fighting back: Michelle Wreesmann, a babysitter from Brooklyn, started a group called “The Nannies of New York City!” where the women can share their side of the story
The fear of being photographed and then fired through one of the groups is now rampant within the nanny community, insiders say. nannies to refuse jobs.
“Some nannies say, ‘I don’t even want to take the kids to the park anymore,’ for fear that something will be misinterpreted or misunderstood, filmed or photographed and thrown into a group, and before they know it they’re job more.
‘They worry a lot about it. And I think it feeds into the us-versus-them mentality,” says a healthcare provider who worked in the industry for 17 years before transitioning to a consulting role.
To fight back, Brooklyn nanny Michelle Wreesmann founded her own group.
Titled “The Nannies of New York City!” it is an online space where healthcare providers share their version of what happened after incriminating messages appeared in the mother groups.
‘I always tell nannies: you are a very valuable person, and you have to stand up for yourself, and your name is your brand, so do your best and be professional.
“But if someone wants to harm you, defend yourself,” Wreesmann said.
The group found a target in Erin Maloney, founder of Abigail Madison – a domestic employment agency – who Wreesmann claimed used the group to take screenshots of messages and pass on the information to the mothers they were about.
Maloney was kicked out of the group and Wreesmann instructed other nannies not to work with her, according to The Cut.
