Part of the family
The chocolate chip cookies on the coffee table are too tempting for 5-year-old Thomas Becker. He knows he shouldn’t ask his mother, Megan Moore, who is in the kitchen making mushroom risotto, for one because she won’t want him ruining his appetite. But he also knows he has another option.
“Fanny, can I please have a cookie?” he asks.
“OK,” says Fanny Zoelssman, 19, as Thomas takes a cookie from the plate and tears off into the basement to play. Every weekday, Fanny has cared for Thomas and his younger sisters, Sophie, 3, and Gabby, 1.5. As their au pair, she has also lived with the family for the past year.
“Au pair” is French for “on par” or “equal to,” meaning that though Fanny watches the Becker children when their parents need her to, she is also treated as a member of their family instead of an employee. Many cultural exchange programs offer young people the opportunity to be an au pair anywhere in the United States and also to work full time, which most au pairs in Europe can’t do. Fanny watches the Becker children for up to 45 hours a week, whenever the family needs her, but never for longer than 10 hours a day. She gets free room and board, one weekend off a month and two weeks of vacation time, as well as the $195.75 per week the Beckers are required to pay. It’s a bargain compared to regular babysitters as well as an ideal arrangement for their family.
“Normally, if you have a nanny, it’s a rush to get home after work because you have to get to home at a certain time,” Megan says. “There’s no leeway, and that’s certainly not something you have to worry about with an au pair.”
Megan says she also appreciates the bond Fanny has formed with her three kids. “It’s much more like having a big sister for your children than it is having a care provider,” she says.
Finding a good match
Fanny grew up in Germany in the small town of Schleiz, where she still lives with her younger brother, parents and grandparents. After graduating high school, she decided university wasn’t for her. “I wanted to do something else, see something else and find out what my aim in life is,” she says. “Being an au pair was the best combination of the things I wanted to do. I was able to take care of kids, explore and live the American way of life by living with an American family, travel and improve my English.”
She filled out an application with Cultural Homestay International, a nonprofit organization with numerous exchange programs, including one that helps match potential au pairs with families from the United States. To qualify, she had to be between 18 and 24 and English-proficient; Fanny had been learning English since the fifth grade. Watching her small cousins when she was 13 was her first experience with childcare, but to qualify for the program she needed 200 documented hours, so she worked for several months at a daycare for 1- to 2-year-olds while she waited to be placed.
Meanwhile, Megan and her husband, Johannes Becker, were saying goodbye to their first au pair and beginning their search for another. Because Johannes travels every Monday through Friday for his job in consulting and Megan is an assistant professor who teaches French at the University of Missouri, they need someone available every weekday to watch their kids. Getting an au pair was an easy decision for Megan, who spent time in France as an au pair while she was in college and loved it. “Of course it’s always difficult to take care of other people’s kids, but I really enjoyed my time abroad,” she says. “It was nice to be able to reciprocate.”
Fanny met Megan and Johannes over the phone, then they interviewed her over Skype. They liked that she had experience caring for toddlers and that she could speak French and German because Johannes grew up in Germany and, like Megan, also speaks French. It was a perfect match.
When Fanny arrived on Dec. 6, 2010, she had only seen pictures of the children, but they made a wonderful first impression when Megan brought them to the St. Louis Airport to meet her with a bouquet of flowers. “The kids weren’t scared at all,” Fanny says. “On the contrary, they were really inquisitive and asked me tons of questions.”
Back in Columbia, Thomas and Sophie excitedly showed her their bedrooms and toys, which made getting acquainted a breeze. Gabby was only 4 months old then, younger than anyone Fanny had ever cared for, but learning was nearly effortless because the baby only cried when she was hungry or sleepy.
A typical workday begins at 8 a.m., when Fanny has breakfast with the kids and gets Thomas and Sophie ready for school. They are students at La Petite Ecole, a French immersion school in Columbia, so they will be able to speak French with their parents. Sophie is at school from 9 a.m. until noon while Thomas stays home and plays games or does art projects. Sometimes Fanny takes them to Going Bonkers or, if the weather is nice, the playground. At noon, she picks Sophie up and tries to feed everyone a healthy lunch in the 45 minutes she has before Thomas needs to be dropped off. He’s in class until 4 p.m., so she spends the afternoons doing fun things with the girls, such as baking cookies. When Megan comes home at 4:30, Fanny’s usually off for the day. Johannes and Megan also give her most weekends a month off instead of just one. “I think it’s better in situations where you’re trying to be a family to treat each other nicely,” Megan says.
Living the American way
Compared to her hometown of approximately 8,700 people, Columbia looks like a big city. Fanny loves how late the stores are open, going to the mall and having coffee or ice cream downtown. Once a week she takes a Zumba class at the ARC, and she took a childhood development and a Spanish class to fulfill CHI’s requirement that she take six college credit hours. She’s also made friends with a few teaching assistants at the kids’ school from France and even went to Six Flags and a Katy Perry concert in St. Louis with them. They’re too young to get into bars, but otherwise she’s free to do what she wants and borrow the car as long as someone knows where she’s going. “Megan and Johannes have always treated me like an adult member of the family,” she says.
In her short time here, Fanny has managed to see more of the United States than many of its citizens have. Her CHI orientation was held in Washington, D.C., and over Christmas the Beckers took her to Chicago and Minnesota to meet the kids’ grandparents. She visited California in June and saw the Grand Canyon with her parents in July, when they came to visit her and meet the Beckers. Her wanderlust also took her to Hawaii, where she vacationed with a tour group. It rained most of the trip, but she did get to swim at Waikiki Beach and tour Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. “America is a beautiful country with friendly, helpful people,” she says. “I didn’t really expect anything different.”
Of course, there were a few things to adjust to, such as driving a car with an automatic shift, paying with a credit or debit card and eating American food. Everything was easy to get used to except for the bread here; Fanny says it’s “not good” and misses dark, crusty German bread. She also misses her family, though they Skype once a week for about two hours, which has been enough to ward off any homesickness.
Going home
All too quickly, a year has gone by and it’s time for Fanny to go back to Germany and spend Christmas with her family. The Becker family has another au pair coming to stay with them this month, but they’re sad to see Fanny go. “It’s been great seeing her settle in here, and we will miss her a lot,” Megan says. “She has such a strong relationship with all the kids, but Gabby in particular was so close to her.”
Back in Germany, Fanny is preparing to take a test for a job with the Customs Department. If she makes the cut, she’ll start attending a special school in August where she’ll learn about the county’s politics and economy for three years before being officially inducted. She credits her experience with the multilingual Beckers for helping her determine which career path to take.
“Being an au pair was a great opportunity,” Fanny says. “I became more self-confident and also more independent, and I realize that I can make decisions without my parents.”
She has decided that if the customs job works out, she’s going to move out of her family’s house this fall. After caring for three children, Fanny knows now that she can certainly take care of herself.
