Investing in infants

Alison McMeans

• Last Updated: October 10. 2009 2:53PM UAE / October 10. 2009 10:53AM GMT

Since quitting her job and releasing her full-time nanny, money is a bit tighter for Maud Hollaender.

Ms Hollaender loved working. Five days a week, from 9am until 7pm, she was an Abu Dhabi manager for Regus, a multinational corporation that offers equipped office space to businesses. Ms Hollaender, 31, who came to the UAE seven years ago from France, was another busy, young professional working in the capital.

Then four years ago, she had Anouk, her daughter.

“One of the reasons I decided to stop working was that the nanny wasn’t enough for my four-year-old,” Ms Hollaender explains. “She needed to be more entertained, pushed and stimulated.”

For years, until June this year, Ms Hollaender struggled to balance work and family life. Her husband, Florian, was equally busy working for an oil and gas company. The situation became even more strained with the birth of Alexis, the couple’s second daughter, who is now one year old.

The parents would take the children to nursery in the morning, and Ms Hollaender would pick them up at lunch and leave them with the nanny until she got home from work. The children watched a lot of TV and rarely ventured outside their usual routine, she remembers.

“I thought, ‘this is not what I want them to be doing, not how I want them raised’,” Ms Hollaender says. “I decided it was not worth working full-time any more because the balance was not right. I was not giving my kids the best.”

Last June, the family decided to let go of their nanny, who also took care of some of the household chores. Now, the children spend afternoons with their mother. In the mornings, they attend Bright Beginnings Nursery in Abu Dhabi, where they are taught by professional educators.

And although the children are happy, Ms Hollaender’s decision came with a cost.

Financially, considering the expense of nursery care and the loss of her full-time job, the family was better off when Ms Hollaender was working.

“Even though we don’t have a maid to pay for any longer, I still have to pay for the nursery, which is more expensive than my maid,” she says. “For both children we pay about Dh12,000 for the semester, whereas a nanny could probably cost half of that.”

With three semesters in a year, the family spends Dh36,000 on childcare at the nursery.

The choices the Hollaenders face are not unusual. In the Emirates, most families, local and expatriate alike, will inevitably face the same dilemma: should I hire a nanny, or send my children to a nursery?

While the term “nanny” often indicates special childcare experience in the West, in the UAE the terms “maid” and “nanny” are generally interchangeable.

Although she had no children when she left France seven years ago, Ms Hollaender misses the childcare system she left behind. Nurseries in her home country are designed to accommodate two working parents and are often open as late as offices and other places of employment.

“One of the things that I never understood is that school here lasts until 1pm or 2pm,” she explains. “This means you can’t really work and care for the kids.”

With this in mind, Ms Hollaender felt she had little choice but to hire a nanny. But like Ms Hollaender, many parents worry that the types of stimulation their children receive at home might not be sufficient for their cognitive and intellectual growth. And while nannies are often thought of as inadequate educators, early childhood professionals are quick to point out that staying home with mum is often not much better, and stress that it is vital for young children to spend time in a social setting with their peers.

“Children learn most through being with other children,” says Birgit Ertl, the director of The Children’s Garden, a nursery in Dubai. “You need to understand how a child’s brain functions at the age of two. You want to stimulate them, you want to meet their curiosity.”

“There is a different relationship with the teacher,” Ms Ertl explains. “There is love, but also respect. To young children, the preschool teacher is their hero.”

Ms Ertl adds that socialisation is also important, but says that cannot happen unless the child is exposed to many different people.

“Children need children for development,” she explains.

“Teachers facilitate and inspire children, but the learning takes place from child to child. Social interaction is important and it can’t be done at home.”

There are hurdles involved in sending your kids to a nursery. Generally speaking, nurseries in the UAE close their doors at noon, with many offering an extended-hours option, closing at 2pm or 4pm.

And demand for UAE nursery slots is high; some facilities have waiting lists of more than two years. This makes it frustrating for new parents who need immediate solutions.

The average cost of a year at day care ranges between Dh18,000 to Dh24,000 for three terms. Using the extended-hour option can increase these costs to between Dh28,000 and Dh36,000. However, an increasing number of companies and government offices have childcare facilities on site, or plans to build them. It is a good idea to check with your human resources department to see whether your company has on-site childcare facility or if they are willing to provide you with a childcare credit.

Beatrice Vetter and her husband, Philipp, decided to use a combination approach: they invested in both a maid – who helps with the children when necessary – and a nursery.

Ms Vetter, 34, works part-time as a researcher at the Imperial College of London Diabetes Centre in Abu Dhabi. Her husband is head of strategy at the Health Authority of Abu Dhabi, and often works long hours.

The couple has two children – Laurence, who is two and a half, and Raphael, who is 11 months old.

“Childcare options here are better than Europe, to be honest,” says Ms Vetter, who arrived in the capital from Germany more than four years ago. “Not everyone, even if they live in their home country, lives next door to their family. If you don’t have that, no one can afford a full-time housemaid in most European countries, so it’s actually better here.”

The Vetter children also attend Bright Beginnings nursery in Abu Dhabi; they are there from 7am to 4pm.

Though the family’s maid does help with the children when called upon to do so, Ms Vetter tends to be hands-on with her children.

“She is full-time, and although we don’t need her full time as a nanny, we need the safety net,” she explains. “We don’t have family here and the two children are sick quite a lot, so we have to have someone who comes and looks after that. Grandparents often do that sort of thing, but none of them live nearby.”

Although the average minimum live-in maid’s salary in the UAE is Dh750 per month, many expatriates pay more than Dh1,500 a month, including room and board. In addition, many families prefer to employ full-time maids or nannies and pay extra to house them in separate lodgings, which adds to the monthly outlay.

And hiring a nanny will cost you more than her (or his) monthly salary: a residency visa can cost up to Dh10,000 per year, including a Government fee, labour card and medical tests.

In addition, you will be required to buy your household help a plane ticket home once a year, a cost that varies depending on the destination.

All of this can easily add up to Dh30,000 a year, before bonuses, which many families offer at the end of the year based on performance.

Emma Riedel, who is married and whose husband has a full-time job, has her hands full with newborn twins and a two-year-old. When she’s not caring for them, she is running her children’s party-planning company, called Riley and Me, named for her toddler son.

Her job means that she is needed at odd times during the day, and sometimes without much notice. Instead of sending her offspring to a nursery, employing a maid allows her to be more flexible and have access to help whenever she needs it.

Many busy parents appreciate having someone around to handle the household chores, and Ms Riedel is no exception.

“Her primary job is to look after the house, and her secondary job is to help me look after the children,” she says. “Her third job is to help me with my business. It’s fantastic because she puts everything together for me.”

So where should you look if you want to find a live-in caregiver for your children? Most experts advise families to consult a professional placement service.

“Many of our clients are first-time moms without a support system around them,” says Laurie Warner, the managing director at the International Personnel Group, one of many organisations in the UAE that help families sponsor nannies (www.intlpersonnel.com).

“We get a lot of requests for baby nurses so the new mom can recuperate, and there is someone there to help you in the middle of the night when the baby is crying and your husband is out of town.”

To help narrow your search, Ms Warner notes that the Philippine government maintains a particularly rigorous training and certification regimen to ensure that prospective caregivers are able to carry out their duties. In addition, she adds many candidates for nanny slots are mothers themselves, which can go a long way towards easing the minds of new parents.

Sarah Kim, herself a new mother, is a Canadian in her late twenties who has been living in Abu Dhabi for more than four years. She had her first child 16 months ago, a girl named Farah.

“When you’re a mother, you read all these books and you feel like you’re prepared, but when it hits you there is nothing else like it. You feel like you’ve lost a part of you,” she says. “Having someone there not only helps with the cooking and the cleaning, but can help me to take care of Farah so I can get my life back together.”

Ms Kim runs a catering business and makes jewellery, in addition to being the primary caregiver for her child. Her husband works full-time at a bank.

“Ester, my maid, is live-in,” she says. “Some people find it awkward, but we’ve adjusted to it. She’s almost become like family. She knows our routine, she knows Farah’s routine. She is very reliable, so it works out for the best.”

No matter what you decide to do about providing care for your children, flexibility is key. This means keeping your options open and taking a hard look at the merits of both keeping your youngsters in the home environment and allowing them the opportunity socialise on a daily basis with other children from different backgrounds.

Ms Hollaender, for one, has not looked back since deciding to let go of her nanny and enrol her children in nursery in Abu Dhabi.

“School educates your kids and gives them things to do and you know they’re going to grow. With a nanny, she might not be able to do all that, but she can do the cleaning and the ironing,” says Ms Hollaender. “The question is, what work do you want to give someone else to do? Is it the cleaning or the ironing, or is it the education of your children?”

amcmeans@thenational.ae