Nanny Knows Best

Not quite part of the family and more than just an employee; idealised and demonised, the nanny has always had a difficult role in family life. Any discussion of nannies arouses strong emotions in those who have employed them and reveals a sometimes shocking range of experiences both for the nannies and for the children they looked after. Winston Churchill as a child rarely saw his mother and idolized his nanny, paying for fresh flowers to be maintained on her grave and keeping her portrait by his bedside till he died. A nanny to the one of the principal landowning families in Dorset nearly starved their treasured heir to death, while a Suffolk nanny found parting from one of her charges so traumatic that she suffered a mental breakdown. This book weaves personal stories viewed through the eyes of nannies, mothers and children into a fascinating cultural history of the iconic British nanny. Katherine Holden goes beyond the myths to discover where our tradition of employing nannies comes from and to explore the ways in which it has and has not changed over the past century. From the Norland Nannies’ ‘method’ and the magical Mary Poppins, to the terrifying breach of trust in films, The Nanny and The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, to today’s child-tamer ‘Supernanny’, our culture has alternately welcomed and rejected this approach to child-care. The tales told in this history reach to the heart of the nanny dilemma that parents still struggle with today.