Nannydom: Men Need Not Apply

The nanny and I are far, far away from the row houses of merry old England, where perpetually smug nannies alight from the skies, borne on the wind by black umbrellas.

This particular nanny and I, in fact, are sitting in a dingy coffee shop in Lynwood, hunched over plastic foam cups of steaming coffee, our clothes absorbing the smell of greasy onion rings as we chat.

Not that anyone can say for sure what a nanny looks like, but this one doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to what you might imagine when you hear the word.

Wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress, for starters.

He is tall and thin, with a head of thinning gray hair. His craggy face is lit by large blue eyes, rimmed with thick lashes. A bushy mustache hides his smile.

Let it be said straight out: Gary Jones is not your average nanny.

In fact, he’s not anyone’s nanny at all.

And that’s the problem.

He can’t get a job.

Which is too bad, since Gary Jones seems highly qualified for nannydom. He raised his son, Sean, now 25, after he and Sean’s mother were divorced. He loved being a dad--thought it was a blast and never understood why people complained about such stages as the “terrible twos.” No developmental step of Sean’s, he says, was ever terrible.

Jones, 51, has worked for Los Angeles County, has worked construction, has worked at Taco Bell. But his calling, his love, his dream, he says, is to care for children.

“This is going to sound grandiose,” he says, “but I can do the society so much more good as a nanny. I mean, I think I can help create a really well-functioning human being. I am good at that.”

The society, however, isn’t banging down his door.

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Gary Jones came of age at a time when it was unheard of for men to devote their lives to child care. It is still a rare phenomenon.

But this is what he told me when I asked what made him decide to become a professional baby-sitter:

“My son was grown up. The empty-nest syndrome got to me, and I found myself with just a general feeling of dissatisfaction. What’s the word for it? Anomie? Just disconnected from everything.”

He spent several years caring for children. Then in 1989, he was accepted to a local nanny school on the strength of those references. He spent an intense three months studying in the mornings and caring for children at a Sherman Oaks day-care center in the afternoons.

Jones landed a job with a single-parent family in Bakersfield, but when the father remarried, his services were no longer required. Combing through the want ads, he made 20 to 30 calls a week, he says, and after about a year with no offers, gave up.

He remembers being thrilled for a fellow student--a woman, naturally--who had landed a plum job with a wealthy Saudi Arabian family. And he remembers sinking lower and lower into depression as every call he made, every interview he sat for ended the same way: “We’ve found someone more suitable for our children.”

Translation: We don’t want a man caring for our kids.

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This comes as no surprise to Wendy Sachs, who in nine years as owner of a nanny employment agency has placed a male nanny only once.

“For whatever reason, there are too many preconceived ideas about this not being a man’s job,” says Sachs, president of the International Nanny Assn. “People are resistant to hiring men simply because this is a position typically filled by women. . . . A lot of families just picture the person nurturing their newborn and toddlers and preschoolers to be women, not men. That’s just the way our culture is.”

And that is why Jones is so dejected.

“I have no objection to women in any field of position they wish to be in,” he said. “From housewife to physician to president to CEO of a corporation, I will be one of the first to cheer any woman on, if that’s what she wishes to be. Gender has little to do with the ability to do the job. But damn it, grant me the same freedom!

“Where is it written that a man cannot cuddle an infant? Or apply a Band-Aid to a scrape? Or change a diaper? Or color a coloring book with a toddler? Or read a bedtime story?”

Good questions, of course.

And sad ones.

For no matter how you answer them, Gary Jones is still out of work.