We live in a society that neglects children but are loathe to admit it

NANNIES must be proven innocent, not guilty. They transgress our ideals of motherhood and raise in us fears we cannot name, writes Victoria White.

You can’t win if you’re a nanny, not unless you have a flying umbrella and the “real” mother is nowhere in sight. You can’t even win if the children love you more than their “real” mother. In fact, that’s when you lose hardest.

Nannies embody all Western society’s ambiguity about motherhood. A mother is an idealised figure but if she is actively mothering the ideal is ruined. She has no time for her looks! She has no time for her career! Worst of all, she has no time for her husband!