I enjoyed this book for what it was, very entertaining! We all love to hear about the 1% and how they are able to live their lives.

I love reading about the super wealthy, especially those living in NYC. This book provided an inside look at parenting in this privileged population that was super insightful and entertaining. The author did a great job contrasting the lives of the children she is caring for with the way she was raised. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced e copy.

In this memoir, Stephanie Kiser uses a dry sense of humor to describe her life as a nanny for the Manhattan elite. Contrasting her own current life - drowning in student debt, fraught relationships, low stability - with the lives of the families she works for - six-figure closets for toddlers, dozens of staff running their lives - provided some interesting insights into how important money and privilege are early on in determining success and stability.
The way I described this memoir was The Glass Castle mixed with The Nanny Diaries. I was expecting a bit less of a memoir and a bit more of a data-driven look at why some kids have it better than others and what the results are.... however, I'm not sure why I was not expecting as much personal history as we received, so this was probably a misunderstanding on my part. Additionally, the author's life was a great case study for the effects of money, privilege, and familial/economic stability on a child's development.

Stephanie Kiser's childhood in a financially strapped family in North Providence, Rhode Island was a far cry from the lives of the privileged children she cared for as a nanny. In this memoir, Kiser alternates anecdotes about her impoverished young years with stories about the mega-rich families she worked for, who resided in Manhattan, and vacationed in places like the Hamptons and Florida.

When Kiser majored in 'Writing for Film and Television' at Boston's Emerson College, she had no intention of being a nanny. However Stephanie's HUGE student loan, which required monthly payments of $1000 (almost entirely for the interest) gave her little choice about employment. Stephanie had to make enough money to pay her rent, take care of her bills, commute around the city, occasionally lend money to her parents, and service her student loan - and nannying was the only job that paid enough. (In some ways, this book is a cautionary tale about student loans, as Kiser wonders if her 'good education' was worth the box it put it her in employment-wise.)

To contrast her own life with that of the rich kids she minded, Kiser compares her childhood to that of her 5-year-old charge Ruby, who attended an Episcopal school with the children of Drew Barrymore, Robert De Niro, Steve Martin, and other celebrities. In the after school hours, Ruby might play in Central Park, get mint chocolate chip ice cream, and be treated to random indulgences on the way back to her family's luxurious Upper East Side apartment. Stephanie writes, "With Ruby I eat gourmet sandwiches from Dean & Deluca and take Ubers across town to celebrated museums."

About her own childhood, Stephanie remembers growing up in a run-down apartment with young parents who had too little maturity and too much responsibility. She notes, "My own childhood was calls from debt collectors, pets that never lasted longer than a few months, and [during hard times] strict portion control that often sent my sisters and me to bed hungry."

Stephanie was employed by a number of families during her seven-year-stint as a child-minder, and some jobs were better than others. Among Kiser's favorite nanny jobs was her first, working for a woman called Sasha and her husband. In this home, Kiser looked after three children: the above-mentioned Ruby, Ruby's little brother Hunter, and a baby (when he came along). Stephanie's employer Sasha was 35-years-old, came from a wealthy family, graduated from Yale, and did not work, but was on the board of myriad fundraising committees. Kiser says, "It's part of a strange phenomenon on the Upper East Side, where women of great means spend decades preparing to attend prestigious schools like Princeton and Stanford, only to obtain degrees they never apply to a career....The working mom is a rarity - and, in many instances, the least respected on the totem pole of motherhood." (Note: This lack of ambition seems very strange to me.)

In any case, though Kiser was a full-time nanny, Sasha was still a hands on mother to her children. Sasha would be dressed and ready when Stephanie arrived to work each morning, and Sasha would prepare food; play with the kids; shower them with affection; and often take them to activities herself.

Kiser worked for Sasha's family for several years, and has many stories about her employment there, including visiting the Florida mansion of Sasha's wealthy parents. The vacation home, on an island near Palm Beach, is a nine-bedroom, eleven bathroom estate, large enough to house twenty people comfortably. There are palm trees and a running trail, golf carts to drive from one part of the yard to another, a putting green, a hot tub, a pool, a fountain, a private beach, and more.

Stephanie compares this to her family vacations when she was a child. Once, the Kisers went to a Howard Johnsons beachside motel in the dead of winter, when rates were affordable; another 'vacation' was a trip to Pennsylvania for Stephanie's basketball tournament, where the hotel was so gnarly that Stephanie's mother developed impetigo from the 'hot tub', and Stephanie played the last two days with strep throat.

One of Kiser's less fun jobs was working for a woman called Stefany and her husband, whose children were a 6-year-old boy named Digby and his baby brother Sampson. Digby would call his brother "stupid ugly baby"; scream at Stephanie, "Don't talk to me! I hate you! Dumb fat, Stephanie!"; and call Stephanie "stupid, foolish, and non-use." Digby's mother didn't discourage this behavior, and told Kiser, "My philosophy is no discipline. Digby is a good boy; he needs guidance, not regulation." Kiser writes, "Digby is not a bad kid....but a 'no discipline' philosophy has taught him that being cruel is acceptable." During a group playdate, Digby acted out, sang raunchy songs, and slapped another child, but his mother didn't react. Digby also purposely soiled his pants every day, and Kiser was expected to wash his underwear after cleaning off the poop.

Kiser found Stefany difficult in many ways: Stefany was poor before marrying into her husband's rich family, and she spoke openly about her current wealth, taking every opportunity to mention something the family owned or a vacation they'd gone on. By contrast, when Kiser mentioned moving into a new building with a terrace and a gym, Stefany responded, "A gym, huh?" Kiser observes, "There is a hostility in her voice that I have heard her use with others - waitstaff or secretaries, people with whom she has only brief interactions and whom she decides are less than her." When a worker remodeling Stefany's kitchen asked to use the bathroom, Stefany said, "I'm sorry; would you mind driving into town to use the bathroom? There's a Starbucks there. It's only ten minutes away."

When Kiser decided to quit the job with Stefany, she called her nanny agency to confirm she was leaving. Kiser's agent said she wasn't surprised; the previous nanny went to lunch one day and never returned. Stefany thought the nanny might have been murdered or kidnapped, but the girl told [the agency] she was fine; she just couldn't spend a single moment longer working for that woman.

Kiser writes much more about being a nanny, and intersperses the nanny stories with numerous tales about her past. As a kid, Kiser was a terrible student; had a hard time learning to read; was in the disabilities program for years; was overweight.....and stuffed herself with food whenever she got the chance; had an uneasy relationship with her mother; had a father who kept leaving the family for other women; etc. In short, Stephanie had a difficult time of it.

Then, when Kiser was in middle school, she showed a surprising talent as a basketball player. This led to a scholarship to a toney high school called Lincoln School for Girls. There Stephanie met her best friend Lila, and she writes a good deal about their relationship, which had highs and lows. In any case, Stephanie eventually managed to raise her grades enough to be accepted to Emerson College (which led to her humongous student debt).

Kiser even ventures into politics when she admits to blindly going along with her family's staunch support for the Republicans, whose policies actually harmed people in the Kisers' socioeconomic class. Kiser was enlightened by Hillary Clinton's book, 'Hard Choices', which led to a 180 degree change in Stephanie's views. 👍

Kiser also writes about other nannies she met during her employment, and their kind of 'nanny club' that organized playdates among their charges, and gave them the chance to share concerns and advice. Some of the nannies were immigrants, well past retirement age, who still worked 12-hour-days.

Kiser was about to quit nannying when the Covid pandemic hit, and she had no choice but to move in with her employers for the duration of the crisis, for safety reasons. Some of Kiser's nanny friends, who had families of their own - and couldn't live with their employers - were summarily fired; a few nannies even showed up to work to find their employers had left New York for their vacation homes, without informing the staff. (Goes to show how some entitled rich people conduct themselves.)

Kiser makes many cogent observations about women in this memoir. In Kiser's role as a nanny, especially during the Covid pandemic, when she lived with her 'kids', Kiser was privy to the private lives of her families. Thus she notes that, "Women, regardless of their age, race, or tax bracket, were overshadowed by the men they were associated with. Whether it was a stay-at-home mother watching the children from dawn to dusk or one with a master's degree and a job at the UN, when the weekends came the story remained the same. These women would busy themselves cooking, cleaning, and caring for the children, while the men carried on with their lives."

Thinking of her own childhood, and her mother's problems, Stephanie goes on to say, "The fact was, Americans supported working wives, so long as the women still did all the things they'd done when they didn't work......Women in America were f**d. Poor, minority, and uneducated women in America were doubly f**d."

Kiser is now a writer and an executive assistant at a tech company. Who knows, maybe she'll even break into television and movies. 🙂

I became interested in Upper East Side families when I read Primates of Park Avenue by Wednesday Martin. Kiser's memoir, which addresses the topic from a different angle, is a good follow-up; it's interesting and suffused with self-deprecating humor. Highly recommended.

Thanks to Netgalley, Stephanie Kiser, and Sourcebooks for a copy of the book.

I really appreciated this author's perspective, both in sharing her upbringing and in the details of her work as a nanny. I definitely came for the "toddler's personal assistant" title and stayed for the crazy family dynamics at play. I loved that it kind of toggled between her upbringing and her work as a nanny- it kept me engaged and wanting to know what happened next. I also became emotionally invested and am just so thrilled for her that she followed her dreams and wrote a book!!!

3.75 stars.

I don't know what I was expecting when I went into this book, but it honestly surprised me. I did not expect the bluntness and openness the author would have for the topics she covered, many of them personal and emotional, and I was surprised by how critically she viewed and recorded the world and the people around her in this memoir. At times it felt almost uncomfortable to read, like we were seeing too much into the lives of the people she wrote about, including her own, with all of the private mess and drama dumped out in the open, but it seems to me that the uncomfortableness of it is kind of the point. Stephanie is sharing her experiences, and, as she mentions at one point in the book, being a full time nanny is full of those kinds of uncomfortable experiences, where you see far too much of all the private unpleasantness of the families you work for. And the candor with which she writes works for her and her narrative. I absolutely flew through this book every time I picked it up and would struggle to put it back down! Something about it was so gripping.

The way Stephanie contrasted the lives of her clients with her own impoverished upbringing struck a cord. She raises, several times, the point that the opportunities throughout life provided to poor children and wealthy children are wildly different. Wealthy children are, at every turn, given everything they could need for future success. Poor children, on the other hand, are typically set up to fail. While occasionally overly simplified, or presented through a biased lens, this memoir is full of similar notes on Stephanie's observations regarding the role class, wealth, race, and gender play on a person's development and life path.

As much as I enjoyed this book, the narrative did feel a bit disjointed at times. We jumped around in time a lot, and Stephanie frequently relayed her experiences complete with her mental and emotional state at the time, which could occasionally be jarring when things suddenly changed. But it only really bothered me in the final 10% of the book, where I found the pacing to be rushed compared to the rest of the memoir.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and I recommend it to anyone with an interest in intersectionality, or even just childcare!

I didn't have high expectations going into this book, having previously read what I thought were similar exposé books about ultra-wealthy Manhattanites.

However, this book stands alone from the others because it has an interesting comparison with the author's childhood running through the duration of it. I liked the duality of the life that Stephanie grew up in and the life she was living as a nanny for these insanely rich families.

You can tell she genuinely cared for the children she nannied for, and it was so sweet to see the relationships build over time.

Overall, it was a well-written, interesting book that was much better than I expected. I love being pleasantly surprised by books and this one is a keeper!

Thank you to #netgalley for this ARC of #wantedtoddlerspersonalassistant

Well written and thoufht provoking memoir. Felt the present day and past storylines weaved together nicely.

This one leaned more to the author's personal story than to insidery stories of the wealthy, and that wasn't quite what I had thought this one would be based on the description. The connections she drew weren't always logical to follow, but overall the story was interesting, though a little unpolished.

This was such an interesting book! My husband and I have a nanny (but we are not the 1%!) and it was so interesting hearing everything from Stephanie's perspective and interspersed with her upbringing. This gave me a whole new perspective about what nannying for the 1% looks like. Very different than what our nanny does for us. I loved that ultimately Stephanie made her dreams come true - living in NYC and being a published author!

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP81WujQt/
“Wanted: Toddler's Personal Assistant” is a modern look at the class inequalities in America today and a peek into how the ultra-wealthy live. In her memoir, Kiser describes her life of nannying for different families that belong to the 1% in New York City. The stark comparisons Kiser makes between her childhood with poor parents in a chaotic environment and the unlimited resources of the children of the mega-rich shed light on the class division in America.

The book is a well-written glimpse into the type of wealth that almost all Americans will never see. I enjoyed Kiser’s humor when describing the often-ridiculous behaviors of the people she worked for – think $500 an hour for a learning class for a toddler.

I relate to Kiser as she shares her struggles in understanding who she is and what she wants in her 20s. I appreciated that she was candid in her vulnerability of feeling somewhat lost.

In the end, Kiser comes to the age-old truth that while unlimited resources and funds may bring you closer to happiness, true joy comes from those you love. It is not a perfect book, but I enjoyed it and would recommend it to fans of memoirs.

I picked up this book because it was similiar to my own story - I ended up babysitting/nannying for a few years to pay for college and once I ended up in NYC is was for a couple of "money" families and I definitely grew up lower middle class so it was a bit of a culture shock for me. Seeing how similar our experiences were, even though she worked for the 1% and I worked for the moms that could afford midtown, was a bit wild. Overall, I think it is a great commentary on the life of nannies in NYC and how childcare can be such a lucritive business and even though we care for those kids like our own, it is still very much a business.

I asked for this book for two reasons: one, becuase I find the topic o child rearing fascinating and important (even though I'm nowhere close to being a mother); and because it seemed like it would be an entertaining look at the lives of the 1%.

But I found a lot more than that!

I really enjoyed the contrasting perspectives between the author's own empoverished childhood and the wealth and privilege of her work environment. I loved how engaging and thought provoking the writing was. It was great to consider questions of class, gender roles, and the so-called American Dream as I turned the pages.

I really enjoyed the read and would highly recommend it (in fact, I already rec-ed it to my book club!). The discussion guide at the end was also very interesting to consider!

Thank you Sourcebooks and NetGalley for the opportunity to review it.

Went into this expecting a light hearted “omg I can’t believe that” look into the life of the 1% and their kiddos, but left with a vulnerable, heavy memoir that I’m grateful to have read.

While we do get a look into the many families that Stephanie Kiser nannied for, we also do get a contrast between the 1%, Stephanie as a white nanny, and nannies of color. While Stephanie’s journey was no walk in the part, she acknowledges that she was still treated better than her co-workers of color.

Hindsight into someone’s life can make it really easy to say that it was privileged of Stephanie to leave her college scholarship for a school that would cost her thousands in student loans, that she should’ve just moved out of New York, etc. BUT she fully acknowledges that she, as an 18 year old, didn’t understand the impact of taking out loans like that. She even reflects on her journey from being a Republican to a Democrat. Life is all about learning.

Grateful for the “wtf??” laughter moments of nannying stories, but especially grateful for this shared story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A fascinating insight into the nannying world! I really enjoyed the narrative voice of this book and am interested to see what they might write next. The stories of the rich families and contemplations on wealth gaps were super interesting. The childhood sections dragged for me at times, hence the 4 star review but overall a really enjoyable read.

This memoir wasn't entirely what I was expecting but that only made meike it even more! As a nanny myself, I was drawn to the stories of what it's like nannying for the rich, but was really hooked my the social commentary and how the author brought in her own childhood and upbringing and contrasted it with the lives of the children she nannied. Really excellent and well done.

Thanks to NetGalley and SourceBooks for this advance reader copy, in exchange for an honest review. This book was a memoir about the author’s experience working as a nanny to Uber-rich Manhattanites, while also recollecting her own childhood and how vastly different it was compared to the lives of the children she’s nannying.

This book kind of reminded me of the Nanny Diaries but, I appreciate the difference with the author comparing it to her own childhood and thus, also providing her own social commentary on a variety of issues. It gave the story a unique angle and I appreciated the dichotomy between the two main narrative threads. I did struggle to get through the book a bit, as just sadly lost interest in the story. The tone of the book sometimes felt more whiny, rather than observant and whatever else the author may have been going for. Perhaps this book just did not catch me at the right time but, I think the premise and overall arc of the story was interesting. I’d like to come back to this at another point and would be interested to see what others think!

Stephanie had a difficult childhood with her father working hard but not making lots of money. Her mother stayed home and had babies. Stephanie remembers some hard times and lots of shouting. Although she wasn’t a good student, she was a terrific basketball player which got her into a prestigious school that didn’t care about her grades as long as she played well at the sport. She managed to get into college and borrowed lots of money to do so. She got a degree in television writing. Her goal was to go to New York City. She soon realizes that any job she tries to get in television writing only pays a pittance and no where enough to pay for rent and her student loans. When she hears about getting a nannying job, she decides to check it out.

Nannying jobs for the super rich in New York City can pay six figures and some come with benefits. So, she tries her hand at that. Her first job was good but subsequent ones left a lot to be desired. Some of the people she worked for were very rude and demanded she adhere to ridiculous tasks and rules.

The story goes back and forth from her childhood and the hardships she faced to the present day and the opulence of the lives of the super rich. There are some chuckles and some sad times as well. I had hoped to read more about the different children and their families but was disappointed that this book was more of an autobiography of the author’s life.

Copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

If you liked The Nanny Diaries, you'll like this.

"Wanted: Toddler's Personal Assistant" by Stephanie Kiser offers a fascinating glimpse into the world of high-end nannying in New York City. Kiser's engaging writing style and keen observations make for an entertaining and often humorous read. Her personal journey from a struggling college graduate to a well-paid nanny for the ultra-wealthy is both relatable and captivating.

Kiser excels at painting vivid pictures of the lavish lifestyles she encounters, from Prada baby onesies to exorbitantly priced preschools. Her descriptions of the bonds she forms with the children in her care are touching and genuine, adding emotional depth to the narrative.

The author's honesty about the challenges of the job - long hours, sacrificed personal time, and the struggle to pursue her own dreams - adds authenticity to the story. Readers will find themselves rooting for Kiser as she navigates the complexities of her role and grapples with difficult decisions.

While the book provides an intriguing insider's perspective on the lives of the 1%, at times the political commentary on inequality and social mobility detracts from the personal narrative. The frequent digressions into broader societal issues, while important, occasionally overshadow the more compelling aspects of Kiser's individual experience and relationships with the families she works for.

Despite this minor drawback, "Wanted: Toddler's Personal Assistant" remains a highly readable and thought-provoking memoir. It offers a unique window into a world few of us will ever experience firsthand, while also touching on universal themes of ambition, sacrifice, and the search for fulfillment in one's career and life.

When her career plans don’t work out, Stephanie Kiser became a nanny as a temporary fix to pay her bills. Living in NYC is expensive. Nannies are paid well but sometimes asked to do crazy things. Kiser’s descriptions of the families are sometimes hysterical and others sad. She becomes very attached to most of the children she spends time with. This is a realistic portrait of what nannying to the wealthy in a big city is like. I enjoyed reading it and I thank NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this ARC.