I think the au pair or nanny situation can be particularly troubling because of the imbalance in power between a white thirtysomething mom (I’m making this up, of course) and a twenty-year-old nanny or the mom and a nanny who doesn’t speak English. There’s always room for abuse when the difference in power is that substantial.

Twelve years ago when I used to babysit, I watched a woman’s 9 year old daughter for $2.00 an hour. This wasn’t part of the deal, but her disturbed 13 year old son was also always there (”but you don’t have to watch him!”). I loved the time when he shot his sister in the face with a beebee gun. I put up with a lot of crap for that job because I was too nice. But when the mom (who told me, long after I’d agreed to $2/hr (8 hours a day), that she sometimes brought home 5 grand a month from her job as a car saleswoman) started hinting to me that there was an old lady a few apartments over who was willing to watch her daughter for $1 an hour, I suddenly grew a spine and said, “Well, that’s a bargain, isn’t it?” And she never called me to babysit again.

Australia is so spread out, I wonder if this is a problem all around the country. Its population density overall probably factors in too.