The glossy brochure advertising "the best live-in child care in the world!" had featured energetic European lasses with megawatt smiles. So Cathy and Thomas Lynch of Wilton, Connecticut, were perplexed in November 1990 when their Dutch au pair arrived fearful and miserable. On Day One, Saskia, 21, wept uncontrollably, but lacked enough English to explain why she was upset. On Day Two, Saskia expressed shock that she was expected to provide sole care for the Lynches' two daughters, ages two and four, while the Lynches were at work; she thought she had come to America primarily to travel and learn English. On Day Three, Saskia announced that she wanted to go home -- then stopped speaking English altogether. Baffled, Cathy found an interpreter, who translated: Saskia said she couldn't be left alone with the Lynch children.
When Cathy phoned the sponsoring agency, EF Au Pair of Cambridge, Massachussetts, she was stunned by their refusal to help. "They literally told us we could put her out on the street, and that she could now find her own way home," Cathy recalls. (An agency spokesman says that she is unfamiliar with the case, but that the standard response is to "do what we can" to help an au pair return home.) Instead the Lynches helped Saskia make her travel arrangements. Then, not wanting to squander their nonrefundable program fee of roughly $2,700, they demanded a replacement. This time, they got a 19-year-old Swede who was all the agency had promised: an English- speaking au pair who provided 12 months of flexible, dependable child care in exchange for room, board, a $100 weekly salary, a $300 educational stipend and a round-trip ticket.
Heartened by their second au pair experience but now leery of EF Au Pair, the Lynches then signed with the Connecticut-based Au Pair in America, another of the eight private agencies designated by the U.S. Information Agency to match American families with European au pairs who are between the ages of 18 and 25. Melanie, 19, promptly erected a vast photo shrine of the child she had cared for back home in England, then cried and cried. Three days later, an agency counselor visited and suggested that Melanie leave within 24 hours. Exit Melanie, enter Katja, a 22-year-old German who failed to watch the Lynch girls when they swam at the beach. Katja also couldn't drive, though her application stated otherwise. Worn out, Cathy dismissed Katja within three weeks, quit her nursing job and became a full-time mom. Her conclusion: "Scrap the whole au pair program. It's just plain bad."
The Lynches' experience is not one of those sensational au-pair-from-hell stories that make for splashy headlines and breathless movies-of-the-week. Yet it is typical enough in the annals of live-in babysitters to give pause to any family seeking an au pair. A number of the eight agencies that have placed 40,094 au pairs in American homes since 1986 say between 20% and 30% of their placements don't work out. Unhappy au pairs complain that they are lonely and treated like slaves. Discontented parents speak of au pairs who are immature, irresponsible or mentally unstable. Both sides fault the agencies for sloppy screening procedures and poor follow-through when troubles arise.