Salary for Babysitters
Pay given to babysitters is a very personal and debated issue. Parents don't want to break their budget for a special night out, but they also want someone trustworthy to watch over their children. Several babysitting websites show hourly rates ranging from $4-18 as acceptable. For some parents, paying more equals peace of mind that their children are well cared for while they are gone.
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Children's Age
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Sitters watching infants should be paid more than a sitter watching only pre-teens. Infants require significantly greater monitoring with feeding, burping and diapering than do 10 or 11-year-old children that can, for the most part, keep themselves entertained. Age span of your children also is a factor. If your four children range in age from 3 months to 9 years, you should consider paying your sitter an extra dollar or two per hour to reflect the varying demands.
How Many Children
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There's an old babysitting myth that dictates twice the children means twice the pay. It is just that: a myth debunked by experts in the care-giving field. Sheila Lirio Marcelo is the founder and chief executive officer of Care.com, a national online service connecting families to approved caregivers for infants to elders. On the Lifetuner website, Marcelo writes, "typically if you add a second child to a babysitting session, it won't double the price. Rather, parents should increase the overall pay by a couple dollars per hour, as long as their babysitter isn't doing twice the work." However, if three or more children are being watched simultaneously, additional hourly pay is required.
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Time Of Day
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According to the Babysitting-Rates website, the hours between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. are considered normal babysitting hours. Jobs before 8 a.m. or lasting past 10 p.m. should be compensated with a couple extra dollars per hour. However, the exception to this rule occurs when a sitter has been hired for an overnight care-giving job. According to Marcelo, "it's okay to decrease their hourly salary for the hours when they're sleeping. But you'll still need to pay them for the whole time, though."
Babysitter's Age/Experience
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If this is your sitter's first job, you aren't required to pay extra unless you come home to find your little darling tucked in safe and sound, all the toys put away and the dirty dishes you left in the sink are now drying in the dish rack. Age and experience level matter in all jobs, including babysitting. Most sitters in their early teens jump at $5 an hour. However, older sitters needing gas money for their car who also have completed CPR or first aid training are worth at least $10 an hour. Ditto for a sitter that shows up with her own bag of toys to enthrall your children with during your absence.
Special Dates
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If you want to go out for New Year's Eve or Valentine's Day, be ready to shell out some extra bucks. These are premium nights and sitters know it. If you want a 16-year-old sophomore that successfully completed a babysitter's course through your municipality to forgo a night out with her football-playing senior boyfriend, be ready to more than adequately compensate her. Parents talk to each other about what the sitters did right or wrong. The teens are doing the same thing, except they talk about who is cheap and who isn't.
Extra Responsibilities
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If you only want your sitter to make sure your kids don't kill themselves or each other, you don't need to pay above the local going rate. If you want that sitter to go over a spelling list before bedtime, make a pizza for the kid's dinner, feed the cat or even make sure the kids refrain from texting their friends all night, pay more. You'll need to make a short list of what you expect and for reinforcement, perhaps leave the additional pay next to the note after you go over it with the sitter prior to your departure.
Location
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Certainly there isn't much difference in changing a diaper in Boston versus changing one in Arkansas. But if you live in New York City, the going rate for babysitters there is bound to be higher than if you live in a rural community in the Midwest. Several websites offering babysitting advice also have rate calculators that take location into consideration. Consult those.
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References
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- Photo Credit happy children image by Marzanna Syncerz from Fotolia.com
