A couple of weeks ago, I started shopping for my first housekeeper. I live a hectic corporate life by day, and I’m at the mercy of basketball practices or games, store runs, rowdy dogs, building passion projects, supporting my husband’s business needs, and cooking dinner or cleaning my house, by night.
I go to bed rolling my eyes at the notion that Beyoncé has the same 24 hours in a day as I do, because I know she has assistants, trainers, nutritionists, managers, handlers, and the damn funds to knock out her day at a rate that’s three, four, five times more efficient than the average person.
And listen, I don’t even have kids, so it literally boggles my mind how women can go about their day with them, you feel what I’m sayin’?
How Sway? How?
Well, someone who shed a little light on all the above, is Tamron Hall, legendary journalist, and Emmy-award-winning host of her own daytime talk show of the same name. Hall, 52, recently revealed in an interview with SheKnows.com that she has a live-in nanny for her three-year-old son, Moses, to support her in her day-to-day.
“I’ve talked about the fact that our nanny lives with us. It's impossible to do it without her; my nearest family members are 2,000 miles away. And I made a very conscious and deliberate decision to make sure people knew this about my life. I wasn't going to pretend, and I also felt that [to do so] was diminishing this great woman who chose a career to care for my son when I'm not able to be there,” Tamron said.
And, honestly, this is absolutely okay to decide. For some, a nanny is necessary to manage a household, and others opt to take the more traditional route of raising their family, but either way, the great thing about having these conversations is that they become less stigmatized and more prevalent so women can decide what’s best for them.
Powerhouse Shonda Rhimes expressed similar sentiments as Hall about her nanny, saying, “I’ve read a lot of books written by and about working women and I’m struck by the fact no one ever seems to want to talk about having help at home," Shonda wrote in her book, Year of Yes. "Which I think is not so helpful to the women who don’t have help at home."
Zoe Saldaña, whose face is plastered all over 2022’s mega box office smashes, admits that her nanny raises her kids with her husband as well, telling Yahoo Style in 2017, “Our assistant, our nanny, and our housekeeper. They are literally raising our children with us. It's because of them I am able to rip myself away as long as I can, and my husband as well, to do what we do. They're teaching us how to manage our pain as they’re raising our kids with us."
Whether you agree with any of them or not, in a world where nothing is what it seems, you have to respect that these women openly welcome the conversation. And Tamron agrees just so whatever you decide is best for your home, you give yourself grace, as she feels that she, along with other moms "measure ourselves against standards that aren't real."
"I don't know what balance feels like. I know what being present feels like," Tamron explained. "I'm a work in progress. But there's such great advice and such great conversation that we can have with other moms every day to uplift rather than wallow in some of those difficult days. So for me, I don't know what balance feels like. I just know what it feels like to try."
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Featured image by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic