Tamara spent two years with Cultural Care Hungary across the United States - from Chicago and Connecticut to San Diego - caring for children and becoming an unforgettable part of their everyday lives. 

5,000 miles away - The start and what came before

There’s a good chance you've heard about au pairs before, saw us on your feed, or maybe even came across us in your neighborhood. Being an au pair is an amazing experience full of valuable lessons - and sometimes challenges - and I truly returned as a different person.

The plane taking me to the start of this journey was to Chicago, but living away from my home wasn’t unfamiliar to me. I spent a semester as an exchange student in the Netherlands during university, and though being an au pair is very distinct from being a student, having this experience helped me in the process.

Family selection happened prior to my arrival in the USA. Au pairs meet the families through video calls with the help of their agency, and it’s through these talks that both parties can decide if they’d like to work together. 

I met the family of a little boy, only eight years old, through these calls. He was pretty quiet and shy, and I was assured that he was very agreeable and listened to the adults around him. So after the matching and planning process, I boarded my flight to Chicago.

Re-pair - Au pairs and the rematch process

Usually au pairs arrive on a Friday and don’t yet work through the weekend. It’s very different from being an exchange student: there are fewer resources to get oriented, but it’s definitely not unmanageable. There’s time to settle in, meet the family, and get over jet lag before becoming an integral part of family life. 

Unfortunately, in my case, the first match didn’t work out as we hoped. It was very different from my expectations based on the information I was given, and we often just weren’t compatible for multiple reasons. We tried to work things out with the whole family and with the child, but ultimately couldn’t come to an agreement.

I think it’s important that the au pairs know: you don’t have to tolerate behavior you are not comfortable with. Yes, we have to remember that they are children and often they don’t know any better, but we also can’t let it cause us the amount of stress it did.

The rematch process happens through the agency and each au pair’s local childcare consultant. It’s initiated after some serious talks to see whether a situation can be fixed, but everyone takes it seriously that rematches are for legitimate reasons. 

Technically, during the two weeks when the agency searches for a new family, we can still live in the first home, but that wasn’t my case. Luckily, there are hosts in the USA specifically in case this happens, and I could spend those weeks among other au pairs waiting for their new families, our host, and a dog. It was very reassuring to see that I wasn’t alone in my situation, and that there was a safety net for us. I even got to cook some Hungarian food and walk the host’s dog!

After the small intermission, I left for my next destination: Connecticut.

The many faces (and au pairs) of Connecticut

Settled in with my second host family, I felt much more certain. The area where we - and by we, I mean the hundreds of au pairs staying there - lived and worked was part of New York City’s agglomeration, with trains taking residents to the financial district of Manhattan every morning.

I was hired to care for the son and daughter of one of the people taking that train each morning. The mother is a doctor at Yale University, the father a financier, and both were very hardworking and kind. We had pretty different personalities, so we never became very close, but it was pleasant working for them. Now, the kids I adored.

The boy was ten and the girl slightly younger, only six at the time. They were both very sweet and polite, and I loved working with them. Their parents were also always fair and nice with me, but the children were definitely the highlight of my time there.

Of course, there are a lot of challenges to being an au pair - if the kids don’t want to go to school in the morning, you’re the one who has to somehow lure them out from under their beds, and you can’t just ask the parents to deal with it. It’s easy to see only the great quality of life and adventures au pairs have, but always remember: it’s a huge responsibility.

As doctors and financiers, the parents often had slightly unpredictable or long schedules, but as an au pair, you can never be alone with the kids for more than five and a half consecutive days. The rules are pretty strict about making sure we don’t burn out, and the family was always considerate of this. The boy was in competitive swimming, and sometimes he had tournaments farther away, but there was never an issue with working a bit more for these occasions, because I knew my time was still respected.

There was also a big community of au pairs there, and since I consider myself pretty extroverted, it wasn’t too difficult to settle in; I developed some really good relationships, especially with a Mexican girl, who was my best friend there. I also recognized some parts of Europe in the places and people of the East Coast, in the thick winter jackets and the organized straightforwardness, and that’s where my au pair journey really found its track.

Sunny San Diego - My last stop as an au pair

My experience with my last family as an au pair was so far from how I started this journey, and I couldn’t have asked for a better one.

For some reason, au pairs aren’t as popular in San Diego. I was always added to the group chat for the people in the area where I was staying, and while in Connecticut the number of members was really high, in San Diego it was about fifteen. Nevertheless, it was here that I found some of the best connections throughout my whole experience.

The couple I was working with also had two children, a boy and a girl, and I really loved the family. The children were slightly younger, only seven and five, and it was, of course, a little more difficult because of this. But the support I had from the parents was incredible, and it was also great to witness how they were teaching and raising them. I left knowing that they would become healthy, amazing adults.

I grew very close to their mother and their mother’s best friend, since the parents always made an effort to include me in their friend group. But I also met an au pair from Sweden around my second month there, and though there weren’t a lot of us around, it was perfectly enough to have each other.

I was really surprised by how calm, happy, and laid-back California’s people and culture were, especially after Connecticut. Coming from Hungary, the flip-flops and very little sense of urgency were a little unfamiliar, but the constant sun and happiness were contagious. 

This easygoing manner applied to the parents too. A big contrast with my schedule in Connecticut was that it was very loosely timed. At first I texted the parents constantly about how the day was developing, whether their kids and the tasks were all in order (as I was asked to do in Connecticut), but that habit quickly went when I realized they trusted that everything was going well to begin with.

I usually didn’t work on weekends as I did in Connecticut, mostly due to the much more stable schedule of the parents in San Diego. I always worked around 30 hours a week, which still left time to recharge, spend time outside, and get ready to focus on the kids when I was back on the clock. Thirty hours a week, or the maximum of forty-five, doesn’t sound like that much, but there is a reason there are so many regulations about free time. I was essentially like a second caretaker, a little like an additional aunt, to the kids I was caring for without any experience with raising kids, and it’s important, for everyone’s sake, to stay rested.

I still miss my time there, but I’m very grateful that I got to spend my time with people and children like that.

Thinking about it?

When I first started, a lot of what I knew about being an au pair also was from social media. And of course that aspect of it very much exists - the amazing places you get to see, the great people you get to meet - but it’s also a lot of responsibility. You’re not replacing the parents in these kids’ lives, but you become a very important part of it, and you have to learn quickly how to solve situations you likely never had to think about.

But there are also small, beautiful things you probably never thought about. The boy in San Diego was learning karate at the time, so I learned with him - I knew the entire rulebook by the end, but it was so great to witness him finally learning something he has been trying to do for a long time.

It does help if you are more extroverted - initiating with the host family, finding your community in the new places you live. But there were plenty of introverts in the program as well. You’re a little more likely to see them caring for babies or the younger kids, but they also manage their situations perfectly. More importantly, I really recommend looking for a family that’s real as opposed to looking for a family that’s perfect. A child running up and down in the background is usually much closer to reality than a child sitting there silently.

I can only recommend this journey to everyone.I changed and grew so much during my time there, and I hope many more people can find themselves on this path.