The Question of Nannies

Child care arrangements are one of the areas in life where there is much disagreement. In ancient and prehistoric times, mothers carried their own babies on their backs while they went about their business, including all the work of hunting and gathering that went into keeping themselves and their children alive.

http://www.pubwages.com/43/our-mothers-backs

With the social stratification that necessarily accompanies the invention of agriculture and food storage away from the source, many women were freed from the burden of that baby on their back, while other women, from a lower social caste, took up the task.

http://aya-katz.hubpages.com/hub/Bread-The-First-Fast-Food

Sometimes a mother dies, and then somebody other than the mother must step in and care for the child. In the case of Jean Laffite, that somebody else was his grandmother, Zora Nadrimal. The upbringing that Jean Laffite received from his grandmother in fact determined the entire course of his life. His personal values derived from his earliest experiences. Even the first language Jean Laffite ever spoke, which was Spanish and not the French which was the mother tongue of his father, was determined by his grandmother. He learned to hate Spain and to plot revenge against it from the woman whose husband fell victim to the Inquisition.

The importance of the nanny, whether she be a granny or a hireling, a slave or a mistress,  should not be underestimated. We pick up our values with our mother's milk or whatever formula  serves as a handy substitute.

Some of the very first nannies were actually grannies, and in English the words "nanny" and "granny" are known to be related.  But when Jean Laffite's first wife, Christina Levine, died after giving birth to his daughter Denise, it was a black servant woman who had accompanied the family from Saint Domingue,  who took care of Denise.

Is that exploitation? I tend to think that unless Jean Laffite completely trusted and respected the woman to whom he entrusted his child, he would not have entrusted his only daughter to her care. But today, more and more children are being taken care of by the nanny state, rather than by actual nannies. And when they see a picture of a black nanny, a white baby and white mother from the 1950s, many are scandalized.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/gordon-parks-a-jim-crow-mystery/

Is it a shameful thing for a white woman to employ a black woman as a nanny? Is it exploitation? Or is it actually a way for people from different backgrounds to know each other better?

Today, in America, many wealthy blacks hire nannies, and usually their nannies are not black. This is not the choice of the employers. Black nannies prefer to work for employers who are not black.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/26/us/26nannies.html

While the nanny is not always from a visibly different race than the child's mother, it is quite normal for her to come from a different socio-economic class, and often the nanny speaks a different language, and in some cases a different dialect of the same language, from the home language of the parents of the child, You can view this as exploitation, or you can view it as being exposed to a different culture in early childhood.

For instance, my father had Polish nannies who spoke Polish to him, and one of them even learned a little Hebrew in the process.

My father Amnon Katz with his first Polish nanny Manya

Of course, the nanny is going to be less wealthy than the family employing her, otherwise they could not afford to pay her what seems like a worthwhile wage. But the fact of the income inequality does not need to be a source of bitterness. It can be an opportunity to learn from one another.

When I was looking to employ a nanny for my own daughter in Taiwan, I wanted to find someone who was not only a good caretaker, but also spoke excellent Chinese.

http://aya-katz.hubpages.com/hub/The-Once-and-Future-Nanny

Unfortunately, there were undercurrents of mutual distrust among the people in Taiwan that had something to do with the Japanese occupation of the Island many decades earlier, and I was dissuaded from choosing the nanny with the most prestigious dialect of Chinese.

Today, in many western countries, the practice of hiring a nanny is frowned upon. There are a lot fewer nannies found in middle class homes than there used to be, and this is partly due to the fact that the minimum wage has gone up -- or even that there is such a thing as a minimum wage and employee benefits that most people can't afford to pay. Only the very wealthy have nannies. When people work they usually send their children to day care. Some people think day care should be free, which is another way of saying that it should be provided by the state, through coerced taxation. The nanny then becomes, rather than a servant of the parent, a public servant who often stands over the parent. In some countries, they are even making child care after the age of three mandatory -- or at least seriously considering it.

http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4622401,00.html

While the most natural arrangement may be for a mother to carry her own child on her back all day long, the best thing for the child is to have a dedicated caretaker chosen by the parents. Coercion in the choice of child care means loss of family unity and also a lack of choice in cultural and moral values. Make no doubt about it, Jean Laffite would not have been the same man if not for the things that he learned at his grandmother's knee.

Should Smaller Countries Rely on the Beneficence of the United States?

If there is any lesson to be learned from the way Jean Laffite was treated by representatives of the United States goverment at Galveston, it is this: A very small country cannot expect to survive long if it chooses to become a satellite of the United States.

There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is the fact that in the tit-for-tat of diplomatic negotiation, the United States tends to make concessions to countries whose behavior and goals it sees as problematic and even threatening, while taking for granted that well-behaved satellites will stay in line.

My father, back when he still hoped that Israel would stop relying on US assistance,  explained it like this:

An excerpt from ISRAEL: WHENCE AND WHITHER
the entire article can be read in facsimile here:http://www.pinterest.com/ayakatz/israel-whither-and-whence/

When Uri goes to school, the teacher, Bracha, tells him that discipline, quiet and order are the keys to success. If Uri asked for my advice, I would tell him to ignore the teacher and do whatever he feels like. I know what the teacher learned in her pedagogical seminar: take the wildest boy, give him a position of authority, give him responsibility, imbue him with importance,  and he will help you to rule over the class. You will be able to handle the obedient children either way. Uri knows all that. He does not need my advice.

I'm not saying that it has to be this way. It is possible to manage a class, a family, a country or the world another way, too. The teacher, the head of the family, the government of the country,  the international authority can do so. But it's not up to Uri. He can only study the responses of Mrs. Bracha and learn that it is not the one who obeys her who is rewarded. In the area of international relations, it is not in Israel's hands. Israel can only determine that it is not in its best interest to obey international powers, even if their intention is for the good. The international powers have interests that are in conflict with those of Israel; at times the great powers do not even understand what is their own best interest. For its own sake, and at times even for the sake of the great power whose commands it disobeys, Israel must break out on its own.

 This same advice holds in every relationship, even the intimate ones. Those who are most secure in our love and most sure of our allegiance to them are the ones who tend to take advantage of us. Often family members show greater deference and concern toward strangers they are wary of than to those whom they trust and rely on. In a romantic relationship, the person who is most committed is the one with the least leverage. In business negotiation and at the diplomatic conference table,  it is the least well-behaved participant who has more of a chance to get what he wants.

http://www.amazon.com/Theodosia-Pirates-The-Against-Spain/dp/1618790099

In Theodosia and the Pirates: The War Against Spain, we learn this lesson over and over again. From the opening pages, where Theodosia's love for Jean leaves her unable to demand anything for herself, not even that he break his ties with the treacherous General James Wilkinson, to the many different moments when Jean offers his allegiance and his services to the United States only to be told that they would rather do business with Spain or Britain, to the final negotiations by Pierre for a safe conduct pass, which is only granted when Pierre hints that Jean could just hand over Galveston to Spain, we see how it all works. The one who loves the most is rarely found on top, and the United States gives in to empires it is afraid of and not to the friends that are helping it to resist them.

Could it be otherwise? Could unconditional love ever be rewarded? Could a pater familias, a governor or a ruler ever punish the disobedient and reward the good? Could justice be swift and unerring, and could there ever be someone we can count on not to betray our trust once we give it?

We do see that in the actions of Jean Laffite as he governs his own family, his captains and his  own little country. But Jean Laffite was not a world power, and he was fighting too many enemies on too many fronts, while not having enough allies he could count on. If the United States had feared Jean Laffite more, it would have respected him better. Because they knew they could always count on his loyalty, they were able to completely disarm him. In the long run, this was not in the best interest of the United States.