Standing Up For Yourself As An Au Pair

Stand up for yourself if you’re being mistreated and communicate your problems.

• Try to reach out to and meet as many new people as possible! As great as your host family may be, spending all your time with them will only lead to problems down the line.

• If you and the family can’t compromise, leave. It’s your life. There’s no reason to waste a year doing something that makes you so unhappy.

• Come with enough money saved to keep you afloat for a week or two just incase you need to find a new job or au pair family.

It’s been over a year since I flew from the U.S to Vienna, Austria to be an au pair. With only basic knowledge of the German language, no friends here, and very little experience taking care of toddlers, I was pretty much starting with a blank slate.

I’m now leaving Austria in a couple of weeks with several new friends and experiences, a full heart, and a strong desire to return. If someone asked me if I would recommend the whole au pair idea, I would say “YES, YES DO IT, but...” because there are so many things I wish I had known in the beginning. A lot of things I had to experience first in order learn some lessons.

Long story short, it didn’t work out with my first host family. Although we had signed the Austrian au pair contract saying I was to work a maximum of 18 hours a week with at least one day off a week, it didn’t turn out that way. With this host family, it wasn’t a question of when I was working but when I wasn’t working. I was just expected to be there all the time unless I had something to go to, and then I could ask if I could leave. When I asked for a day off, I was told I could have off on Tuesdays until 2 p.m and that was it. This combined with other little things made me very uncomfortable and unhappy, and I knew this was not what I had signed up for.

Luckily, I had met a few other au pairs, expats, and locals through Facebook or meet ups who had experience with this stuff. They assured me this was not okay. It wasn’t legal, and it wasn’t fair to me. Despite what may seem like a terrible situation, I absolutely adored the children and I quite liked the parents as well. I had been in Vienna for a month and I wanted the experience to work out, but I also didn’t want to be taken advantage of.

The host family and I had a chat. I brought up the fact that I felt like I was on call 24/7, and would really prefer to have a schedule with hours. Basically the mom told me that she couldn’t give me working hours because she wasn’t “a college kid” and “didn’t have a schedule” and I would just have to deal with it. I told her that despite the fact that I loved the family, I wasn’t okay with being at her beck and call at all hours of the day, and it was clear we couldn’t compromise. I had a week then to figure out a new situation, but I knew for sure I did not want to return home. I thought about going somewhere new, maybe to Spain or Ireland, but I had just dipped my toes in Vienna and I was already starting to warm to it.

The first thing I did was get online and start searching for new families. I found one, interviewed with them, accepted, and moved in the next week. Throughout the process, other au pair girls, Austrian friends, and fellow expats were with me either in person or online. Girls I had just met once or twice would message me asking how it was going, if I had found a new family, if there was anything they could do. People were saying they would reach out to their host parents to see if they knew anyone looking for a new au pair. I was told I could stay with friends while I looked. While my host family failed, I still felt like I had a family abroad. People from all over the world knew the struggle of starting anew in a different country, and they were there for me.

I’m not saying to run away at the first sign of problems, but I think a lot of au pairs will put up with a lot or get taken advantage of, because they think if they leave it’s considered a failure. It’s not a bad thing to know what you deserve. Sometimes our problems as an au pair can seem very lonely because we’re the sole employee for that family. It’s not like a restaurant job or an office job where everyone has the same boss. It was just me there to confront my employer, and although it was terrifying, I rose to the challenge. Luckily I had people around to tell me I had done the right thing.

I’ve stayed with my new host family until the end. I moved on and although things weren’t perfect, I was still so glad I got out of my original situation.

In conclusion, what I learned from this experience is to reach out to as many people as you can once you get there, because it is so important to have a support network in your new life abroad. I also learned that it’s better to start anew in a situation where you’re happy, rather than stick it out somewhere and be miserable. In the end, you’ll feel proud of yourself for standing up for yourself and knowing what you deserve. It’s okay to change families. A lot of au pairs do. Know what you want and don’t be afraid to communicate, and no matter how it may seem, you are not alone.

-Dana Hufe

You can read more from Dana here: https://wienqueen.com/category/au-pair/

If you wish to submit a Real Story, please contact us at aupairwithcare@gmail.com.