Meredith Swanson has been nannying in New York City for more than a decade — but it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that the job helped her go viral on TikTok.
On July 1, the 33-year-old posted a 90-second clip on her account @meredithgswanson walking people through a day in her life as a nanny in the Hamptons.
Swanson, who is an actress, singer and dancer by trade, calls nannying her “survival job” — the one that covers her bills and living expenses as she pursues a career in entertainment.
In the video, Swanson drives from her apartment in Manhattan to the Hamptons — a commute that takes about two hours — and settles into her nannying routine, which includes picking up the children she watches from tennis camp, taking them to the beach and grabbing donuts at a bakery downtown.
Within days, the TikTok racked up nearly 1.5 million views.
“I was stunned,” says Swanson, who started vlogging about nannying in the Hamptons over a year ago.
Soon, her comments were flooded with questions about the gig: How did she become a nanny? Where are the parents? What’s the pay like? Is working in the Hamptons all it’s cracked up to be?
Working in child care “is not for the faint of heart,” says Swanson. “But it’s the best job I’ve ever had.”
Building a career through ‘word of mouth’
Swanson moved to Manhattan shortly after graduating college in 2013 to pursue her dream of performing on Broadway.
She took a part-time job as a hostess at a steakhouse in the city and nannied for families in her neighborhood in the mornings and afternoons to earn money between auditions.
“It paid the bills, but I wasn’t happy,” Swanson says. Working late shifts and weekends at the restaurant was burning her out, too.
In 2018, Swanson says she realized that she felt “more energized and fulfilled” working with children than she ever did in a restaurant — so she quit her hostess gig to work part-time at My Gym, a children’s gym in Manhattan.
That job introduced Swanson to the families she would work with for the next six years, including the one she works for now.
“It’s all just been through word of mouth and networking,” Swanson says of her child-care career. ” I’ve been very, very fortunate with how nannying just fell into my lap.”
She didn’t start working in the Hamptons until June 2020, when the family she worked for invited her to be a live-in nanny at their beach house four days a week through the end of the summer.
Swanson follows a similar schedule for the family she’s with this summer. She started watching the children earlier this year, and plans to continue working with them part-time for at least the next two years.
Spending summers in the Hamptons
Between June and August, Swanson works from the Hamptons as a live-in nanny Mondays through Thursdays, from 6:30 a.m. until 7:30 p.m., watching two boys under 7 (Swanson declined to share the exact location in the Hamptons to protect her employers’ privacy).
On Fridays and weekends, she’s back in Manhattan. Every family she’s worked with in the Hamptons has loaned her a car for the summer, which is how she commutes.
“Summers are slow for auditioning, so I essentially have a 3-day weekend,” she adds. “That kind of flexibility has been amazing.”
Swanson says the average rate for nannying in the Hamptons, based on her experience, is anywhere between $25 and $60 an hour. Care.com puts the average rate for a live-in nanny in East Hampton at $26.33 an hour.
“It wasn’t until I started nannying that I became financially secure,” she says. “There are some years where I’ve made close to six figures from working in child care alone, which is really cool. People underestimate how viable this career path is.”
Avoiding burnout in child care
Nannying can be “exhausting, but so much fun,” Swanson shares.
She gets several breaks throughout the day as both parents work from home, and take turns getting the boys ready in the morning, feeding them dinner and putting them to bed.
That gives Swanson time to exercise, read, grab a coffee or go window shopping in Southampton.
Burnout is high in the child-care profession because of the long hours and staffing shortages, among other challenges — but that hasn’t been the case for Swanson.
The most difficult part of nannying, she says, is adapting to how parents prefer to discipline or communicate with their children.
“You might have a certain way of how you want to handle a meltdown or temper tantrum, but that might not be the same way that the parents would handle it,” she says. “I don’t want to confuse the kids, so I always try to communicate upfront with the parents and get on the same page off the bat.”
Once the summer ends, Swanson will cut back her schedule to 20 hours per week so she has more time for auditions, which pick up in the fall.
Though she doesn’t plan to continue nannying long-term, she’s enjoying it for now.
“I’m hoping that within the next couple of years, I’ll have kids of my own, and I’d like to save my energy for them,” she says. “But it’s been an incredibly rewarding career. I love helping people, it’s a privilege to be trusted to take care of someone else’s child and bring joy into their life.”
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