By Daniel Rigney
A new company calling itself "Rent-a-Grandma" and describing itself as a "revolutionary concept for domestic staffing needs” announced last Friday that it has begun a nationwide rollout. The California-based company has already begun selling franchises in Texas and other states.
I had never heard of Rent-a-Grandma until last night, when I noticed it was trending as a topic on Yahoo. Ever the cultural radar scanner, I decided to check it out. Here’s what I found. What do you think?
We Report. You Decide.
Rent-a-Grandma, a domestic employment agency engaging older women to perform various domestic services for hire, is already up and running in Los Angeles, with about 50 “grandmas” on active duty as child care providers and, in special instances, eldercare providers and companions, pet-sitters, and cooks. Prospective customers are assured that employees are well vetted, speak English, are loyal, and meet several other desiderata. I am still not clear whether applicants are required to be grandmothers in the technical biological sense, or merely matronly grandmother-equivalents in appearance and demeanor. I’m also not sure about age limits, lower and higher.
Be assured that I’m not here to push this product. I have some qualms about it personally. A recent Fox News story about Rent-A-Grandma, narrated by Casey Stegall of Fox Business and viewable on You Tube, raised some vexing questions for me.
Stegall opened his report with a question of his own: “Why not?” He urged viewers not to “rush to judgment,” noting that for some parents the service may meet an important need, and that (verbatim) “it’s tough finding good help these days.”
Talking Points
Fox Business and other sources have provided us with several talking points and catch phrases to help us make up our own minds about Rent-a-Grandma. For your consideration:
As a caregiver, a mature, experienced granny may be preferable to a teen nanny in many respects, assuming the older woman has no relevant health limitations. [One cranky observer notes that experienced grandmas don’t spend all day phoning or texting when they’re supposed to be working. And grandmas know how to cook and clean up a room.]
At $16-23 an hour, the service’s cost is affordable to most of those who watch Fox News and especially Fox Business.
The service is entrepreneurial. It’s not a government program. Rent-a-Grandma creates jobs for unemployed or underemployed seniors. It shows we care.
The tone of the Fox report is generally upbeat and uncritical. “Be open to this idea,” it seems to whisper reassuringly.
Also findable on You Tube is a mean-spirited video of two young male pranksters harassing an elderly Rent-a-Grandma. The men in the video ask her questions like “Can I rent four or five of you to remodel my house?” “Can you do roofing and unload my truck?” and “Can you bring your own lunch?” The hapless victim of this call is not the agency itself but, apparently, an older woman who works through the agency and seeks legitimate work as a caregiver.
The concept of Rent-a-Grandma, and even the name itself, are not brand new. I found evidence that in San Francisco several years ago, older women of varied ethnic backgrounds (e.g., Vietnamese), who were identified as rent-a-grandmas, were offering to teach their their native cuisines to interested clients. And of course, grandmas have been providing domestic care for centuries, long before they were a part of the paid labor force.
Interestingly, I could find almost no entries on the web for “Rent-a-Grandpas.” One of the few such businesses was a pet-sitting service in Virginia.
Several questions came up for me after I’d had a chance to mull the idea of Rent-a-Grandma for awhile:
Economic Questions: Is the grandma-rental business entirely a win-win arrangement for all concerned parties (owner, employee, client, others)? Would our answer depend partly on the level of wages and benefits (if any) its employees received?
Would Rent-a-Grandmas have the right to organize Sisterhoods to negotiate better pay and working conditions, or would their compensation be determined solely by the market, company management, and minimum wage laws? Would those currently employed as nannies and babysitters be nudged into unemployment by this new labor arrangement?
Legal Questions: Is there a case for external regulation of such agencies beyond rules that currently pertain to babysitting and domestic cooking? Does Rent-a–Grandma pose any special hazards to caregiver or children beyond the routine hazards of childcare?
Is there potential for abuse of the elderly on the part of the children, parents or the company, or potential bases for discrimination (too old, too young, not a “real” grandmother, etc.) by the company, clients or others, beyond traditional bases of discrimination such as sex, race or ethnicity, religion and the like? Can a prospective employee be rejected, for instance, for being “too Muslim” or “too gay”?
Sociological Questions: How will the children’s real grandparents feel about having some aspects of their customary family roles assumed by someone who could potentially become a rival for the family’s affections, or has a different approach to childcare than they or the parents have? Should rent-a-grandmas be permitted to spank?
Where are the grandpas in this picture?
We almost forgot to ask: How, if at all, will this arrangement affect the children themselves, compared with the care they currently receive or would have received under existing social practices?
Is there anything disconcerting about turning the traditional family role of the grandmother into a commodity or a “brand” and selling it on the marketplace? Can markets ever be bad for people?
The agency website announces that “ Rent-a-Grandma sets a standard unequaled in the industry.” Is there, or will there be, a grandma-rental industry? Will it rival the babysitting industry?
Whose core values, if anyone’s, would the existence of a grandma-rental industry offend? How many would even notice its existence in the cultural cacophony of our frenetic attention economy?
Does the rise of a business like Rent-A-Grandma say anything surprising or unexpected about the kind of society we are, or the kind of society we’re becoming?
Discuss.
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