It's 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are?
For a select number of professional women, the answer is: in the next room of the hotel suite. Brooke Barousse, owner of Lexington Nannies in Brentwood, California, reports that many of her work-obsessed clients regularly take their children and a nanny (or two) on work-related trips. The nannies are sometimes treated to their own suites and are free to partake of all hotel amenities--assuming that care of their young charges isn't compromised. "This is a natural progression of having talented women in the work force," says the vice president of a well-known investment banking firm who--because of the sensitivity of a nanny's work as a business expense--asked not to be identified. "We are at a point where the five-day work week, retirement, and maternity leave no longer exist as we know them. If you are the rainmaker and we need you to make the deal, we'll ask you to go--even if you have to bring the baby and nanny along." But this company, like most others, has no formal policy on paying for the added expense of two or potentially three additional travelers.
As a result, many women are quietly taking matters into their own hands. "It's sort of don't ask, don't tell," one says. A director-level executive with a manufacturing company, who has traveled with her toddler daughter and a nanny while on business, put it another way: "I suspect many women do it under the radar." (Concerned about calling attention to the issue, the executive asked not to be identified.) A platinum-level flyer on
She'd asked colleagues balancing careers and newborns about their approaches, learning that some would go so far as to pump their milk and
For her part, Dawn Walzak--a senior vice president of Tishman Hotel Corporation who travels for work three or four times a month--has jet-setting with her two young children down to a science. "I always request a club-level room and a refrigerator," says Walzak, whose mother has accompanied her on the road to act as nanny. Best, she says, are connecting rooms or junior suites that allow more space for all the kid-related flotsam and jetsam (stroller, car seats, toys). Walzak, who'd made business trips for ten years before starting a family, champions the benefits of bringing the brood along.
Vivian Deuschl, corporate vice president of public relations for Ritz-Carlton, notes that women executives are bringing one--even two--nannies with them to business hotels and resorts. Other hotel groups have also picked up on the trend. "In the past year and a half, we have noticed that more executive women are staying on the Gold Floor with their children and nannies while on business trips," says Clarence McLeod of the Fairmont in Washington, D.C., explaining that the space offers amenities tailored to kids, such as bedtime treats and board games.
Major corporations aren't picking up the tab--on a formal basis, at least--for the pleasure of your children's company. Some, though, like
If there's an expectation of payment for taking nanny and kids on business trips, few are seeing evidence of it. Bonnie Gwin, a partner with the executive-search firm Heidrick & Struggles, says that while female execs do travel with children, she hasn't seen the nanny issue raised in any of her negotiations. "I think it would be unusual for a company to pay for [a nanny for] a man or a woman," says Gwin. "Most women executives would not want to ask for that. [If this is a necessary travel arrangement,] she'd want to keep that to herself." Gwin, a mother of two, has traveled on business with her own children, usually hiring a babysitter in the destination city rather than bringing along a nanny.
Even in more creative fields, paid travel for nannies is not that common. Karen Danziger, a managing partner at the Howard-Sloan-Koller Group, a New York-based executive-search firm focused on the media and entertainment industries, says that at the very highest executive levels, there might be a line item for child care. But more likely, "it's just built into the salary [and] they keep the personal details out of the conversation." Danziger worries that asking for nanny support for travel could perpetuate negative stereotypes or misperceptions about female executives, inviting male counterparts to suggest that women can't compete without special assistance.
Of course, child care isn't an exclusively female concern. "Work-life balance is a hot topic, and it's germane to male candidates, as well," says Thomas Fuller, general managing partner of Epsen Fuller/IMD International Search Group in New York. Nanny travel hasn't surfaced in conversations he's had about potential perks, but "I have seen companies be much more flexible about how women schedule their business trips," he says.
That flexibility alone marks a major step forward for executive women who, despite cultural shifts in the roles of the sexes, still tend to bear the greater responsibility for child rearing--at least in children's earliest years. So when a business traveler says her hotel has all the comforts of home, that just might include the nearness of her children and their trusted nannies.
Amy Cortese is a freelance journalist based in New York. Austin-based Becca Hensley writes for the Robb Report, National Geographic Traveler, and other publications.
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