Become a Member
Life

Sartre didn’t prepare me for life as an au pair

December 2, 2016 14:03
SusanXYXYReuben.jpg

BySusan Reuben, Susan Reuben

3 min read

In the summer before my A levels, I spent a month in France being the world’s worst au pair.

I set off with no childcare experience or domestic skills of any kind. To be fair, my French was excellent and I could talk at length about existentialism and Sartre’s mauvaise foi. I had other talents, too: I could play the solo in Telemann’s viola concerto, and write an amusing limerick on any given subject.

None of these skills, it turns out, is useful when one is required to help a single mother living with two small children in the French Alps.

I quite liked children in general — cute ones who chatted and showed you stuff and asked you to read them stories. My small charges, on the other hand, were semi-feral and hugely resentful of having a stranger looking after them. I tried —