Aside from receiving lukewarm reviews, the film “The Nanny Diaries” has provoked discussion in the media and the blogosphere about the relationship between mothers and nannies. Here are a few reactions:

 

In the

Washington
Post, Heather Hewett said while she enjoyed the satirical book on which the movie was based, “. . . [A]s a working mother, I can’t help noting how little the story has to do with reality – either with the situation of parents like me, who depend on nannies and babysitters to care for our children, or with the lives of most women who work as caregivers.” Calling nannies the “linchpins that enable many two-career households to function,” Hewett said that the film’s portrayal of an extremely affluent, narcissistic at-home mom who “abuses her nanny and neglects her attention-starved son,” is “the exception, not the rule.”

 

In the Boston Globe, Joanna Weiss explored how the “delicate” mom-nanny relationship has been portrayed in popular culture. Noting films such as “Mary Poppins,” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle” and “Nanny McPhee,” as well as books such as “To Hell with All That” and “The Feminine Mistake,” Weiss wrote: “There is no relationship as fraught with tension as the one between a mother and a nanny: that legal trespasser, perpetual eavesdropper, occupier of children's time and affection. That's why servants, nursemaids, and governesses have served throughout literary history as a sort of snide Greek chorus; ‘The Nanny Diaries’ novel uses quotes from them as chapter epigraphs. And that's why film and TV nannies have existed largely as metaphors: walking, talking, occasionally singing admonishments about what domestic life should really be.”

 

On the web site Babble, blogger Jessica Ashley, who was once a nanny, wrote: “I have no idea if this movie is worth your twenty dollars in tickets and forty dollars in popcorn, sodas and sugary goodness you wouldn’t dare let your kids eat in the theater, or if it will be worth the four bucks it costs to rent and the eight dollars in overdue fees I will inevitably fork over. But I do know that it is good to see and imagine and write and discuss the relationship between mother and nanny more and not leave it to silver screen stereotypes to define.” (September 2007)