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I have several children. We used a baby sitter once. She was very frank and told us to be very cautious using baby sitters, especially from agencies. We didn’t go down that route again.

I think it's because kids are so fucking overscheduled. They don't need to be babysat at home because they're not at home. They're at swim practice or Chinese lessons or math tutoring or football or baseball or cheerleading or gymnastics or or or or or or orrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Purely my personal experience from a few years back: It's mostly stopped being something that you can pay a random local teenager $7/hr cash for, and turned into yet another gig-economy hustle job, e.g. urbansitter.com etc. In turn I suspect this is because high school kids are hugely overscheduled.

Yes I have. My answerrs Eitan Patz, John Walsh, and “Do you know where your children are?” We are less willing to trust others, and we have a generation of laws that make it harder for older kids to be allowed to be independent, let alone responsible for others

High School extracurriculars. Kids 15-18 aren't free on a random Thursday for babysitting, they're at a tournament with their traveling soccer team or at violin lessons or at ACT prep

It’s obv possible that people have moved too far in other direction wrt safety and qualifications but it feels genuinely insane that I used to, as a 12 year old, babysit 5 and 7 year olds. Before cell phones!!!! The parents would just leave the name and number of the restaurant they were going to

There is video after video on TikTok of people claiming they can’t go to child-free weddings because they have no family nearby and won’t leave their kid with a non-family babysitter. They seem afraid, but it’s wild how the parents, I guess, never go anywhere together without the kid.

Noticed it. Few thoughts: Infantilizing of teens. Fewer teens interested in the gig. Decaying social trust + litigiousness. Also seeing a lot more grandparents taking regular babysitting duty among parents I know (was UMC more mobile a generation back? Fewer local grandparents then?).

UK based but we have only used family for baby sitting so far Partly because kids are still young but also feels like you want to leave them with someone you know in some way. Would be great to have a reliable baby sitter but almost feels unclear the best route to find one

I mean we do because I make really good money. Babysitter is $100 for four hours. One date night a week is $5000, or around $8000 of taxable income Remember that's before the price of the date

I feel like the age at which people think it’s ok to allow someone to do things alone or babysit is a factor. I was babysitting neighbors at 11 and it was normal for people to babysit at 13. A lot of people wouldn’t let someone under 16 or 17 babysit now. Also cost & knowing community less.

we (my wife and i) are fundamentally soft, is my take. (6 yo daughter that we maybe get a sitter for like 4 times a year)

My guess is that a big part of it has to do with smaller family sizes. When there are a bunch of kids at home the older ones get deputized to watch the younger ones, so having teenagers watch over young children is more normalized all around.

supply of teenage/college babysitters was already dwindling in about 2000 i bet it's still way easier to find somebody in small towns where you can really background a person i also think having to pick up or drop off a teen babysitter is considered more of a burden now

I think fewer people know enough neighbors. Also, just as a piece of anecdata, all the families on my street are like THE SAME AGE. I don't think there are any kids older than eight. So maybe in like five years, today's eight year old kids will be babysitting today's newborns or toddlers

I don’t hire a babysitter because I don’t have children, and probably won’t be able to afford a babysitter when I do eventually have them.

Kids won't let us?

Parents take their kids with them EVERYWHERE now. When I was a kid, my parents were eager to get rid of us LOL. I see little kids in bars now. It’s crazy. I think it’s an offshoot of helicopter parenting plus the expense and availability of babysitters.

Don't go out as much. Have movie nights in, etc.

In a word: community. My wife is an expert at identifying potential babysitters and getting in their good graces, but it's a constant challenge. The lack of community in modern US culture has been discussed in many places, but the core problem is that there are fewer opportunities to meet neighbors.

100% vibes based guess (tried and couldn't find data on this) but I think the increase in intensive parenting among upper middle class+ causes them to have lower trust in babysitters and other child caretakers. That and rising costs.

Teenagers aren’t allowed to babysit anymore because suburbanites became convinced en masse they were being gangstalked— sorry I meant abducted by human traffickers at the Target parking lot

my parents usually found someone trustworthy from church to do it, but we don't go to church, and our friends are either out of state or childless. most babysitters want a regular gig, too. that leaves family as our only option, and they're usually busy with our less fortunate siblings' kids

It’s been hard to find sitters, we haven’t had a regular one since she graduated from college

I dont have kids but when I was young it was not very common for the parents to brag that they never used babysitters but now it's practically an Olympic sport!! Also babysitters used to be a neighbor girl who was basically just there to make sure the rugrats didnt kill each other -- now rich people

Honestly it’s hard to find one. We’ve done childcare trades with other parents, and there is sometimes events at the local soft play or a park where you pay $50-$100 for your kid to hang out for a couple evening hours.

we have very seldom gotten a babysitter, but I can't speak to the larger trend because I thought it was just us not getting our shit together. It's... hard to find somebody? the services are expensive and bad, the daycare teachers were always heavily booked, we couldn't find the right nearby teen.

They remember what the babysitters their parents hired were like...

The same way that ppl try to call CPS if a 12-yo is walking down a sidewalk alone, [UMC] society has decided that teen girls are no longer grown up enough to babysit, so the pool of potential babysitters has shrunk, and 18-yos aren't watching your kids for $20, a pizza, and whatever's in the freezer

change in societal norms from "a 14 year old is capable of watching 3 kids for an evening" to "a 14 year old can't be trusted to be in public unchaperoned"

parents now pal around with their kids....older gens palled around with their own gen

I fit into that demographic. My wife contacted a local college about putting an ad on their jobs board and we found a qualified girl with her own car pretty quickly. She’s been our regular sitter for over two years, I can’t imagine not having her as an option.

Are you counting group day care as babysitting or not?

💰💰💰

1) neighborhoods age out; there are no teenagers on the block like back in the day. 2) the going rates for sitters these days make it cost-prohibitive. 3) as academics, we mostly used babysitting time when our kids were little to Be Productive, which is its own pathology, lol.

expensive

I think they are far more involved in their children’s lives and/or do more things with their children

Well, when I was a kid, my parents could find someone from down the street to babysit. Those options are much fewer now.

Fewer teenage girls do it. More options.

Does the upper class go out less than they used too?

Baumol’s cost disease?

They know fewer people, especially neighbors with much older kids. I think when our younger one is 2 or so we will make a rule to always have a monthly date night, but we're probably going to end up hiring a sitter from an app or something.

I have totally noticed this as someone without kids (though I think it’s also very much linked to way fewer available babysitters/no one wants to leave a 14 year old in charge of little kids anymore)

Possibly age is a factor. UMC typically means starting a family later, after uni, perhaps grad school, and establishing a career. Less desire to go out when you're around 40 compared to 25.

Like, my parents wouldn't let me babysit because they were worried the kid would fall on their head before I could stop them & I would somehow end up on trial for murder (I hit prime babysitting years around the time of the Louise Woodward trial) & many modern parents make mine look laissez-faire.

Absolutely the case, babysitters are very expensive now.

I think a while ago you’d hire the kid (usually girl) down the street and be off without giving a shit. Now the kids down the street are being babysat or over scheduled so we had to rely mostly on counselors and more expensive adults from after school programs who cost 20plus an hour.

Upper middle class parents have safety panic disease like crazy

1) too expensive because of 2) introduction of laws that give a minimum age of babysitter, usually old enough to get a proper job so they do that and 3) parents are way more panicky than previous generations and refuse to leave their kids even for playdates.

Interesting, this is the opposite of our experience? We go out maybe two times per month and have two regular babysitters. We used to have three, but one went off to university. All three are teenaged kids of friends/coworkers

UK, but my son is 13 and I don't think he's ever had a babysitter. I don't know if this is a church thing? Pretty sure our babysitters growing up were all responsible daughters of respectable people at church. (Including the hippie vicar's daughter who moved out to live in a vardo)

I also think there's a critical mass of parents to trade off babysitting duties. Not that many of my friends have kids

I legitimately just don't know how to. Like, how? I don't know. Can someone tell me?

they’re just not available it seems, between general decline in the relevant population, alternative work opportunities, and general social mistrust on both sides

My wife has a couple of saintly childless adult friends who watch our kids occasionally. but as far as the for-profit teenage neighbor babysitter I think the main thing is we don’t really know any.

Speaking as a former babysitter, I think nowadays many parents would hesitate to hire kids under the age of 14 to look after their children. I got my first regular babysitting gigs when I was 11. My first sporadic hiring was when I was about 9.

Speaking personally, I just have my daughter's usual daycare provider babysit if we're going into the city for dinner and a show. It costs the same as it would to hire a local kiddo!

Absent any other reason, scarce labor is more expensive - teenagers have more going on so competition for reliable & available sitters is intense. Our local middle school offered basic training classes (CPR & other stuff) for kids so they could allay “what if” concerns; it’s not just a skills issue

I've definitely noticed it in myself, and I think it's 1. cost 2. do more stuff as a family and 3. we go out less (not necessarily in that order). my folks just did more stuff outside of the house without us, for better and worse.

probably because they have nannies?

Not economically feasible for most parents. Also, childcare standards are different. In the 1970s I used to babysit every kid on the block while all the parents went out to dinner. Fifty cents and hour. I was 11 years old, in charge of 8-12 kids at a time.

Not in the US but is it not other people having less kids & having them older? You can’t get your mates eldest to watch your two if they’re also 10

I'm in a babysitting coop 🤷‍♂️

So big picture it's due to a mix of tight labor availability and rising costs from what I understand, but anecdotally I've noticed is especially kids born during COVID, the parents want to spend as much time with them as they can, and among people who lost a parent this urge is particularly intense.

Daughter and friends did a babysitting course. But nobody is hiring 13yo babysitters anymore. Combination of a) they're seen as too young, b) parents don't go out as much, c) parents don't trust non-family, and d) harder for kids to advertise without word of mouth networks

None of my friends who have kids use babysitters. It’s either daycare, grandparents, one parent stays home while the other goes out, or the kids come with.

my stepdaughter used to babysit in Brooklyn, but it was already less prevalent then. where the long age-grading of American society cuts against the surge in class stratification.

Going to agree with those saying less social trust but I think parents face more pressure to be everything for their children these days? Like if you leave them with anyone else too much, you're a failure of a parent.

Fewer reasons to go out with food delivery on the up, movie going on the down (particularly in the adult drama/comedy categories), new movies going early to home streaming, and events like theatre and concerts priced out of family budgets

We’ve hired the teenager who lives across the street for a couple of years. We pay her $15/hour. Unfortunately for us (but good for her!) she leaves for college at the end of the summer.

Parents speaking, and it’s really hard to find people to watch your kids in 2026.

Baumol’s cost disease

I don't feel like I've observed this, but I might not be looking at it the way you mean. Can you give a bit more detail? Are you saying they stay with their children more often or that they rely on family members or the like?

In my experience they’re just harder to find. More sports, more academics, seems like fewer teens are working generally. My parents would find babysitters in the neighborhood, I live in the same area as an adult and don’t know any local teens.

We get one monthly-ish. Wed do it more but It makes an already kind of expensive proposition (dinner out) that much more expensive. There’s also the challenge of in my town people guard theirs like sacred resources so it can be hard to get one.

I'm not (yet) in the market for babysitter services, so this is an off-the-cuff guess but: Baumol cost disease strikes again?

Honestly if I ever have children I would avoid using babysitters that aren't family as much as possible because I had babysitters that treated me awfully as a kid.

I *hope* it's... dads

For us it was because family wanted to spend time with them, unlike my grandparents, especially because my mom and dad were married young. My grandma still had two kids at home when I was born. My sis-in-law watched them for choir practice and my mom took them every Fri and most other times.

as others have said, hard to find them. we eventually found someone we like at the daycare . We may not use her when they’re older. it’s expensive, like $30/hr for two kids. So a night out goes to $400+. Honestly we use the sitter more for working late which I’m sure says something

Going rate in NYC is $30/hour so movie date night just went from $40 to $200

We have a sitter (a woman in her early 20’s who goes to culinary school) who is great, reliable and almost eerily punctual and when I tell other parents this they look at me like I discovered Atlantis

Yes. My pet theory is teens are busier/booked more than ever in their “free” time so they’re not begging for babysitting jobs to make money like I was as a teen (especially before 15/16)

there's a section at the beginning of a barbara ehrenreich book where she is summarizing betty friedan, basically says the midcentury american middle class sanctified housework and childcare such that they were the richest people ever and also had no domestic employees

true crime podcasts

in that income bracket their neighbors' teenagers are too busy optimizing sports and other extracurriculars to have a job and the full time pro nannies are happy to pick up date night shifts

Keeping my house in shape to have a sitter over is too much work. A lot of compelling answers, so I'll just add another minor one: kids who are hustlers are making their pocket change online instead: etsy, content, influencing, or automaton jobs

i think that there are a tremendous number of ways in which both social and legal norms have really outlawed the extent to which previous generations of parents used to be away from their kids. latchkey kids are more or less unlawful, and 13-year-old nonrelatives are not much more accepted.

I think covid had an effect. I noticed there was less babysitting a few years ago, but now I see the neighbor's kids watching other neighbor's kids more often.

seems that way to me but I also live in a city but grew up in the suburbs, plus cell phones…

Near me, the babysitters are busy with extracurriculars and/or jobs at the grocery store. Most of our social calendar is with other families and their kids anyway. Movies are the one thing where we’d get a sitter, but there aren’t that many movies for which I’m willing to spend that kind of money.

can't speak to the market, but I'll speculate that parental leave and flexible hours are making a difference. they are *definitely* making a difference in the story about baby matinees that kicked this off. lot of potential babysitters wouldn't be available in daytime

The most responsible teenagers are extremely busy with other things.

Cost of labor has gone up up up.

People don't know their neighbors as well, and being exaggeratedly cautious about letting your kids out of your direct supervision is a signal for responsible parenting in many social circles (see: sleepovers).

Because they have nannies?

It's funny because pet sitting is very popular now. My parents generation just crated or kenneled their pets, depending on how long they planned to be gone, now people pay for a human to come to their house and hang out with their dogs. Or cats or birds.

Having kids in cities - less neighborhood kids or grandparents around.

agreeing w the sentiments here- when I've been between FT jobs, i have found that as an adult with 20 years of childcare experience, references & certifications, i can make quite a lot of money babysitting because parents want all that and will pay for it (and act like they've won the lottery lol)

No kids, but my UMC friends with kids only hire people with CPR certifications and other credentials, which makes it very expensive. I was babysitting by 11 or 12, like most of my friends, and though I won't say that was optimal, we had younger siblings and knew the basics. And we were cheap!

It’s a chicken and egg problem. The kids don’t go outside because other kids aren’t outside. The adults don’t go out because their kids are home.

To the other explanations here I would add that people go out less in general. That’s the context for a lot of social phenomena, eg friendships (fewer), pets (more time with them), remote work. The parents can also stream something and the kids can stream something(s) else simultaneously.

The general atomizing effects of covid means that many people don't know the neighborhood kids, who are traditionally the main source of babysitters

More exposure to true crime/child abuse stories and associated paranoia

Echoing everyone about difficulty of finding someone and the pull of just staying home. I also think a lot of gentle parented kids in the current generation aren’t good at bedtime with babysitters (my kid definitely included).

Low trust. Same reason parents don’t want kids to go to sleepovers at other people’s houses

unlike parents, we both work fulltime and send our kids to daycare and feel worse about getting them babysitters, too.

I'd guess that at least some part of it is that everyone wraps themselves in sport utility vehicle the second they leave the house now so how would they even know if there were a 17 year old nearby who needed some cash

More of a stigma on using teen girls as cheap/free childcare and safetyism.

We had a really hard time finding babysitter recommendations from our network because most of our friends had never used them. Our parents were just finding a neighborhood teen for the job

iPad

A lot of these answers focus on the supply side (pros expensive, teens leaving the market) but IMO there's also a demand side factor: millennials want to be around their kids more and they're not going to boozy parties or other adult events you'd get a sitter for as much as earlier generations.

The house hasn't been tidy enough to let someone not related by blood in since March 2020.

We have family nearby so we never needed a babysitter per se, but in contemplating this post I realized I'd be terrified for my girls to be babysitters in a relative stranger's house. Too many "adult man preys on babysitter" situations in my head

It’s really hard. I have no qualms about having 14- or 15-year-olds babysitting and pay full adult rates, and even so it’s not easy to find sitters

People used to trust teenagers to do this and now they don’t! It means it’s harder to find someone in your neighbourhood, and harder to find someone willing to do it for a bit of pocket money rather than a real wage. www.theatlantic.com/family/archi...

Don’t Tell America the Babysitter’s DeadFor decades, sitting was both a job and a rite of passage. Now it feels more like a symbol of a bygone American era.www.theatlantic.com

When I was a kid the only requirement for a babysitter was that you could stay awake and dial 9-1-1 I suspect the bar is a bit higher now and the wages accordingly

Well I’m an outlier I guess but my kids both babysat by teens and as teens babysit (they both did safesitter classes at Red Cross, primarily friends kids but tween is looking to advertise via drop flyers w listed references!) it’s 1995 up in here

I made good use of babysitters in my time and never was into bringing my baby to the bar or other adults-only venture. and my kids are 10&14 now so they’re more or less cool left by themselves. but look, it adds $60-100 to your night. I get it

I mean most parents work full time, while kids are w daycare or teachers 40+ hrs/wk, now so they want to spend their non-work time w their kids. At least us anyway

Don't know if this is also true in America, but are parents older than they used to be? I'm sure if I'd had kids in my 20s I'd have had more drive to find someone to look after them so I could go out.

No need for a babysitter when my retired parents live 15 minutes away

You'd think it'd be easier this gig Economy landscape

friend of mine in highschool started a sitting job for about a week and then quit immediately when the kid misbehaved one day because he had no idea what to actually do and the parents weren't helpful at all and made him unbelievably stressed out. kid was 8 or 9 iirc. really funny at the time

for us, it's mostly an availability issue - we can afford it but it's been incredibly difficult to find someone who is reliably available and especially if you need someone last minute you're usually SOL

It’s just much harder to find people imo. this is something that classified used to be good at - it’s the perfect kind of job to post for in that platform on both sides. its one thing Craig’s List or Facebook marketplace didnt replace

Babysitters are $$$

Two fold of teens may not be as responsible as they were in the 80s / 90s paired with rampant misinformation on how dangerous the world is leading to more people not wanting a teen to babysit their kid, cratering the supply demand levels needed for affordable baby sitting

even towards the end of millennials it was on the decline. I was a kid in the 90s / early early 2000s, and I can't recall ever having a babysitter? the few times I was left with someone else while my parents were gone, I was dropped at a friend's house.

I have no idea how I'm supposed to find and vet a 14-year-old.

Yeah I babysat for 3 kids, ages 4-9 when I was 13, but I feel like that would be considered irresponsible parenting these days. The friends I have with kids don't seem to use them much either, including the reciprocal token schemes my parents used a lot.

Grew up upper middle class, graduated from high school in the late 1960s. I was regularly babysitting for the walking-distance neighbors by the time I was 12. Of course, my mom was nearby, but I was responsible for making dinner & getting the kids to bed. That would be unheard of Tory.

we’re at precisely median middle class income for our area, and the simple answer is: I don’t know anyone

It's just got relatively more expensive hasn't it (it's still one babysitter per house....)

Babysitters now make well above min wage now tbh and maybe they deserve to but you can’t pay that rate every week.

fewer long-term local connections for us

For sure have noticed. As others have pointed out, standards for babysitters are far higher now. People expect a college student or older, not the 12 year old who lives down the street. Which means it‘s more expensive.

I think childhood experiences as or with babysitters are that they’re more or less useless anyway and there‘s less kids around in that age group in absolute terms than there used to be.

Cost Helicoptering

We do a lot more social stuff with our friends who also have kids the same ages. When we use a sitter it's for my wife and I to go to a nice dinner or see a movie, only two or three times a month usually

UMC people think that only someone with a masters degree in early child development can be trusted with their kid during date night at the local Thai joint I am dead serious, I have called out my sisters for talking like that while we were routinely watched by neighborhood teenagers as kids

Every time my husband and I think "we should get a sitter and go out for the night!" we then do the math and change our minds. We have neighborhood teenagers babysit our kids but they still charge $20/hour. Plus dinner and a movie are also much more expensive now! So we stay in.

I've seen it to the point that the people I know who do get sitters are "manager at Amazon corporate" levels of rich. Merely working in finance or Big Tech doesn't seem to be enough.

I don't think parents do things without their kids anymore

I wrote about this from Boulder which is very upper middle class but also tends toward an early-to-bed crowd and found it to be a mix of lack of sitters (for those who don't have nannies) and profound need for control bsky.app/profile/cour...

it’s too expensive

North America's car-centric, sprawled infrastructure has created a society with less and less social friction over time. the internet was the final tipping point for this, & the average family does not have a kid they can call up to see if they can babysit. also related, helicopter parents

A lot of high earners have moved, for work, to a city where they don't know anyone. So they don't have the informal connections via which people typically found babysitting, particularly no connection with lower income people who typically did the babysitting.

Paranoia

yes, and my guess is that it happened for the same reason that they stopped letting kids have sleepovers

We don't really use babysitters all that often for a few reasons: 1. We like hanging out with our kid, so we take him to the events we go to and always bring him on vacation with us. 2. His grandparents are often available to watch him when we are going to a more adult-themed event.