When Marina Krim found two of her young children fatally stabbed on returning home to the family's New York City apartment, their nanny alongside them, stabbing herself, as the news quickly spread, parents were shaken to their core, Bloomberg News reports. For decades, the business of entrusting young children to a nanny has been a fraught yet informal affair for busy dual-career couples.
Leaving children in the care of others tended to be a process that was patched together, word-of-mouth affairs with little more to guide parents than a wink of encouragement from a trusted neighbor. Now, the wisdom and safety of that time-tested approach has been crushed. “I can imagine every mother who's heard about this is scared to walk out of their house,” said Lisa Berger, a married mother with a 6-year-old in Brooklyn, who has two jobs and works 60 hours per week. “Everyone puts their children into the hands of others,” she said. “Sure, you can run a background check and drug tests but you can never determine how people are going to act in certain situations or know their breaking points.”