Mommy said you're supposed to take me to her favorite museum, the "Guggyheiny."
Well, since today was supposed to be my day off, we're gonna go to my favorite, the Museum of Natural History.
Isn't that on the West Side?
Yeah, so?
I'm not allowed to go on the West Side. That's a rule.
Well, today just happens to be break-the-rules day.
Annie Braddock: Okay Mrs. X, now it's time for a few simple childcare rules.
Oh, alright, the teddy bear has been compromised.
Slamming the door in your kid's face is *not* okay. Spending more time on a benefit for kids that you've never met than you do with your own blood is *not* okay. Going to a SPA when your son has a fever of a hundred and four and not answering emergency calls, that officially makes you an unfit mother.
This is outrageous. Stop the tape.
Uh, no. This is clearly a disgruntled nanny. W-we might have something to learn here.
Now I know that you're all pretty busy with your hair appointments, and your watsu massages and your attempts to stay young so your husbands won't leave you. But here's an idea! Why don't you try eating dinner with your child every once in a blue moon. And heads up here, lady, try smiling once in a while. People hate you.
Child-rearing around the world boasts a wide variety of customs and mores. But perhaps the most bizarre social patterns can be found within the small island community of Manhattan... The inhabitants of the region known as the Upper East Side have the most prosperous, yet idiosyncratic social systems on the planet. After successfully mating and producing offspring, the men are often distant and uninvolved, leaving their women to hunt, gather and provide for their families. Yet the resourceful mothers of the Upper East Side have plenty of time to participate in a variety of sex-role specific activities. These include body mutilation, sacred meditation, even fasting rituals. Which brings us to our focus on child-rearing: Who actually does it? Well, in Africa, they have a saying, "It takes a village to raise a child." But for the tribe of the Upper East Side, it takes just one person: the Nanny.
My desire to be an observer of life was actually keeping me from having one.
There's a common belief among anthropologists that you must immerse yourself in an unfamiliar world in order to truly understand your own.
You want to know about the dads? I'll tell you about the dads. They're chubby, bald, steak-eating, cigar-smoking, type-A pigs who get more turned on by the Bloomberg Wire than they do by any hot nannies. Actually, it's all of you in about 5 years. So take it from me, guys: Enjoy tonight, because your future looks pretty **** bleak.
