Why Hollywood supernannies are the latest must-have
Nanny Connie is the highest-profile child carer since Mary Poppins
‘Who have you hired?” I’d get asked the question a lot when I first moved – four months pregnant – to LA. And the women weren’t talking interior decorators, hairstylists, spray-tan “artists” or nutritionists – those names and digits had already been bossily bashed into my phone. No the “who” was referring to the handful of Hollywood supernannies you were supposed to have selected from and signed up the moment you found out you were expecting. And actually because that handful could be pared down to a covetable couple, it wasn’t so much a “who” as a “which”: which out of British reality TV star Jo Frost (who has worked for and advised the likes of Catherine Zeta-jones, Hugh Jackman and Britney Spears) and Connie Simpson (Amal Clooney, Jessica Biel, Emily Blunt and Jessica Alba) did you manage to snare?
Well, on the recommendation of her friend, Amal, the Duchess of Sussex has landed the biggie: the woman affectionately known as Nanny Connie – a woman I didn’t call, on account of the endless A-list names that came up when I googled her, and a yearly salary I was assured contained an equally long list of zeros (six figures, since you ask). Because neither Hollywood supernannies nor “platinum nannies” (the next tier down) work by the hour, week or month. They’ll interview you (and not the other way around) and if the prospective parents are deemed acceptable, cover the baby’s first year and beyond. But, perhaps more importantly, they’ll cover your first year, helping to raise not just a newborn, but a new mum and dad. Now this latest appointment may make her the highest-profile child carer since Mary Poppins, but I’m sure Alabama-born Nanny Connie’s as grounded as she looks. I like that, according to one actress friend who employed her, “her ethos is ‘mums always know more than they think’,” and given she’s a 30-year childcare veteran who has raised 270 children – not all part of the one per cent club – her expertise is beyond doubt. But she’s also, undoubtedly, a status symbol, a brand, a celebrity governess with the kind of A-list provenance that makes her as desirable as the Fendi Peekaboo It bag.
As I recall, “Who have you hired?” was always asked in exactly the same tones as “Who are you wearing?”
Why wouldn’t Meghan (pictured) be happy with Norland-trained British supernannies like Maria Teresa Turrion Borrallo, carer to Prince George and Princess Charlotte? Because whereas British
experts tend to limit that expertise to their chosen fields, their Hollywood counterparts have more of a 360-degree appeal. So Nanny Connie will be a therapist, marriage guidance counsellor, lactation and nutrition specialist rolled into one (according to Jessica Alba, she likes to give baby milk a good shake to check there’s enough of a fatty layer and that you’re not “skimming the calories”). In her own words, Nanny Connie’s “all about the nucleus of the family”: less of a nanny, in fact, than a “family coach” – and the power implied by that term is faintly terrifying to me.
Maybe Prince Harry will like being coached through his first year of fatherhood. Maybe he’s so used to being told or “advised” how to behave in public that it’ll feel natural to have that in private, too. And, of course, however involved both he and Meghan turn out to be in the parenting process, their experience will be a very different one to most of ours.
Children may be “life’s biggest leveller”, but I’m not convinced that necessarily extends to Kensington Palace. What I do know, however, is that the tough bits of child-rearing are often the most bonding for a couple – although they may not seem it at the time. The wrestling over car seats apparently designed by sadistic Nasa engineers; the somnolent stand-offs when the baby wakes in the early hours (“I did it last time”). So you don’t necessarily want a super anyone to smooth out every rough parenting edge.
From the little she’s said, Nanny Connie seems to agree. “I’ll tell Meghan that in all the things you can give a person, the most important thing you can give them is yourself and your love,” she told one publication. Nobody can quibble with that, although her assertion that “the baby is going to have no earthly idea that their mother is Meghan Markle and that she’s Prince Harry’s wife” seems a little optimistic in the long term.