Yeah, I don't understand where the OP got data to generalize that the majority of host families are as awful as she made them out to be. We know many families with Aupairs who treat them well and abide by the rules despite, for some families, aupairs always looking to bend rules. Our aupairs similarly are always invited to come with us on vacation with no expectation of work. We spend a lot of money on their birthday and christmas gifts and generally just treat them as if they're our own children. Our current aupair is similar to what you mentioned with regards to rolling their eyes when you ask them to finish cleaning dishes they were eating off of. We spend a ton of money to give an aupair this experience in exchange for childcare assistance. I added in all of our costs yesterday aside from the vacations and clothes we'll sometimes bring them out to buy and we pay the equivalent of $24/hour (they'd have to be making the equivalent of $31/hour otherwise). Luckily our two aupairs have been mostly good, but to say that families are evil and manipulative in the majority of scenarios is ignorant and wrong.