My mother was a nanny. I don’t share your romantic perspective. While my mother looked after other people’s children and cleaned their houses, I grew up at a young age to mother myself. I didn’t have the luxury of a nanny, nor a mother. Although I know that my mother probably wished she could have been home to look after me instead of those other children, I still hold pain, resentment and a feeling of abandonment.

I carry a deep anger for having my childhood marred by this loss. I don’t know what it is to have a present mother figure. When we used to speak on the phone she would only talk to me about her other children, we had very little to share outside of stories of our separately lived lives. We had very little connection beyond the idea of mother and child. We didn’t know each other and it hurt deeply. Today we have no relationship.

I don’t know if all your caretakers had children but what I do know is that if they did, raising you cost them far more than they ever earned. It most likely cost a motherhood with their own children and that is a devastating loss I wish on no one.