Oh, the au pair adventure! A new country, a new family, and sometimes even a new romance.
When our au pairs fall in love — or heck, if they find somebody really hot that they want to date — they often want to bring this person home with them. When that home is also your home, there are some extra dynamics involved. 
First, you should consider your comfort with having your au pair having an intimate relationship under your roof.
You need to consider whether this is okay with you, under what conditions (e.g., only when you are home, only with advance notice, only if you’ve met the person), and with what limitations (e.g., gone before the kids see).
Second, you should consider your comfort with having someone new-to-you sleeping in your house.
Somehow, when it’s your au pair’s friends from home it seems a bit easier to assume that you’ll be safe, that your house will be safe, and that your au pair will be safe, if you let someone into your home.
Third, you should consider your position on your role as host parents.
Some host parents are very involved in the social lives of their au pairs. Others take their role as ‘parent’ very seriously and want to make sure their au pair will be safe. Still others have a very ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy towards what their au pairs do when they are ‘off duty’.
Has your au pair ever wanted to bring home a new romance? What’s your policy been? What’s worked — or not worked– for you?
Here’s a specific questions from HostMomEvita:
Dear AuPairMom –We have an au pair who has been with us for 5 months and we like a lot, and does a really nice job with the kids (ages 1 and 3). She’s thinking about staying a second year with us, and we’d be glad to have her stay.
In Loco Parentis? Your Parental Responsibilities when your AP’s behavior challenges your values
Au Pairs and Online Romances: Your role as a Host Parent
What Kind of Parent Are You — To Your Au Pair?
A Good Au Pair Relationship Requires Your Emotional Investment
Image from Flickr: Sloth
Some rights reserved by Mandy_Jansen
{ 57 comments }
Hmm well bringing male guests into our home is a NONO and stated in our hand book. My aupair is friends with a guy, and I am okay if he came over for dinner but not spending the night. She has a long term boyfriend of 7 years and he may come to visit her on vacation, in this situation I told her we will make arrangements if he comes to our town with her and possibly stay in a spar bedroom. But I’m not going there with my young children, asking questions etc. we may have him stay with my brother locally instead.
I think a new love our someone they have been dating for a few short months shouldn’t be coming to stay in a HF home, because they could be old news by next week, and a new guy in the picture soon after, are you going to let any new boyfriend spend the night? This is just a NO for me, my house my rules and I can make exceptions in certain situations only. But that’s up to me. She makes money and can go get a hotel room for her and her boyfriend for privacy in my opinion, my house isn’t a place for shacking up. Jen
Hi JenNC, I can understand the no new boyfriend over night rule, it is definitely not good for children to see a different guy every month, but I don’t understand how having a long term serious boyfriend for visit would negatively affect your young children. Your children know mom and dad share the same bed, if you have for example you sister and her fiancee over for a couple of days you wouldn’t be thinking “Oh my! what are my children going to ask?!”
Of course I have no idea what your home is like, I can see how it could be awkward (more for you and your husband than for the children) if you have to share a bathroom, but I just can not see it as negatively affecting the children
LFtbAP -While this is not the rule in my home, there would be many homes in America where the HP would permit anyone unmarried to share a room/bed. There are not an insignificant number of Americans who for religious reasons or otherwise, would consider any unmarried adults sharing a room and/or be to be inappropriate or unacceptable, or “sinful”/contrary to their values and beliefs.
And in such homes, the sister and fiancée would not share a bed either — they would be in separate rooms, or possibly not even permit the fiancée to stay in their home for a visit.
*would NOT permit (that typo clearly changes the meaning of what I meant to write!)
I have to ask, out of pure curiosity, without trying to offend anyone.
So no official sharing a bedroom with a romantic partner. Would a partner in a seperate room be okay? And what if you accidentally ran into your au pair leaving his bedroom late at night?
Is it just about setting an example for the kids or is it about her having sex under your roof?
Does it make a difference to you if it’s a partner or just a male friend? Would female best friend be allowed to sleep in au pair’s room but male best friend not?
I’m really just wondering how the lines would be defined because I do understand why you wouldn’t want random guys wandering your halls but I don’t understand the boyfriend of 7 years.
Of course it’s your house and your rules, but since I’m from a much more liberal culture, I’m really just interested how that’s supposed to work in specific.
This is going to vary significantly be family and I think probably relates somewhat more to religion and culture than it does to being American. We are not religious and are completely fine with a long-term male partner and any female friends sleeping in our au pair’s room (switching that up to allow for homosexuality of course, though we haven’t yet experienced that).
I am fine having different “rules” for our children than I am for our au pair. My kids know that I am their parent and I’m not our au pair’s parent. But also, our au pairs have all been over 21, and are effectively adults in my kids’ eyes. I guess if I had teenagers, maybe I’d be more concerned about the example setting. But that has never occurred to me with my two elementary-aged kids.
We are not fine with a short-term male partner sleeping at our house at all, but not because we care a whit about her sex life – simply because I’m not comfortable having a person that no one knows well sleeping at the house.
I’m probably not who you’re asking though. But I suspect that for most of those that wouldn’t allow a romantic partner to spend the night at all, it’s mostly because of a religious or cultural standpoint that unmarried opposite sex people don’t sleep in the same room while in their house and the example setting for the kids. They likely won’t allow their children to have opposite sex partners sleeping with them even when they themselves are unmarried young adults, so they want to set that example – “in my house, no one unmarried sleeps in the same room, period.”
I will say that if I had a rule that opposite-sex unmarried people were not to share rooms in my house, and then I allowed a boyfriend to spend the night in a separate room and caught the au pair sneaking back into her room after visiting him, I would be pissed. Not because she was being intimate in my home, but because it shows a lack of respect for the house rules. I think typically when you have this kind of rule, it’s a respect thing more than a “preventing young people from having sex” thing (although it can be a bit of both). It’s like “I’d prefer you not to do it at all, but you’re certainly not going to do it in my home.” Controlling your impulses shows respect for the person who is allowing you to stay in their home. Sneaking around anyway shows that you don’t care what they say.
My objection doesn’t have anything to do with setting an example or having sex under my roof. It it purely in the interest of protecting my children.
When we invite someone to stay in our home that is a signal that we think that person is safe to be around our children. Hosting an au pair that we personally interviewed, communicate with, live with, and interact with on a daily basis is different than hosting a boyfriend (even a long term one) of an au pair.
Should be working’s story below is a perfect example of why we feel the way we do. Just because an au pair has a boyfriend for 7 years doesn’t mean that the boyfriend in necessarily trustworthy.
We do realize this might be unfair as we don’t have as much of an objection to female house guests, but that is our prerogative as parents.
I fell into this trap accidentally. AP #2, whom we adore, came back to visit for a 2nd time with a male friend, just after AP #4 arrived. We were in the process of putting our house back together after it had been gutted, and didn’t really have a proper place for them to stay, so we put them together on a futon in our very open basement. It turns out they weren’t seeing each other – he just agreed, on a whim, to travel with her to the States. How embarrassing! We could have inflated an airbed in a separate space so they could have been apart, but we assumed they were together and too shy to say so! (It turns out they weren’t and too shy to say so!)
Someone once commented on this site that by the time she is done hosting AP’s, she’ll be better prepared to be a parent to her kids as teenagers and young adults. I’m finding that to be true, because my husband and I are discussing issues and setting household rules on topics we are years away from addressing with our own kids. It’s so much easier to make an unemotional decision when it’s about what our AP can do in our house. By the time we have to deal with our children’s requests, we will have fully formed and tested household rules ready to be applied.
When my husband and I were deciding our policy on sleepovers for our AP Manual, we discussed what our rule would be for our kids as older teenagers and as single adults visiting our home. Then we apply that rule to everyone in our house. This way, there’s no confusion for our kids. Our rule is no sharing a room with romantic partners unless you are living together or engaged to be married. We clearly state this in the AP Manual and it is discussed in our profile and during the interview process along with our policy on all guests and visitors. We make it clear that this is about setting a consistent example for our children. The AP is free to stay over at her partner’s house or to go get a hotel room.
In the OP’s specific situation, I think the fact that the AP felt the need to ask for the use of a more “private” room should have been her cue that the sleepover is inappropriate in her current living situation. I think it would be fine to say that you’ve had more time to consider it, and you realize that you aren’t comfortable with romantic partner’s sleeping over. Then you might want to consider easing any curfews you might have that would interfere with her finding somewhere else to spend time with her boyfriend.
I am curious how far the analogy of treating the AuPair like you would treat your own children/teenagers/young adults goes. It seems that this (in the post above) is restricted to what is happening in your own house as the AuPair is free to go do whatever she pleases outside the house. My guess is that this will not be quite the same for older teenagers.
In our family I don’t feel that I treat the AuPair the same as I would treat my own children as I don’t feel a need to “raise” the AuPair as I would my own children. There is some training/discussion of issues/etc. involved but that feels different. Also there is no rematch option with your own children :).
In the interest of clarity, I didn’t mean to say that we are thinking of ourselves as parents to the AuPairs. I’ve got my hands full with my own kids, I certainly am not looking for anyone else to mother. I was trying to say that we want our house rules to be consistent so that when our children are 16,17,18,19,20 etc., we don’t have one set of rules for that age group who aren’t our kids and another set of rules for our own children. My husband and I never thought we’d be discussing the rules regarding overnight guests before our kids have attended their first slumber parties, but here we are. I’m certain that my kids will remember if the AuPair got to have her boyfriend/girlfriend sleep over but they aren’t allowed to do the same when they are older. Nothing gets a teenager upset more than inconsistency in applying rules (unless it works in their favor of course). So we’ve decided It doesn’t matter who you are, this is the rule in our house.
I treat our AuPair the way I hope to treat my own children when they are that age, like she is an independent adult living in my home. I do believe that my children will do whatever pleases them when they are not in my home, just as I did when I was that age. That’s the scary thing about kids growing up and gaining autonomy. I can only hope they’ll have learned a little common sense, will use good judgement, and be very lucky when they don’t. So that is much the same philosophy as I have about our AuPairs going out. Go for it, have fun, be safe. And if you are adult enough to decide to start a sexual relationship with someone, then you are certainly adult enough to find a place to do it that is not my home. What’s wrong with his/her place?
As far as the AuPairs being adults, I think they are definitely adult age and some are ready to behave as adults and some aren’t. Our youngest AuPair was the most “adult” and our oldest AuPair was the least “adult”. Either way, I expect anyone of adult age to respect the rules of whatever house they are in, just as I do when I am staying in someone else’s home. If an AuPair doesn’t want to do that, she should find a program that doesn’t involve living in someone else’s home.
Great points & post.
“That’s the scary thing about kids growing up and gaining autonomy. I can only hope they’ll have learned a little common sense, will use good judgement, and be very lucky when they don’t.”- exactly what we are starting to got through with out eldest.
I think your last sentence is what confuses me the most about au pair assertions that “I’m an adult, I don’t get why you involve yourself in my personal life even a little bit.” Believe me, I completely get that, and I have no interest in involving myself in any way in my au pair’s personal life. The issues come, I think, when that personal life gets entangled with my family’s personal life, at which point it sort of does become my issue. Don’t want your host parents in your personal life? Don’t make it their business.
If you want to bring guys home all the time, more power to you, but when you make the choice to participate in a program that’s main feature is living in a family home, surely you understand that there might be some choices you’ll have to make that may impact your personal life? If you don’t want to be impacted by the needs of others, then I would respectfully suggest not living in someone’s family’s home.
Additionally (and ideally, I realize), the matching process should be a great place to shake all this out. We’ve already seen how many variations there are in host families based on posts on this board. The wise au pair candidate who doesn’t want a whole lot of impact on her personal life will seek out a host family that wants a similar separation – ideally physically, by which I mean a family that has a separate au pair suite; but also ideologically, by which I mean a family that doesn’t want another member of their family. They’re out there – don’t pick a family that has a same floor bedroom and shared bathroom and talks about how excited they are about having another family member and then complain that they are interested in your personal life and don’t give you any privacy.
Opinionated HM, some times AP’s throw us a curve (great practice for raising teenagers and young adults, as I have found), so when I read your line “And if you are adult enough to decide to start a sexual relationship with someone, then you are certainly adult enough to find a place to do it that is not my home. What’s wrong with his/her place?” it made me laugh. I can’t tell you how many APs have fallen in love with young men over the years who have roommates, live with relatives, or their parents. The topper, for me, was AP #8, who fell in love with a free spirit who was living at the local “Occupy Movement” shelter in our city. And when he didn’t sleep there, he slept on friends’ couches.
Now, we have an open policy – it’s in our handbook – and so she announced, some weeks after she had told me about “this cute guy” that they were seeing each other and he didn’t have a place to live, so he was going to be staying over a lot.
Now, if we hadn’t had “the bedbug conversation” on Au Pair Mom, my nape hairs might not have gone up. So, after a strategy session with my LCC, I asked for an evening meeting. I showed her a short bedbug video my LCC had found online, and asked her to go an examine her room carefully. I told her that since she had no way of knowing our city had a bedbug problem, that we would not charge her for clean-up if they were in her room. But, if her room were clean and a problem developed later, we would. I showed her online advertisements for cleaning bedbugs, which made it clear everything — and I mean everything — had to be pitched (including books!). I asked her to look around her room and decide whether this boyfriend were worth throwing away all her mementos for the year.
In the end she decided it was worth the risk, and fortunately she did not leave us with a bedbug legacy. The boyfriend was made to leave his backpack and belongings outside our house – only he could come in. In the end, he got a job and rented an apartment with friends, but as he had a roommate, he continued to spend many nights in our house (which I used to leverage job performance on her part, as in “You want him to stay over all the time? Then actually do your job.”). When her year was up, I told her she was free to crash on the playroom futon (where there is no privacy), but there would be a “no-guest” policy. She left.
Oh, man, the bedbug post. That really did remain with me and it is something I actually have to repress a lot–like everytime we stay in a hotel, or my kids stay at someone’s house. It is such a huge problem, much worse than the lice we’ve passed to the au pairs over the years (and we pay big bucks for a lady to come comb us out and take full responsibility for no nits).
We had similar discussions when writing our manual and agreed that if not married, can’t stay together at our house. We are of a religion where you don’t have sexual relations before marriage and don’t live together before marriage. My brother and his girlfriend came to visit soon after we agreed on this rule and they didn’t stay in the same room. It irritated my sister, but we told her it was house rules. If people weren’t from our religious tradition and were living together, we would probably let them stay in the same room.
Our ap took us very seriously in the handbook and when she had a married couple coming to stay a night (we weren’t home) on the way to Christmas (they were taking her), she thought about getting other arrangements for the guy for a place to stay. We told her it was ok for both to stay here because it is her friend from home, who we have met, and her husband.
As an ex aupair who is now a 30-something adult, I would agree with the philosophy given above of treating the au pair as you would treat your own daughter when she’s that age. I also agree with the point about easing curfews if the au pair has proven themselves trustworthy. After all, young love is part of growing up. It is the HP’s right not to have boyfriends sleeping over, but the au pair then needs to be able to see her boyfriend in her own time. Once the relationship is more established, could the boyfriend stay over in a guest room? Giving a concession like that might give the HF brownie points for the future, e.g. if the parents want an extra date night and the au pair may be happy to do it if she can have a movie night with her boyfriend while watching the kids. If an au pair is trustworthy, then do trust them, and hopefully that will build strong and flexible relationships. However, sleeping in the same room is against the principles of some HF’s, and that should be respected.
As an ex aupair I must tell you, it’s really hard to adjust to house rules that forbid you to bring your partner home for the night, where back home it was normal and your parents had no problems with that.
Before matching with the family I turned few others down because of the “no men in the house” policy. The family I eventually matched with had the rule as well….just “forgot” to tell me beforehand (along with some other rules they didn’t mention). Only after I arrived I found out about no men, no going out, and pretty much no social life as the HM was convinced that being a part of the family means spending every waking hour with said family, on and off duty. Needless to say, I didn’t last long with them.
We’ve got this in our handbook and applied it. Nobody at our house if we aren’t there without approval from us. This even goes for same sex until trust is earned. Once trust is established we let her judge same sex guests and haven’t had an issue. No opposite sex sleeping in the AP room, they can sleep in the guest room upstairs with advance notice/approval. We don’t care what religion anyone is, house rules are if you aren’t married or too young to notice, you aren’t sleeping in the same room period.
Our car has a curfew on the weekends but not the AP, if she wants to shack up at the boyfriends she is free to do so. We had one american boyfriend that lasted 5mos, he slept over maybe 3 times and that was after we had met him and he’d spent time around us at several birthday parties, lazy Saturdays, etc so we were comfortable having him in our home.
Current AP has very long term boyfriend at home, we would love to meet him and have him visit, she knows the handbook forwards and backwards and says it’s a non issue.
Just a note: There is a reason we say Romantic Partner instead of Boyfriend in our handbook. Unless you screen for preference, (we do not) you might want to rethink your wording to include all romantic possibilities. Or, you are leaving a pretty big loophole!
Agreed. We actually say opposite sex. Doesn’t matter if her best friend is a guy he’s not sleeping in her room and he’s not sleeping over in our home until we’ve met him and feel comfortable with him.
I think OpinionatedHM was alluding to same-sex romantic relationships, i.e. lesbian or gay APs.
Yes mommymia. I guess I should have been more direct. If I’m going to ask that boyfriends not sleepover, then girlfriends shouldn’t sleep over either. It’s not really fair otherwise. I also want our AP’s to feel they can be comfortable and open with us regardless of their sexuality. If my handbook automatically assumes she is heterosexual, then how could she feel comfortable introducing me to her girlfriend? Ditto my kids when they grow up. And yes, we have direct experience with this.
We have this rule, and struggled with it a bit (i.e. same rule for romantic partner whether same-sex or opposite). If the AP has a long-term romantic partner from back home, we’d probably be fine hosting that person in the AP’s room (haven’t had to confront it yet); our policy for all out-of-town friends and family is – ask us first, and we will discuss.
However, if the AP meets a new dating prospect here in the U.S., our rule is: please have your sleep-overs at that person’s home, not ours. We do not feel comfortable with a new possibly here-today-gone-tomorrow romantic partner sleeping over, and we also feel that if the person is local, they are probably in a better situation for hosting romantic sleepovers than our AP (i.e. the romantic prospect is more likely have their own place/roommates, or live with their own family who is probably more comfortable making decisions regarding their own child’s romantic sleepovers than I am making those decisions for an AP I host).
Our rule for friends (non-romantic) made here in the U.S. (who are generally other APs) is: introduce us first, and ask before a sleepover, but your room is your room and you can host your friends if we have met them and been asked first.
With all of our five APs, the only one who has ever asked about having a romantic sleepover in our home was a female AP in a semi-new same-sex relationship (the others just never asked / also never seemed to get into serious relationships, and if they ever had one-night things, or early dating sleepovers, they intuitively went to the other person’s home). DH and I struggled with it a bit because my immediate reaction was “no,” as it would have been had our female AP asked the same thing about a new guy she was dating. But DH’s immediate reaction was “yes,” both because he felt that it was similar to allowing female non-romantic friends to sleep over, and because he just doesn’t feel as icky having another woman sleep over as he does about a strange man. He came around to my viewpoint though (what if there is drama between them of the sort that really can only come from romantic relationships, etc.? Just didn’t want that in our house with a not-yet-solidified relationship). Also, in this particular situation we were going to be out of town and had not yet met the woman, and there would be no opportunity for us to have met her first (and so in that situation, we wouldn’t even allow a non-romantic friend to sleep over, and that is clear in our handbook). Anyway, the relationship actually ended pretty quickly, though then they became good friends. So had she ever then asked for this woman to sleep over as a friend, after we met her, I’m sure we would have been fine. And this AP then got into a very serious relationship with another woman who frequently came over to our home to hang out, though they always had sleepovers at her place. BUT, once that relationship was established and we felt like we knew the girlfriend, we would have been fine having her sleep over.
I think same-sex relationship sleep-overs are tricky for parents of teenagers and for AP host families in a similar way: you would probably be happy having same-sex friends sleep over, but then when it becomes romantic, you may feel differently, but the bright lines are not drawn for you as they are for opposite-sex relationships. (i.e. you can have a bright-line rule for your teenage daughters/sons or female/male APs: no boys sleeping over/no girls sleeping over; but you really can’t say “no girls sleeping over,” for a girl or “no boys sleeping over” for a boy, banning both friends and romantic prospects alike….). And then of course there’s the issue of opposite-sex friends sleeping over for straight APs and children…..
We tend towards the relaxed. When I was 20 years old and in a serious relationship with a study-abroad love that lasted well beyond my return to the US, my parents and his parents both allowed us to stay together in one room when we were visiting one of their houses. I remember how grateful we were to be allowed to be together on those precious nights we were on the same continent and how very important those times were for us when we saw each other so infrequently. As a result, we are extremely welcoming when it comes to visits from boyfriends (or girlfriends) from home. We have hosted two boyfriends over the years (only two of our APs have had serious loves from home), and each time the boyfriend stayed with the AP in her room (in both cases, I asked where they were used to staying while in their own house at home – and the answer was in their own bedroom). We simply asked the APs to be careful around use of the shared (with the children) bathroom and also to be respectful of this privilege of staying together: I told them I didn’t want to hear any noises that made me uncomfortable or that would cause my children to ask questions that I wasn’t interested in answering yet. Both times the visits went great and gave me nothing at all to regret with this approach.
I am not sure how I would feel about a new love interest, however. Part of my acceptance/welcome of these people was due to their long term involvement with someone I loved and trusted. My sense would be that I would need to know a good bit about a new love before he (or she) would be staying – which would mean many dinners and shared times together before I’d say yes. Of course the AP could stay with said love interest whenever not working (I’d have a talk about trust and safety beforehand), so the issue isn’t trying to keep them from staying together; in this case it would be about the safety of my family). Some of my decision would also depend on the guy (or woman) and his (or her) situation (age, circumstances, family or friends known to us, etc). I know for sure that I am very relaxed when it comes to other APs staying over: we are away right now for the night, and our AP is home, and I know for sure he has a female AP sleeping over tonight. I don’t think anything is going on with them, but I also would not mind if there were. He has had female APs stay over when we are home as well, and we have been happy to have them. Mostly these female APs have stayed in our playroom, but if he started dating one of them seriously and wanted her in his room, I would not mind this at all as long as he abided by the same rules as our APs who had their boyfriends from home visit (no noise that makes me uncomfortable or prompts my children to ask questions).
Ultimately, as host parents, it’s our house and we have to feel comfortable with whatever approach we decide to take. I do think it’s fair to discuss this topic in matching, whatever your position is, so that any incoming AP knows where you stand ( I already know we will be hosting the girlfriend of our next AP next year when she visits).
I think you can be more relaxed with female guests. We have two little girls and my husband is very protective of them, me and our APs so until he’s ok with whatever guy or boyfriend would be staying over it wouldn’t happen. Other female APs he doesn’t care at all, I’m the one that wants to chat with them to screen for a crazy vibe. :). It also depends on how long we’ve known the AP and her judgment. If we trust her and she’s a good judge of character (our new rematch AP is about 3 weeks in and has already profiled our first AP and others we know in the area with 100% accuracy so her radar is fantastic and we would trust her judgment already) then there is less scrutiny. Our first AP – terrible judge of character and we screened guests until the end of her extension.
Our current au pair is 26, takes care of my twin 2yo girls, and rekindled a romance she had in her home country upon seeing him again when she arrived into the US (NYC) on the first weekend. So her romance was both new and old. She didn’t really know him as their relationship took place 8 years ago in her home country, yet she knew his family and had a foundation.
Our rule has been to welcome him when he comes and they can stay in her room which is an “in law suite” with it’s own areas and bathroom. Our only rule was that he could never be alone with the girls by himself and can not interfere with work hours. For example, he can come to visit and if it’s during work time when he arrives, they’ll have lunch together and go to an activity like the park or museum as a unit. If they stay in, the guest may read them stories or play appropriately with them with supervision. The same rule applies for her same sex friends who are mostly other au pairs. Between the long-term housekeeper (who is fiercely protective of our girls) or one of the parents working from home there are always two live-in or decades long “family type” adults around the house during the au pair work hours so all police the guests interactions until there is a comfort level. We have grown to really like this guy. We even took a 2-week road trip by car with him in tow leading to them staying in the same room when we arrived at our destination.
Our au pair is a mature and lovely ADULT. We could force them to get a hotel or have her boyfriend to stay solo in our guest suite but do I really care that they are having sex? No. In fact, I make sure she has the tools and knowledge to enjoy young life in a safe manner. By allowing her to share her full life with us, we also share a deep familial connection that includes her going way above and beyond with the care of our girls. (To the extent that we are meeting with immigration specialists to change her visa to one that will allow us more years with her (and her boyfriend) in our lives).
I think same-sex / opposite sex / romantic sleepovers can be absolutely fine and they have worked in our lives for a year. The only sleepover problem we’ve ever had involved a same-sex non romantic guest which our au pair dealt with appropriately before we even had to get too involved.
However, your rules are your rules and whatever they are they should be articulated and consistent.
I am a first time host parent and my Aupair did ask us about having her boyfriend from home stay with us for a few weeks. We thought about this a lot before we said yes. Our current rules prohibit men from staying the night at our house.
In the end, we allowed it. Although, we did require her to use some vacation time during his visit. Our Aupair was appreciative and the boyfriend was very respectful.
Prior to the visit, I was concerned that our Aupair would get pregnant in our house. I know our Aupair is a smart girl but, I was unsure if she even knew where to find things like birth control in the US. I really didn’t want to talk to her about this however, I thought it needed to be discussed since I was allowing her boyfriend to stay in her bedroom.
I sent her an email indicating that I did not want to be intrusive but, I wanted to provide her with information (if she ended it). I explained what was available and where to find it. I also provided contact information for places like planned parenthood. Finally, I told her I was available to talk or help her if she needed anything or that we never had to speak of it again.
Although I really didn’t want to address these potential issues at all, I was glad I did and I think my Aupair appreciated the information and my concern for her well being.
Our rules are less about preventing pregnancy (she can go to his apartment or a friends apartment we aren’t naive) and more about our comfort/safety and religious beliefs. Both sets of grandparents had this rule when my husband and I were together before marriage (about 4.5 yrs) and we weren’t bothered. Their home, their rules. Since we have young children it’s also about setting an example for them. We also go a step further and ask no male guests in the AP room with the door closed. I realize she’s an adult, but it’s my house and our beliefs and I’m not ok with the mambo happening here. God forbid if she did get pregnant and her mom asked how did this happen?! I don’t want the answer to be that our home and rules fostered that. Also, God forbid, things get heated and she tried to stop and somebody doesn’t take no for an answer! It happens. Religion + Risks + HF protectiveness = sorry not in my house regardless of if you’re 18 or 28.
I have very inquisitive children and an 8 year old who asks questions, and kids are learning more and more at too young of an age. I’m not going there with my kids yet. So for my house I am not comfortable with having outside male guests sleeping in my aupairs room. As I said because she has a long term boyfriend of 7 years, I have told her we will make an exception and he can visit his last few days of their vacation here, using our spare room, the other option is staying with my brother. I know her parents don’t allow the boyfriend to stay in their home in her bedroom either. It’s just a thing, but for the OP the fact the aupair asked for “privacy” is just a no for me, get a hotel room and romp all you want! My aupair can stay were ever she chooses outside my house, thankfully I have a girl committed to her boyfriend and don’t have a lot of worries. But of course this could come up in the future with other aupairs. Jen
We have two young girls. Having an unknown male in our house at all is not acceptable to us.
When we were interviewing there was an au pair that was straight forward that she would want her long term boyfriend to stay with her for 2 weeks. While we do have a spare bedroom for guests and have plenty of room we didn’t go any further in the interview because we were not comfortable even saying we might be ok with that.
It’s my job as a parent to protect my girls and not put them in situations that might be harmful when the situation can easily be prevented.
I totally agree with you on this Emerald City HM. I am not comfortable with a man staying in my home while I am sleeping on the other side of my house and my older children are right next to them. The only I would consider letting a man stayed in my house is if I knew him pretty well and was very comfortable with him. With our two au pairs, neither of them had men around our house mostly they hung out at his house which is fine by me.
Yet another thing that is so varied between host parents! We (try at least) to choose young women who don’t need or want parenting and don’t do any parenting of our au pairs. Ours are all 21+ and when I was 21, I was living on my own doing whatever I wanted and it was completely fine and normal. I don’t believe it’s my place to be putting restrictions on a 21+ year old other than, of course, keeping my house and my family safe.
Our first two au pairs had boyfriends back home and both came to stay with us for two weeks each. Both sets spent the weeks in a separate bedroom and not in their room and both were out and about a good deal too. The young men were very polite and responsible and it was completely fine. I trust our first au pair completely and our second one I still trusted at the time of the boyfriend visit, though later that was eroded.
I will say that I did not sleep well that whole period they were visiting and was hyper aware of any signs of strangeness with the young men. It’s pure and simple concerning to be having any person you don’t know sleeping in your house. A responsible au pair will understand that. Our second au pair later broke up with the young man that had visited and started dating quite a bit. These guys didn’t seem to want to be in our house anyway, so it was never an issue. But I would not have been ok with any of them spending the night – not because I was parenting her or I didn’t think she should be with these guys, but because she didn’t know them well, I didn’t know them at all, and I didn’t trust her judgment anyway.
Our current au pair is more than half way through her year and has not met anyone to my knowledge. She’s more of a girl’s girl anyway and we always welcome her girl friends to be over and spend the night whenever. I trust her though – if she met someone and really got to know them over a longer period of time, he came over to have dinner with us, etc., I’d be ok with him sleeping over. Again, though, if I had any concerns about safety, I wouldn’t hesitate to say no.
I didn’t have that issue myself, but honestly, any au pair who wouldn’t understand that the HF doesn’t want random strangers in their house, would show some lack of judgement to me. My HP had such a rule (really one of the only rules). Once an au-pair friend was staying with me for a couple of days and another au pair wanted to come to our house and say goodbye to her. She also wanted to bring her boyfriend. MY HP weren’t there but I didn’t allow that to happen at the house because I didn’t know that au pair so well and had no idea how long she’d been with that man or who he was. I just said that and every party -including him (whom she is married to now, by the way) understood. It’s just common sense and respect for other people’s homes. It shouldn’t even be a question.
Awesome, German Au-Pair – I totally agree. But you’d be surprised (at least I was with our second au pair) that some people don’t have this sense of what is basically respectful given that they are living in someone’s family home. On one of her last nights with us, I heard someone go out the door at 4am. I asked her the next morning and she told me she had just gone outside to put some trash out. Turns out, she had snuck a guy in and he had left before we woke up, and she lied to me because she knew that wouldn’t have been ok. Terrifying!
German AP you sound like an awesome AP and your ability to put yourself in the host families shoes (empathy) is one of the major qualities we look for in our APs and the great ones always have it. Your HF is very lucky to have you!
I’m well documented on this topic. DH and I lived together (when we were in the same country or state) for six years. We have no religious reasons to prevent it. I assume child #2 will have girlfriends over – we’ve already started having conversations with him about treating girls well, and even birth control (better he knows before he goes into puberty, quite frankly). And so, we permit male guests in our house. Our first AP did not, but she also slept across the hall from us. It wasn’t really until we put an addition our house that gave our AP an ensuite bed & bath under the Camel’s bed & bath with it’s own legal external staircase that AP’s felt comfortable having male friends over. (That is not to say that they snuck in.) All have been quiet (and we let them know that the Camel’s baby monitor, with which we sleep, can pick up loud noises). I feel pretty assured that we met most of the boyfriends over the years, and many sat at our table. Our favorite boyfriends were ones that did activities with the kids and engaged them on their own terms. Now that I have teenagers, this happens less, although our current AP, whose boyfriend stayed for 3 weeks at Christmas, did play board and card games with us.
I would not condemn a HP who said no boyfriends overnight. I do think it should go up front in the handbook. APs and HFs are not always going to share the same ethics and morals, but by stating guidelines up front, then an AP doesn’t have to confront a rule about which she did not know.
my main concern here is having strange men knowing that our AP is at home with our children alone most of the time. While the AP is here to enjoy herself and have fun (and has definitely been doing it, meeting people and dating them right away), I don’t like the idea of strangers knowing where we live. Obviously she has been told that she can’t have male guests. I have not yet addressed this issue with our AP. Being a HM has been a lot more than I bargained for
We are on our 4th au pair and this hasn’t actually come up for us yet. We do allow overnight guests who are APs or friends/family from home but permission needs to be asked ahead of time and it is granted on a case-by-case basis. I don’t have any philosophical problem with my AP having a boyfriend over, but I do have some logistical concerns. The AP’s room is right above mine and my children’s, so they would have to be super quiet- to be honest I don’t like having friends visit because they inevitably stay up late, that’s an extra set of feet creaking on the floorboards when I’m sleeping, voices talking, an extra person in our bathroom (we only have one bathroom and it’s next to our room). So for those reasons I don’t think most of our APs would even broach the subject. We do have a guest bedroom in the basement that is more private but the same bathroom issues. I think once we build that extra bathroom in the basement it might become an issue and to be frank I’d be ok with a boyfriend staying there once in a while, but I would have to know about him ahead of time and know that they are in a relationship and he sounds OK. I don’t want any weird drama in front of my kids, or myself, to be honest.
Our last AP had a serious boyfriend but she spent every non-working weekend at his place- he even lent her a car so she could drive up there (like others, our car has a curfew, not our AP). We met him at some family events and he is such a nice guy. We also met his kids- one is just a year older than my older daughter, the other is quite a bit older. Both really nice. They have all gone out together with my kids and that was fine with me. Our AP was not a youngster though- she turned 28 in our home (started at 26 with another family and extended with us). I think her boyfriend is about 10 years older.
My biggest problem was when my AP’s family was coming to visit and stay with us, my husband was away, and right before they came she confessed (first time to an adult in her whole life)that the father had beat her up all her life–including right before she came to us. And his father (her grandfather) had molested her, she claimed her father never had.
I did not sleep much while they were at our house. I hung jangly, noisy things all over my kids’ bedroom doors, just so I would be sure to hear all comings and goings, and debated having them sleep with me in my room the whole time. The kids asked me why I was hanging christmas beads and bells all over their doors, and I said it was for decoration. The AP’s family all went off to a national park for a few days and I gave her $300 and said if any violence started, she should take her little brother and leave. She said he never beat them “on vacations”. They also started a mean argument with her during her work hours, telling her she had gained so much weight. I took them aside (after putting on some big-girl panties), told them if they were going to have conflictual conversations it was not permitted to happen in my house, it upset the children, the AP and me, and they would have to go out to a cafe or something. After it was all over I tried to suggest counseling, to no avail, and warned her that she was at risk of ending up with an abusive boyfriend or husband, not her fault, but she needed to take good care of herself and know none of it was her fault. She said some of it had been her fault because she had been rebellious (that’s what her mother had told her). She seemed shocked when I insisted not. All sad and scary.
Our au pairs can’t bring guys over to our house, or have them around our kids. Almost zero exceptions. I don’t want to have to argue about who is trustworthy and who is not. Just, no. On your own time, anywhere but around our kids or in our house, fine. No curfews, no car rules, but keep your romantic life away…
Mostly, it works. Only one big argument over it over 7 au pairs.
We haven’t had to deal with this yet – but I think there’s a distinction that can be made between the “longtime boy/girlfriend from home” vs “someone I met at a bar last week” and that there are shades in between.
I like to think I’m open to the idea of a longtime romantic interest from home staying with us, the same way we’d open our home to parents and/or siblings or longtime platonic/same sex friends. In this situation we’ve generally heard enough about this person over the course of time to be comfortable with them in our home. One night stands need to take place elsewhere (if at all, for a myriad of safety reasons).
Someone the au pair met a few months ago and has been steadily dating, maybe we’ve heard about their adventures or met him/her when they’ve picked up the au pair to go somewhere – that’s the grey area. In the past we’ve explained that while we imagine our au pairs have a sex life, we don’t want details (and they don’t want details about ours, obviously, so it works out). Our au pairs tend to be very young, though, so that may be the reason we’ve not encountered this issue.
I cannot tell you how many newly arrived APs I have had who have entered a dicey neighborhood and have been sweet-talked by a man who only has one thing on his mind. They’re flattered – and a couple have boasted to me about the encounter. A couple have been stunned when I tell them to put on the brakes, decide what they really want, and never go into a stranger’s house. I always advise them to go with a friend and arrange to meet the guy in a public space. It shocks them. 9 times out of 10, they discover very quickly that the man did not have romance on his mind and was not interested in a relationship.
There are no lines on map to say “this neighborhood is a little rougher than anything you’ve encountered.” I did have one AP who went into a local McDonald’s in a rough neighborhood, who was told bluntly, “You don’t belong here.” She was shocked because it was less than a mile from my home.
I try to engage my APs in explicit conversation for their first few weeks. I few have chafed at my advice, and a couple have come back later, acknowledging that they needed to learn to think about things differently. I don’t think they’re naive or stupid – the biggest difference between my house and their parents’ house – is that they don’t know which neighborhoods are safe at first, they don’t have a gang of friends with which to go out, and they’re learning the ropes with a bunch of other newly arrived APs.
TACL, I want to print this out and put it in my handbook. Safety first! It’s so hard to help someone from this age group understand the nuance. And All three of my AuPairs have been approached about “modeling” and come home so excited about meeting up with this guy. Another AuPair got mugged and she was just two blocks the wrong direction downtown. But that’s all it takes. I always ask them if I visited their city, would there be clubs or neighborhoods that they would tell me to avoid? Then please trust me when I tell you that about my city.
I am limited by my divorce decree to not have overnight guests in my home (of the opposite sex). I use this as my house rule. I don’t feel comfortable having a boyfriend of an AP spend the night. They can stay at his home or a hotel.
When I was traveling and my kids were with their father, she hosted her boyfriend over. I guess in that occasion, it shouldn’t have been a big deal (since no one else was there). But since I had never met him and didn’t know the stranger in my home…it was.
I am an au pair in the Netherlands for six months now. I met and got into a relationship with a local boy and my HF were well aware of him.
I think its really silly that so many HPs say they don’t want strangers sleeping near their kids but is an Au Pair not exactly that?
As the religious ones, no disrepect meant at all, but most sexually active young adults will find a way one or the other. If they want to and can’t do it at home, they’ll find somewhere else to do… it.
Look, I’m not saying its right to sleep around, especially as a guest in someone’s home, but alot of au pairs are well aware adults, and I don’t think it’s fair for HPs to try to control the personal aspects of our lives. Sometimes physical and romantic affection is just what we need as a distraction so far from home. That doesn’t make us sluts.
I took my boyfriend seriously and yes, we had sex here at home and my host mom knew and understood. In the end it didn’t work and that’s a shame but the kids aren’t affected at all.
Stop using your children as an excuse to enforce rules that suit you personally. If you don’t want in your home, fine, but the kids don’t really have that much to do with it.
I could not disagree more. We have two young daughters that idolize our AP and having trysts in our home would most definitely be noticed by them. When I was young my aunt and her long term boyfriend wanted to come visit and they got a hotel room because my parents wouldn’t let them sleep together and even though I was five at the time I noticed. We aren’t naive, we know APs can still do it elsewhere but we also aren’t going to send the message to our kids that we support that behavior by looking the other way or ignoring it. Plus my children’s safety is absolutely not an excuse. If our AP starts dating someone and brings them home I have no idea what their background is, what they are looking for, etc. it’s a stranger. Period. A man in the house that worst case could rape, rob, molest, hit or yell at one of my kids so the kids are not my “excuse”.
As I said above. We live with thee au pair and interact with her on a daily basis. Is that 100% foolproof? No. However, statistically speaking most child molesters are male. They also groom their victims and the parents of their victims. They are very smart and very good at what they do. Do I trust that a young woman from another country would have any idea what this looks like? No. Trust is not transitive. Just because I trust my so paper does not mean that I should inherently trust everyone she does.
Sigh. That was posted from my phone, so yeah typos.
I’m one of the ones that allows long-term partners to spend the night, but I think you really missed what others have been saying. No host parent said they think that young adults that have sex are sluts and no host parent said that they don’t want their au pair having sex at all and that they can entirely control this by not allowing it in their home. In fact, many have acknowledged that they know it happens elsewhere and that they themselves were having sex at that age.
There have been two arguments it seems – one is the people who are interested in setting an example for their kids. It’s not an excuse it’s a reason. Particularly as the kids get older, they very much look up to their au pairs and at any age they are watching them closely to see what they do and how they act. These parents likely have a blanket “no one unmarried sleeps together in my home rule” that is applied to visitors, family, and au pairs alike, no matter their ages.
But secondly, and for more personally, important, is the safety issue. You really think that an au pair (selected and background checked by the agency, interviewed by the family, who know what being an au pair is all about and who you’ve gotten to know while living in your home for months) is the same safety risk as “guy picked up in a bar” or eve “guy I met while out and I’ve been dating for a month?”
I’m not belittling relationships and believe me, I had my share of eating and such at au pair age. But if you think host families are being silly because they consider the safety risks of allowing anyone into their home while they themselves and their kids are sleeping, I’d ask you to consider if you would be ok with the same thing in your own home. You’d seriously be fine with leaving the door unlocked and allowing random guys you don’t know to come in while you’re sleeping? Because that’s essentially what you’re suggesting we do.
Not belittling THESE TYPES OF relationships
Dating, not eating :)
Having similar typing issues here…
I completely agree with HMiTC. ShortAuPair (and this is said as much as possible in the spirit of respect we try to cultivate here on this blog): the content and tone of your comment suggest that you are approaching this issue from a fairly immature and not well-thought-out viewpoint. I myself have no religious or cultural issues with unmarried folks having sex, or having sex in my home (HD and I are not married). I have no problem with a person choosing to have multiple sexual partners, to date freely, to love freely, etc. But we are not talking about that here. We are talking about respect for the home in which you are living for the year. And just about all of these posters have said that they put their policies about sleepovers, guests, and romantic sleepovers up-front in their rulebooks, so APs who choose to live with them know the situation.
Your comment “As the religious ones, no disrepect meant at all, but most sexually active young adults will find a way one or the other. If they want to and can’t do it at home, they’ll find somewhere else to do… it” – is particularly revealing. This is the attitude of a petulant young teenager whose parents have forbidden her from having sex with her boyfriend. But – it does not sound like the religious posters on this blog are trying to stop their APs from having sex, or to impose their religious beliefs about sex on their APs: they are simply creating and enforcing a rule for their home, and a rule which should be respected by those who come to live in that home.
Child safety is a very real, and very important issue. The fact that you do not realize this, and do not realize the difference between an AP who the host family and agency have vetted and selected (yes, the process isn’t foolproof, but it is not nothing), and a new person that an AP is dating is equally revealing. If you were my AP and I heard this statement from you, I would seriously question your judgment and ability to make good choices affecting the safety and well-being of my children. To be clear: I am not saying that most APs are bringing home people who would turn out to be unsafe for my children. I’m sure that in 99% of the cases, the people are just fine. But we create rules and guidelines in order to minimize risk as much as possible. Host parents are not trying to “control the personal aspects” of their APs’ lives with these rules – why do you think HPs have more motivation to do that than they would to protect their children from strangers? What motivation would your average host parent have in “controlling” our APs’ lives in that way?
Personally, I am not trying to set any kind of sexual example for my children through the lives of my APs. But that too seems to me a legitimate reason for the sorts of rules we are discussing here.
Bottom line: host families are not simply your roommates. They are families that include young children, and the considerations are very, very different.
It states in our rule book that there are no opposite sex sleep overs, no guests allowed in the house at all if we are not home, and also that any overnight guest must be requested in advance. We don’t want any friends or new acquaintances staying over, until we have met them and feel comfortable with them in our home.
Once we get to know and trust an AP we are willing to relax the rule a bit, for a serious relationship either with and American romance or a longtime relationship/friendship from back home. The AP room is on a separate floor along with a guest room. As long as they are not noisy, or prancing around in underwear in front of my teenagers or we HP, I don’t really care that they sleep together or whatever in the APs room. They still need to ask first, which I think is a deterrent for having casual “romps in the hay” parading through our house.
I know it is a double standard, but with gay couples- as long as they were discreet in front of my pre/teenagers they fall under the same rules as same sex friends.
We haven’t had any issues ( that we know of anyway) with these rules, or our APs “befriending” unsavory people, or hanging out in dangerous areas.
I’m not speaking or pretending to speak for all au pairs when I say this, but I actually like when host family’s have a no male guest rule.
Before everyone starts going crazy about this let me explain.
1. In families where in general I haven’t had many rules (no curfews, no car rules etc.) it’s nice to have a rule and to know that they have actually thought about rules in general and what’s acceptable in their house, rather than just taking a “make it up as we go” attitude and in the end the au pair getting blindsided by rule changes that they’re not aware of (which I have also personally experienced).
2. I think following and respecting host parent rules such as this is the perfect opportunity to prove that “yes, I am a responsible, mature adult and yea I will respect you and your home”. Being treated like an adult doesn’t mean being let to do whatever you want, other adults have to adapt to their environments and sometimes follow rules they don’t like too, nobody’s being unfair to you.
3. It gives me an easy “out”. What I mean by this is, some guy is talking to me in a bar, I think he’s nice and we’re flirting etc. if he asks to come home with me and I’m not ready for that, i have a very simple and easy answer, “it’s not allowed”. Yes this is a bit of a cop out, but it can also be super helpful if you don’t like the guy or they’re a bit creepy. The way I see it this rule helps keep both me and my host family safe from potential creepers.
Not to mention, no matter how comfortable I am in a host family (and I’m very comfortable in mine), I just wouldn’t feel comfortable doing “that” or having a male guest (that wasn’t family) in their home, what kind if message does that send to them about me. To be honest I’m not particularly comfortable doing that in my own home back in Australia.
The “it’s not allowed” line works perfectly with phone numbers, too :D “Sorry, not my phone, can’t give the number to you” :D
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