I got an email from a young man who’d like to become an au pair in the US, and who is under the impression that families are
(1) not that interested in male au pairs and
(2) not interested in male au pairs who might or might not be gay.
My own perception is that, these days, there are plenty of families who would like a male au pair, and there are plenty of families who know that a person’s sexual orientation has nothing to do with that person’s ability to be terrific as a childcare provider. Yes, stereotypes and myths die hard, but they are going away. So,
Where’s a good place for families to find male au pairs these days? And,
Where would you recommend that male prospective au pairs should concentrate their own searches?
Here’s the email:
I live in the EU and have been a tutor, house sitter, baby sitter, pet sitter and studied teaching for a year. With all the experience I’ve gained from that I want to be an au pair and travel to see whats out there. I don’t know much about the different websites to become an au pair in the USA, but what I do know is they do not have much Host families looking for male au pairs. How do I find the perfect site to apply for an au pair position where hosts are open having a male au pair, also overlooking sexual orientation of said au pair?
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My boys are now 12 and 14, for the last 3 years, I’ve moved to male au pairs and only look for male au pairs. We found that with older boys, it was a lot more successful to have someone who can play basketball with them, likes video games and can be a strong male figure. We use CC as our agency and there are many male au pairs available so I would recommend that he look at that agency. They are very popular, there are definitely not as many as female au pairs so they get selected faster in my experience. Our third male au pair starts at the end of April when the current one, who stayed with us 2 years leaves.
I am with Cultural Care. There are loads of male au pairs in Cultural Care’s system. In our small town we have 4 male au pairs out of maybe 20 total au pairs total (don’t quote me on that). I have hosted 3 and will probably host a fourth. Searching now! All of ours have also been homosexual, so that is not an issue for us at least.
I was surprised to learn that the first AP brought over by Cultural Care in 1989 was actually a guy!
We’ve been with three agencies over the years but I only saw bropairs as they are fondly called at Cultural Care. I’ve only got one guy in my group but I’m pretty sure he loves all the attention. LOL
We actually started looking at guys this last round for a myriad of reasons and their experience and profiles looked great! I also met a couple local coordinator/bropair host moms at our last conference and they said they’d never go back so I’ve onlt heard great things.
I’m sure this will sound crazy biased but those of you on here that know me will know I don’t sell so here goes.
Based on my almost a decade of hosting with 3 different agencies if I were you I’d go with Cultural Care for a few reasons. 1. It’s one of the majors so more options in matching and if you ended up in transition I’d hate for you to be at a small agency and be a minority subset and not have options. I know you’d have options at CCAP (and you could reach out to me, I would help you as well if needed). 2. They background check families. 3. They have actual support personnel in your home country (assuming you are coming from one of the countries they support. 4. The policies at CCAP are more au pair favorable in almost every instance and the preparation/onboarding and orientation are much better than everything else I’ve seen at the other agencies (but do you own homework and ask lots of questions).
Hope that helps!
Why would I need to overlook your sexual orientation? I would love a gay male au pair! Most male au pairs are very sporty. While not knowing the details of your personality, I think it’s important for my son to see all kinds of “normal” male role models and differences are ok.
You might want to look at cities where there is a lot of diversity and a large au pair cluster if you’re worried about being too different than a “typical” au pair.
I really agree with this comment! We have a “bropair” through CCAP this year, but before we matched with him, we very nearly matched with a lovely young person who let us know that he was gay and also genderfluid — things I saw as positive! He eventually decided he wanted to work with kids older than ours, but he was considering several offers — so his gender identity and sexual orientation did not prevent from finding multiple families that were excited to host him.
I think if you’re honest about who you are in your profile, people will self-select so that you’ll only hear from families who either don’t care or will celebrate that part of your identity.
We live our male au pair! We recruited via Cultural Care and there is at least one other male au pair in his cluster, plus others working in the area nearby. We live in a major US city, so I’d advise to select a placement that is fairly urban. The issue of sexual orientation should be discussed as you interview—you need to be comfortable in your new home which means finding a family that is the right fit. We’d have no problem with a gay male au pair.
Agree with all the above comments.
Am also with CC, also host bropairs exclusively at this point and have no problem with various sexual orientations. I have 2 girls and 2 boys, and having a bropair is awesome for all of them! My bropairs happen to have been heteorsexual, but people have tended to assume they are gay just because they are aupairs.
My advice to any potential male AP who is non-heterosexual is:
1. Be sure their host family knows you sexual orientation long before you match. Indicating it in your profile is not a bad idea either so you can screen out families who aren’t ok with it from the start. Many families have no issue with a non-hetersexual APs, or are even specifically looking for one, but it would be awful to wind up with a family who wasn’t ok with it and to only find this out after you arrived!
2. Take time to do some research into how gay-friendly a given city or region is, since not all regions of the US are friendly to or safe for openly non-heterosexual persons. Your host family may be lovely, but if you are stranded somewhere really conservative you may be facing a much more challenging year than you want, and may have a hard time finding a social life outside the family.
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