That greeting has welcomed visitors to this domain since 2002, and it still says exactly what this site is for. A Nanny on the Net was one of the early web's destinations for in-home childcare — a place where families learned how professional nanny relationships work and caregivers learned what a real childcare career looks like, back when most of that knowledge lived only inside placement offices and word of mouth.
What this site is today
Today, A Nanny on the Net is a purely informational guide. We don't place caregivers, take applications, run background checks, or maintain candidate listings — and nothing on this site should be read as an offer of those services. What we do instead is keep the accumulated know-how of two decades of in-home childcare practice organized, current, and free:
- A complete hiring guide for families — from job description to signed agreement
- A career guide for caregivers — qualifications, references, and finding families worth working for
- Deep dives on the decisions that matter: nanny vs. day care, live-in vs. live-out, and whether to use an agency
- The practical machinery: interview questions, work agreements, and the pay-and-tax plain-English FAQ
How we handle facts
Childcare advice ages quickly and badly when it is unsourced. Where the stakes are highest — health, safety, and law — we point to the primary authorities rather than paraphrasing them: the American Academy of Pediatrics at HealthyChildren.org for pediatric guidance, the American Red Cross for CPR and First Aid training, and the IRS's Publication 926 for household-employer tax rules. Where we describe industry practice — fee structures, screening standards, caregiver tiers — we describe what reputable practice has looked like across decades, and we say so plainly when something varies by region or by state law.
A note on the name
"A Nanny on the Net" was a charming name in 2002 and we see no reason to abandon it — though the net in question has changed somewhat. The beach-postcard design of this site is a deliberate nod to the original, which greeted visitors with families at the seaside, sky-blue pages, and a sincerity about childcare that we have tried to preserve in every paragraph.
Questions, corrections, or suggestions? We genuinely read them — drop us a note.