In Krista Kitchen’s home, her 3-year-old daughter is wandering through the main living area, eating a snack. Kitchen herself is sitting at the dining room table, holding her infant son. Her husband is close by, recovering from a recent surgery. And Wendy Pérez, a 22-year-old from Ecuador, is entertaining Kitchen’s other 3-year-old daughter as they play with the family cat in the living room, Andycat.
Pérez, who lives with the family in their Northampton home, came from Ecuador in January as an au pair. The federal cultural exchange program brings young people — overwhelmingly, young women — into Americans’ homes to provide child care. In exchange, they get a place to stay, meals with the family, and payment for their work.
“We’re both emergency medicine physicians, so we needed child care — and I think that’s at the heart of this issue — we needed child care that was flexible, in-home and affordable. And we also both work jobs where we can’t just call out if the kids are sick,” Kitchen said. “So, the au pair program has been like a godsend to us and has allowed me to keep working mostly full time.”
Even though the federal program has been run by the State Department for nearly 40 years, Massachusetts broke away from how the rest of the country manages au pairs in 2020. A federal appeals court ruled that, under state law, au pairs had to be paid an hourly minimum wage and qualified for a litany of worker protections. In every other state, au pairs are paid less than $200 for up to 45 hours of child care per week.
Now, a sweeping proposal from the State Department to reform the program would make Massachusetts’ hourly model the national norm. It proposed dozens of additional changes, too, like implementing a fixed weekly schedule, paying au pairs for at least 31 hours each week and banning overnight work.
Such significant changes, many worry, could kill the program once and for all. Thousands of people submitted comments on the proposed regulations. Now, families are waiting to see what federal officials decide — and those changes could come at any time.
What is an au pair?
Au pairs are officially in the United States to participate in a cultural exchange, a benefit many families highlighted to expose their children to different cultures.
For her part, Pérez chose to become an au pair to sharpen her language skills.
“I want to enter in this program because I think it’s a great opportunity to improve my English, live a new experience with American culture,” she told GBH News.
One Medford couple, Brian and Chrissy Lever, said their former au pairs have leveraged their language skills professionally: one, for instance, now works in Canada for an engineering consulting firm.
Those who participate — both au pairs and host families — are overwhelmingly satisfied with the program, surveys show. But the program has come under closer scrutiny in recent years as allegations of abuse that went unchecked have come into the spotlight.
Jamie Rowen, an associate professor at UMass Amherst who leads the university’s Center for Justice, Law, and Societies, was initially hesitant to participate because she’d read extensive research on gender and exploitative work. But hosting au pairs over the last several years has allowed both her and her husband to pursue their careers.
“What changed my mind about joining the program was speaking to the agency, and they made clear that this is first and foremost a cultural exchange,” Rowen told GBH News. “And that was an amazing shift in that: I realized I’m here to offer a young person an experience, I’m not here to employ them.”
Higher wages for au pairs means higher costs to families
Under the new proposal, costs would once again rise for many families. The switch to minimum wage four years ago was jarring for Massachusetts households.
“A bomb went off,” as Brian Lever, an environmental engineer, explains it. His family was hosting an au pair at the time.
“When we first started the program, it was very straightforward,” said Chrissy Lever, who works in marketing. “They would get a weekly stipend ... which both me and Brian agree [was] way too low.”
With the hike in pay, many families eventually stopped participating in the program — including the Levers in Medford.
But, when they had a second child, the Levers went back.
“Now the math starts to work out in your favor again,” Brian Lever said. “Finding infant daycare is impossible, and it’s incredibly expensive.”
It’s not just hourly pay that families have to consider. There are also one-time fees from the private agencies that oversee the program. They charge each family about $10,000 per au pair, money that goes towards facilitating the matching and visa process.
In Amherst, Rowen has participated in the program since before the switch from the stipend.
Now, her family limits the amount of hours they pay to the au pair — she says it’s cheaper to go to a nearby, in-home daycare. And with the potential federal changes, the math gets even harder.
“I would be paying an au pair for 31 hours a week when I might only need them for 20,” she said. “And that makes it increasingly difficult to justify the expense of the agency fee, the car, the insurance, the food, the additional miscellaneous costs, and the hourly wage. It just doesn't make sense when one doesn't need those many hours.”
Each of the five families GBH News spoke with agreed: au pairs need to be paid more than the federal stipend. But that increase in pay comes with a downside: fewer au pair positions available.
“It’s really going to kick people out of the program because they can’t afford it,” Kitchen said. “But I also think the way the program is structured right now is not fair to the au pairs.”
Shrinking the program
The number of au pairs nationwide — there were about 21,000 last year — could substantially shrink if the changes go through as drafted. The prime evidence for that hypothesis: Massachusetts.
Federal data shows that about 1,460 au pairs lived in Massachusetts in 2019. In 2023, it was down to less than a third of that.
Private au pair agencies have been sounding the alarm, warning that implementing an hourly wage — like Massachusetts did — would lead to the program’s collapse.
Natalie Jordan, senior vice president at the agency Cultural Care Au Pair, called the commonwealth a “cautionary tale.”
“Massachusetts was one of the largest states of participation of the au pair program,” noted Mike DiMauro, CEO of agency Agent Au Pair. “In Massachusetts — obviously, pretty affluent part of the country — 70% of the families left the program.”
Rowen said she’s seen a dramatic change over the last several years. Families in Amherst and Northampton told GBH News that Cultural Care Au Pair — one of the largest au pair agencies — no longer serves Western Massachusetts and that Agent Au Pair is the only one still operating in their area.
“When my first au pair came, there were at least 20, I think, au pairs in the area. And her best friend lived very close, and she spent a lot of time with a lot of different au pairs,” Rowen said. “There are no au pairs left in Amherst, Massachusetts — except for my au pair.”
DiMauro pointed to one survey conducted in response to the proposal that found more than 90% of families — in areas with higher minimum wages — would likely not continue with the program if the higher wages are implemented as written.
“What’s been proposed is much more significant than what’s happened in Massachusetts,” DiMauro said.
Leena Mathew, as the co-director of the Boston-based Matahari Women Workers’ Center, was deeply involved in passing Massachusetts’ domestic workers’ bill of rights that ultimately raised au pairs’ wages. Amid families’ concerns about the program shrinking, she hears a different problem underneath.
“It’s related to a bigger concern, which is: ‘What the heck are we going to do about child care?’” Mathew said. “The au pair program, I think, is a Band-Aid for a system that is clearly not working. And I think we’re just going to need more than holding down ... the labor rights and the wages of au pairs to solve that problem.”
She has her own concerns about the proposal: namely, it could preempt local laws and return regulatory responsibility to the State Department. Here, she says that would be a major step backward to keep au pairs safe from potential abuse.
“Guarantees that are given to every other worker: having a schedule, having a contract. These are like basic things in most other fields. But for domestic workers, it’s often considered, like a wild inconvenience to, like, a family,” Mathew said. “That’s so key to acknowledge, as well as having higher wages and a fair salary.”
For its part, the State Department seems to accept a future with a much smaller au pair program, especially as a result of potential new caps on hours each week and rules about overtime.
“The number of families interested in the au pair program may decline as families may turn to other child care options ... but [the Department of State] believes the reduction in maximum hours is necessary to the overall success of the program,” the drafted regulations read. A spokesperson for the State Department did not respond to questions from GBH News.
What comes next
What, exactly, comes next will only become clear after it reviews comments and publishes proposed rules.
Rowen says she would likely continue for an extra year with an au pair she knows and loves — but after? It’s too burdensome.
The changes aren’t likely to affect Pérez in Northampton, since the proposal has a clause that would mostly “grandfather in” current au pairs. If Kitchen can, she’ll keep using the program for years more — at least through elementary school for her newborn.
“We’re in the program for as long as it’s around for us,” Kitchen said.
