Latina Nannies Rear a Generation en Espanol

Buster and Fletcher attend Mass almost every Sunday in Los Angeles, although their parents aren’t Roman Catholic. At 12, Buster reads and writes Spanish perfectly, although his mother and father speak only English.

Fletcher, 9, can make pupusas, a Central American snack that his parents had never heard of until Gladys, their Salvadoran nanny, came to live with the family when Buster was 6 months old.

Like thousands of their peers, Buster and Fletcher--whose parents asked that their last name and Gladys’ not be used--are growing up bicultural in the United States, thanks to their Central American nanny.

The exact number of Central American women rearing U.S. children isn’t available, but they are leaving an undeniable influence on a generation of youngsters, according to experts in early childhood development.

Cultural Give-and-Take

“Children are mimics, and a person who spends a lot of time with them is going to influence their development,” said Claudia de Madrigal, co-director of Happy Faces kindergarten, a bilingual preschool for children ages 1 to 5 in San Salvador.

The nanny’s cultural background is going to be part of that influence, from pin~atas at birthday parties to childhood games.

Central Americans began migrating to the United States in large numbers during the 1980s, when they were fleeing civil wars in their own countries. Because many of them didn’t have immigration papers, job skills or even a place to live, they looked for employment in homes, where authorities would be less likely to find them than in businesses.

Their arrival coincided with a growing child-care crunch as more U.S. couples found that they couldn’t afford to have one stay-at-home parent, even for their children’s preschool years. But many of these couples found they could afford a Central American nanny, who often saw being a live-in employee as a benefit rather than a demand. They still remain an informal work force, contacted by word of mouth rather than employment agencies.

“Central American nannies are not Alice on ‘The Brady Bunch,’ ” said Eric Caceres, 20, who grew up in Texas and El Salvador with Salvadoran nannies. The nannies reinforced the bicultural atmosphere in a home with a Salvadoran father and a U.S. mother.

Unlike Alice on the old television show, who had a mind of her own, his Central American nannies were quiet and deferential, he said. “They do exactly what you tell them,” Caceres said.

Many Central American nannies are from the countryside and received only rudimentary education that left them ill prepared to help children with homework, he said.

Instead, they can teach children about another culture and even another language. “The parents said that [knowing a second] language will be helpful to them in the future,” said Gladys, Buster and Fletcher’s nanny.

Cathy Willis, now 24, is still grateful to the family nanny who taught her Spanish when she moved to El Salvador 11 years ago. Her Salvadoran mother had never planned to move back to Central America, so Willis grew up in her father’s home state of Ohio, unable to speak Spanish. But her parents divorced and her mother moved back to El Salvador, working full time and leaving the nanny to watch the children and teach them Spanish.

The disadvantage, she said, is that her Spanish is marked by the country expressions of the nanny.

Similarly, De Madrigal notices that many of her students who spend a lot of time with nannies will call to other children or even teachers with cht-cht, the Central American version of pssst, which isn’t the most polite method of getting someone’s attention.

Willis has also noted that her own four children are more dependent on their nanny than she would like. For instance, the nanny still bathes her 8-year-old daughter, while Willis remembers showering by herself from the time she was 6. Independence is not encouraged in Central America, where most people live with their parents until they marry.

Discipline is sometimes a difficult issue for nannies from Central America, where corporal punishment is still widely used. They know that they shouldn’t hit the children they watch but aren’t familiar with other types of punishment. As a result, they sometimes feel that they cannot control the children in their charge.

Guillermina Herrera from Santa Rosa de Lima, a Salvadoran town near the Honduran border, disciplined her own three children by spanking them. But when she took a job in Los Angeles 20 years ago, she realized, “You cannot punish other people’s children.”

So when her 6-year-old charge emptied all the kitchen cabinets, throwing objects onto the floor, she had no idea how to stop him. One day, the boy’s grandfather visited while he was in one of his tirades, spoke to the boy quietly and supervised while he cleaned up the mess that he had made.

Herrera didn’t have that option because she couldn’t speak English then and the little boy spoke no Spanish. Frustrated, she recommended a friend for the nanny position and found another job.

Years later, surprised that her friend continued to care for the mischievous little boy, she asked her how she did it. “She had invented a punishment,” Herrera said. “When he began emptying the cabinets, she filled a bathtub with ice cold water and bathed him in it.”

Because the little boy didn’t like to take baths, he complained to his mother, who in turn thanked the nanny for bathing him. “I guess she did not realize how cold that water really was,” Herrera said.

Other Central American nannies have happily adapted to U.S.-style discipline.

“They punish their children with love,” Gladys said of her employers. The boys’ parents taught her to send the children to their rooms or make them stand in a corner. “There are no harsh punishments,” she said.

The result, she said, is that “the boys are very sweet and nice-tempered.” In fact, Gladys said, she regrets that she didn’t know how to use those techniques to correct her own children, now 31 and 29. “I wish that I had not been so strict with them and had given them more love,” she said.

Parents Still Most Important

Even Herrera is more accepting of U.S.-style discipline now that her own adolescent sons bring well-mannered friends to their Simi Valley home.

De Madrigal said that parents shouldn’t be overly concerned about the influence of the Central American nannies as long as Mom and Dad are spending weekends and evenings with the kids.

“Children growing up in the United States are in their own medium, and that is what will prevail for them,” she said. In addition, she has observed that children as young as 2 distinguish their mothers from the nanny and are more likely to imitate their mothers.

“They notice the difference,” she said. “Children’s most important examples are always their parents.”

A loving nanny simply adds an element to childhood, she said. “We all have the same affection for the children,” she said, “even though we speak different languages.”

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Immigration Increases

Undocumented Central American immigration to the United States:

EL SALVADOR

1992: 327,000

1995: 335,00

*

GUATEMALA

1992: 129,000

1995: 165,000

*

HONDURAS

1992: 61,000

1995: 90,000

*

NICARAGUA

1992: 68,000

1995: 70,000

Sources: Immigration & Naturalization Service, based on estimates of undocumented immigrant population who established residence in the United States before 1982 and did not legalize under the Immigration Reform and Control Act, and annual estimates of the number of persons who enter surreptitiously across land borders.

For More Child Care Information

* An extensive list of child care resources and the complete Caring for Our Children series are available on The Times’ Web site:

https://www.latimes.com/caring

* International Nanny Assn.

Station House, Suite 438 900 Maddon St.

Collingswood, NJ 08108

800-297-1477

https://www.nanny.org/indexfr.htm

* American Council of Nanny Schools

Delta College

University Center, MI 48710

517-686-9417

Compiled by JACQUELYN CENACVEIRA / Los Angeles Times