About this Site

Au Pair with Flair is a new website and blog by Anne Marie Segal, a lawyer and mom in Connecticut, USA. Her family has hosted six au pairs from three continents–the first one stayed only three days (for story click here!)–and each has brought different qualifications, strengths, joys and challenges.

On this site, Anne Marie shares insights and give advice to guide host parents, children and their au pairs through the rewarding, interesting and occasionally frustrating experience of living as a family together. Some posts are thinly fictionalized accounts of events that really happened to her family or friends. Others convey more straightforward information about finding au pairs, the matching process, creating a comfortable living environment for your family and au pair, how to set guidelines and deal with common issues that arise and related matters.

The information here is written for a target audience of host families who live in the United States, but au pairs, non-U.S host families and others may find interesting and useful information and advice on this site as well!

*****

Some names on this site have been changed and details have been edited for privacy purposes. In other words, the events described here may not have happened exactly as they are stated and it should not be assumed that they involve or implicate a particular au pair or other person.

If you would like to know more about the author or her writing, please visit:
ART and FOOD (and a bit of yoga).

*****

Why a site about au pairs?

I wrote one of my first posts and showed it to my husband, Mario.

Mario wasn’t trained as a writer, but he’s a voracious reader. He read the post and said, “Honey, take a step back. What are you trying to do with this new site?” (Actually, he said “vida” since he’s from Mexico. “Honey” is just a translation.)

I told him, “Well, I want to help host families understand how to make the right choices and provide advice for relationships [between families and au pairs] to blossom.”

“But why?” he asked. “Why this topic?”

“Because there’s a lot misunderstandings between host families and au pairs,” I answered. “and many times they could be avoided if someone with experience would just point the way.”

“And why are you the right person to write this?”

“Because I really feel it,” I said. “I was never an au pair, but I know what it’s like to be in a foreign country trying to work in another language. I’ve done that myself. And I certainly know what it’s like to be a host mom.”

He laughed. “Yes, you do. But you’ve done so many other things that you could write about. Why this?”

After eight years of marriage, I’ve learned to trust the process. Mario wasn’t trying to talk me out of writing about au pairs, he was trying to tease out the essence of the blog.

“I want to write about au pairs because, honestly, I owe my [motherhood] sanity to my own au pairs. These girls, as you know, have really made a difference in my life. And I know I’ve made a difference in theirs.”

“Well, just make sure you don’t dumb it down….” Mario said, “your talent for prose and real-world experience would be wasted if you did that.”

I leaned back on the couch and glowed in the compliment. Husbands say the darndest things, and sometimes they even make you blush.

“Write about what you just told me,” he said finally. “That’s what people want and need to hear.”