Comedians find lucrative side hustles as babysitters

UNITED STATES – Childcare is hard to come by, and so are well-paying comedy gigs.

Enter the comedian babysitter. 

Parents are struggling to find sitters amid a shortage of workers since the start of the pandemic, and those that are available have jacked up their prices.

On childcare website UrbanSitter, the sitters are charging 11 per cent more than in 2021, averaging US$20.57 (S$27.40) an hour for one child, and US$23.25 for two children.

The two-child hourly rate is about US$24 to US$27 in New York and San Francisco, said chief executive Lynn Perkins. The worker shortage is particularly acute for part-time gigs, she added.

“There’s just no one available,” said Ms Perkins. “It’s crazy. We’re talking about unprecedented numbers.”

Ms Perkins herself recently struggled to hire a US$30-an-hour afternoon sitter for one child. 

Enter comedians. Placement agencies and parents are singing their praises as an ideal pool of part-time babysitters or nannies.

Many performers have returned to cities to attend in-person stand-up gigs and improv groups just as employers are calling parents back to the office.

To comedians, lucrative childcare gigs are more attractive than restaurant work, which can be an inflexible grind, and conveniently require no certification beyond child cardiopulmonary resuscitation and first aid training. The hours also fit nicely with their nocturnal regular jobs.

“Comedy is mostly a nighttime project, and babysitting pays more than minimum wage,” said Jessica Delfino, comedian and author of Dumb Jokes For Smart Folks, who nannied for a decade while performing in the evenings, and now hires comedian-sitters for her two children.

“Kids are inherently hilarious. They provide a different perspective, which is always good for comedic material.”

Beyond the convenient pay and scheduling, parents and comedians alike say that the skills of cracking jokes onstage and minding kids are highly transferable. 

“Working with children is all an improv skit – the whole thing,” said Ms Kristina Wilson, founder of Sitters Studio, a nanny service that mostly employs performers in New York and Chicago.

“People forget that entertainment is a very orderly profession. When the show goes up, it goes up. Kids need that structure too but, inside that moment, we allow ourselves to be present and let loose, and that ability is so specific to the performing arts.”

Parents concur, thrilled to find educated, intelligent, personable caretakers interested in gig work.

“We live on the Upper East Side, where life is so scheduled and full of helicopter parenting, and Michael just comes in without a plan and vibes off their mood, often in open-ended play that’s creative. They’re always entertained,” said Ms Lillie Howard of improv comic and actor Michael Delisle, who she employs for her nine- and 12-year-old boys after school.

“My friends say, ‘Where did you find this guy? He’s great.’”

Her younger son is now fond of performing, to which she credits Delisle. 

Los Angeles comedian Nika Mabson, 30, leans on the improv skill known as Yes, and!, which is accepting fellow performers’ scenarios and building on them.

In childcare, this dovetails with redirection. “You want a doughnut? Okay, you know what else is good? A dance party! And then who cares about doughnuts?”

Mabson was a lifeline for Ms Tanya Paz, an architect in Los Angeles who hired her to mind her now-four-year-old daughter during the pandemic.

“Nika’s obviously funny, but she has this amazing skill set to create a story with bugs or rocks on a walk, and have a great adventure,” Ms Paz said. “I don’t want to say overqualified, but she reads a lot, she’s incredibly bright and she brings all of that to the people she’s around.”

Mabson, who is now busy with entertainment work, continues to nanny for Ms Paz a few times a month.

For Kayla Pulley, 33, a Chicago stand-up comedian, chatting with new charges overlaps with comedy crowd work, which means interacting with the audience.

When her performance is not resonating with the audience, it requires the same on-your-feet problem-solving as childcare. “If little Timmy doesn’t want to nap, I have to use different techniques, like okay, ‘Lets change the environment. What if we pretend we’re camping?’”

To make audition and film schedules work, some comedians share a group approach to childcare. When auditions arise, Facebook groups such as Chicagoland Childcare Connection and Binders Full of Comedy People facilitate swops.

Ms Perkins regularly sees performers join UrbanSitter with friends from the same performance schools and clubs.

“Two friends and I shared a baby,” said Pulley, who served as full-time nanny in 2018. Her pals did not have day jobs, so if Pulley booked, say, a film shoot, she would offer the day’s work and pay as a nanny to one of them instead. “That baby helped us all have so much stability.”

The kids, for their part, have some skills that help the comedians too.

Mabson finds that her kid gigs often help her cope with the professional rejection inherent in stand-up. “I’ll feel down after a bad audition, and a cute little human is like, ‘You’re the best.’

“And I’m like, ‘Maybe I am great.’” BLOOMBERG