Everyone is talking about the horror story in Manhattan. No, not the cop who tried to kidnap women, kill them, and then eat them. I'm talking about the nanny story.
A nanny who worked for a family on the Upper West Side for nine years stabbed two of the children to death, and then tried to kill herself. Just awful.
But equally awful has been the newspaper coverage and the comment sections.
The New York Times article went completely overboard on this story and gave way too much information about the mother's reaction to finding her two children in a pool of blood in the bathtub.
On the Upper West Side, neighbors described seeing Ms. Krim, a towel over her head, clinging to her one surviving child, being escorted by the police to a waiting ambulance.
Ms. Starr said that when she saw Ms. Krim in the building’s lobby, she was in a state of shock. “She was screaming in a psychotic state,” she said. “She was not lucid.”
Overboard.
And then there's the comment sections on this piece and the article in Gawker. I guess the real bad guy in this story is the rich woman who had a nanny. Can't we wait 48 hours before the Internet assholes come out to play?
Apt. 11d 
That comment is even worse because it talks about evil working moms who leave their children…..when the mother of the victims was a stay-at-home mother who also had a nanny.
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Hard to not see those comments coming. I can’t imagine what this family is going through right now. Not that it’s their fault in a million years, but I think if I were in her place, I probably would be thinking that of myself – we can all be our own worst enemies. To have trolls actually give voice to these things is beyond despicable. And the thing is – this could have happened to ANYONE. Who among us has never had even a babysitter for our kids?
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Yeah, having your kids bludgeoned to death is not a first world problem. It is simply a horrific tragedy, one that people would hopefully notice cuts across all class lines.
Do they have any idea why the nanny did it?
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It doesn’t surprise me, but it is awful. After I lost my first baby someone asked me if I thought the umbilical cord was around her neck because I’d done aquafit. People are weird.
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People want to believe that they’re doing something differently so that this senseless tragedy won’t happen to them. And they voice those thoughts. I think we all have them. It’s an important courtesy and social skill to learn to not voice those thoughts. Unfortunately, it’s exactly those courtesies and social skills that are thrown away in anonymous internet comments. We can only hope that the mother is being kept away from the internet comment threads.
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She’d worked for them for nine years before flipping out? I thought the oldest child was several years younger than that.
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I wonder if it isn’t a bit of a problem that it’s harder to read somebody who isn’t from your culture, so it’s harder to tell if they’re a bit off, or to tell the difference between limited English and morose uncommunicativeness.
I’ve told the story here before about my old cleaning lady. She was so scrupulous about cleaning (she practically bombed the house with Pledge and an internet recommender accurately described her as being OCD about cleanliness). Then she disappeared for oh, about 90 days. Her sister called and was vague about where she was and how long she’d be away. When my old cleaner called, she confessed that she’d been in jail for the past few months. My husband looked up her court records and discovered she’d been in jail for threatening somebody with a weapon. Oops. I wasn’t able with good conscience to invite her back to work in my home after that, but I still miss her . (I have no idea what the particulars were (she might have just had terrible legal representation), but a friend of mine who is also Hispanic says that the incident might not have been a big deal. My friend says in her culture it’s quite normal to wave a knife at your sister-in-law if you’re having some sort of disagreement. I wouldn’t know. In my culture, we stick to icily and demonstratively not returning emails and phone calls.)
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That would explain Univision.
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BJ- really well said. I was just talking about trolling on the Internet to my purposefully Internet-unsavvy mother. I feel that people not only embrace the anonymity of commenting, but some use it to vent their darker thoughts. They’ve taken to the web as a place where they can be as mean as they’ve secretly wanted to be, since they have been limited by polite public society. They tell themselves that they’re “telling it like it is.” it doesn’t matter who or what the given topic is, just use it to launch into your favorite diatribe… Especially if it makes you feel superior. It’s like we’re all imprisoned in a Jerry Springer studio audience..,
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Also, the sad, trollish commentary perfectly illustrates our society’s odd problem with mothers (always mothers) who employ in-home childcare providers, particularly Latina nannies.
I had to stop following an otherwise reasonable mother blogger who happily uses daycare (even though she only works part time and has a stay-at-home husband) after she attacked some of her coworkers who either employ night nannies or have live-in help from grandparents, saying “they should have never had kids in the first place.” WTF, right? Her sentiments are fairly widespread, and have some unspoken class-based beliefs.
I think it is hard for folks who were raised lower middle class and/or with a SAHM who never used babysitters to accept that it can be an incredible benefit to the health of the whole family to have someone come into their home to care for their children, either sometimes or a lot of the time. The particular blogger I mentioned was jealous of the career advancement she believed these childcare arrangements afforded her female coworkers. Sometimes the haters are jealous of the imagined luxury of having a nanny, which they may assume they cannot afford. (Actually, they should go read Laura’s old post on ‘Nannies, not just for the 1%)’)
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It’s the Times’ fault that their site is full of assholes.
Also? “Screaming in a psychotic state” — hell yes! Wouldn’t you, any of you?
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Wondering if any of you have read any of the internet buzz connected with that new book “Why have kids?” In this new book, Jessica Valenti talks about this myth that “being a mommy” is supposed to be the most fulfilling, life-affirming wonderful thing anybody can ever do, and then she talks about a thread on that true confessions site where women talk about how unhappy they are being parents. She suggests that there’s this kind of societal censorship that keeps women from ever saying “this is hard and unfulfilling and lonely” because if you even suggest it, it opens up the door to people attacking you and saying there’s something wrong with you and calling you a bad mother.
I think that a lot of women have a lot invested in buying into the myth wholeheartedly, and because of that they would never allow themselves to say “That woman is kind of lucky to be able to leave two kids at home and only take one to dance class. It would be so much easier to be able to leave the one who needs a nap at home.” Instead they find themselves saying that she’s either incompetent because she requires help or somehow evil because she doesn’t want to do it all. (For the record, my MIL lives across the street from the elementary school where my BIL’s kids go to school and they are always dropping a couple of kids with MIL so that mom or dad only has to take one to soccer practice. The other two get to stay inside in a place that’s warm and dry, having a snack and doing homework. They’re lucky, not lazy, in my opinion).
I think that attacking women who use childcare is kind of a symptom or side effect of the syndrome which Valenti is describing. (If having kids is always rewarding all the time, then no one should ever need a night off or help or a little relief, right?)
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“The other two get to stay inside in a place that’s warm and dry, having a snack and doing homework. They’re lucky, not lazy, in my opinion.”
Yep. Why should the other kid or kids have to be dragged along? Not to mention the fact that a lot of schools don’t allow you to bring a younger child when you are chaperoning a school field trip.
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Taking all kids along everywhere isn’t hazard-free, either. In the big city, it would be easy to have a child run into traffic, be breathed on by somebody with TB on public transportation or have some other mishap. Plus there’s the car seat issue, which is a pain when dealing with taxis (when we had two little kids and no car in Washington DC, that issue alone confined me to a 45-minute stroller radius of our home when I was out with both kids). I think I’ve heard that NYCers often don’t even bother with car seats in taxis.
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