I’m just old enough to remember trying to read columns by Herb Caen, Art Hoppe and Charles McCabe in the San Francisco Chronicle.  (This is back in the day when the “Sporting Green” was actually printed on green paper.)  I was trying to move beyond the funny pages, and I was just old enough to read their columns, but not really old enough to understand…

Initially, a share care seems like it should be a very straight-forward and attractive alternative to hiring a nanny just for your own family.  In general, if two families split one nanny, then for each family all the costs should get split in half too. Sounds simple, right?  Share care arrangements can work well, but potential problems can often arise among families with different schedules…

In general, a “share care” is any arrangement where two or more families cooperate to hire one nanny to care for the children of all the families.  Typically, a nanny will require only a slightly higher hourly wage for more children.  However, the cooperating families are able to split all the costs among the entire group, so all things being equal, if two families hire…