Thais' morning is no different than any other responsible young adult. She gets up before sunset. She wakes the kids up and makes breakfast and then she gets them ready for school. After Thais drop them off to school they say goodbye to her. “Tchau,” the kids would say. “Tchau crianças,” says Thais. Thais are like most caretakers. She loves, nurtures, and plays with the kids. The only difference? These aren't her kids at all. Thais is a 29-year-old woman from Sao Paulo, Brazil who works as an au pair for a wealthy family in the Iowa City area. An au pair is someone, usually a young lady, who works as a domestic assistant from a foreign country while she lives alongside a host family. “In exchange for rooming and board, I am teaching the kids how to speak Portuguese. Meanwhile, I am also learning English. I am learning from them just as much as they are learning from me,” says Thais. …show more content…
An affair story that Thais shared with me was the one that involved a male au pair who was sleeping with the father of the family. “The guy was sneaking around and having sex with the father. The father had previously identified as heterosexual, but the au pair clearly was not. I don't know how he was able to convince him to sleep with him, but that was the case in this situation.” The goal of an au pair is never to disrupt the dynamic of a family. Their job, according to Thais is to be as helpful as possible around the house while caring for the kids. In this situation, she is also teaching the kids Portuguese. The au pair business has been growing and more and more families are requesting them, while more and more people sign up to join this job industry. Thais would recommend the job to just about anyone that is interested. Although she loves what she does, she does admit that the job comes with a huge amount of