She’d been with them for four years. The family was kind, respectful, communicative. They paid well above market, provided excellent benefits, gave generous time off. The children adored her and she genuinely loved them. The working conditions were as good as household employment gets. Then she gave notice. The parents were completely confused. “Did we do something wrong? Is there something we could have done differently? We thought you were happy here.” She was happy there. She was also stagnating professionally, earning the same rate she’d earned in year two despite cost of living increases, doing the same daily routines with no growth or development, and realizing that if she stayed in this comfortable position much longer, she’d have no motivation to ever leave and she’d wake up at forty-five wondering why she’d never pushed herself beyond this single household’s needs. Sometimes the problem isn’t that the family is bad. The problem is that staying in even good positions too long can limit your professional development in ways that matter for long-term career health.
This confuses families constantly. They’re good employers, they’ve done everything right, the nanny seems genuinely happy, and she still leaves. From their perspective, good employment should equal employee retention. From the nanny’s perspective, good employment is necessary but not sufficient for staying indefinitely. Career growth, professional development, new challenges, compensation growth, life circumstances, and long-term planning all factor into employment decisions in ways that have nothing to do with whether current employer is good or bad. Understanding why excellent nannies leave wonderful families helps families not take it personally when it happens and helps nannies recognize and communicate legitimate reasons for career moves that aren’t about employer failures. We’ve placed nannies in Washington DC and across markets for over twenty years and we’ve watched hundreds of nannies leave positions where families were great but staying wasn’t right for the nanny’s career or life. Let’s talk about the legitimate reasons nannies leave good families, why career progression sometimes requires changing positions even when current one is positive, how to recognize when you’ve outgrown a position, and how to leave great families without guilt about prioritizing your professional development.
When Comfort Becomes Stagnation
Good positions are comfortable. You know the routines, you’ve built relationships, the work feels manageable and familiar. That comfort is valuable for quality of life but it can become professional stagnation if you stay too long without growing or being challenged. If you’re doing the same activities with the same children in the same patterns week after week, year after year, you’re not developing new skills or expanding your capabilities. The comfort that makes daily work pleasant is also keeping you from professional growth. When you can do your job on autopilot because it’s so familiar, you’ve stopped learning. Some people thrive in stable long-term positions. Others need new challenges and development to stay engaged professionally. If you’re in second category and you’ve been in same position three, four, five years, you might be deeply comfortable and also professionally underdeveloped because you haven’t pushed beyond what this single household requires.
Watch for whether you’re excited about work or just going through motions. If you wake up and feel genuine enthusiasm about what you’ll do with children today, comfort is still serving you. If you wake up and already know exactly how the day will go because it’s the same as yesterday and the week before and the month before, you might be in stagnation zone. Notice whether you’re learning anything new or whether your professional knowledge is exactly what it was two years ago. Great positions should still offer ongoing learning whether that’s about child development, household management, communication skills, or professional practices. If nothing is challenging you to grow, you’re not growing.
Consider whether you’re building skills that will serve you in other positions or whether you’re becoming very good at this specific family’s routines in ways that don’t translate elsewhere. Deep specialization in one household’s needs can limit your professional versatility. Ask yourself honestly whether you could walk into another position tomorrow and be equally competent or whether you’ve become so specialized to this one family that transitioning would be difficult. If the second, staying longer increases that problem. Think about where you want your career to be in five or ten years. Does staying in current position help you get there or does it keep you comfortably in place while your professional development goals get further away?
Compensation Plateaus Even with Good Employers
Many families who are otherwise excellent employers don’t understand that compensation should grow significantly over time in household employment. They provide annual cost of living adjustments, maybe small merit increases, but they don’t conceptualize that a nanny who’s been with them for five years developing deep expertise with their children and taking on expanding responsibilities should be earning substantially more than when she started. The result is nannies whose compensation has stayed essentially flat in real terms while their skills, experience, and value have increased significantly. Staying becomes financially detrimental even when the family is otherwise great.
If your compensation in year five isn’t meaningfully higher than year one, you’re being undervalued even if the family doesn’t realize it. Cost of living adjustments keep you from losing purchasing power but they don’t reflect your increased value as professional. Market rates for experienced nannies are significantly higher than for newer ones. If you’ve been with family for years and your compensation hasn’t kept pace with what you could command in new position, you’re leaving substantial money on table by staying. Sometimes that’s worth it for other benefits of the position. Often it’s not, especially over longer periods where the cumulative effect of lower compensation becomes significant.
Good families sometimes inadvertently create compensation plateaus by being generous at hire and then not maintaining that generosity through continued increases. They paid you well above market when they hired you, so in their minds they’re already compensating generously. But markets shift, your value increases with experience, and what was generous five years ago might be merely adequate now. If you’ve taken on additional responsibilities, children have gotten more challenging, or scope has expanded without compensation adjustments, you’re being asked to do more for same money. Even wonderful families can fail to keep compensation aligned with value you provide.
Professional Goals Beyond Single Household
Some nannies have career aspirations that require experience beyond what one family can provide. Maybe you want to become newborn care specialist but your current family’s children are school-aged. You need newborn experience to make that transition and staying in current position prevents you from building those skills. Maybe you want to eventually work for estate management company or transition to household management more broadly. Staying as nanny for one family, however wonderful, doesn’t build the diverse experience that career path requires. Maybe you want to specialize in special needs childcare but your current family’s children are neurotypical. Getting the training and experience you need means leaving to work with families whose needs align with your specialization goals.
Perhaps you want to work internationally or with traveling families but your current position is entirely domestic and local. Your career goals require different experience than current position provides. Maybe you’re building toward opening your own nanny agency, writing about childcare professionally, or other career ventures that require broader experience base than one long-term position offers. Think about whether staying in current position moves you toward your long-term professional goals or keeps you comfortable while those goals get further out of reach. If your five-year career plan doesn’t include staying in this household, waiting too long to make a move makes the transition harder.
Consider whether you’re becoming pigeonholed by staying too long in one household. Future employers might see you as someone who can only work in very specific circumstances or who’s not adaptable to different family dynamics. Diverse experience across several families demonstrates versatility that long tenure with single family doesn’t show. Evaluate whether professional development opportunities you need are available in current position or require new employment. If you need specific training, certification, or experience that your current family can’t provide or support, staying prevents that development regardless of how good the working relationship is.
Life Circumstances Change Independent of Job Quality
Personal life changes create legitimate reasons to leave positions that have nothing to do with employer quality. Maybe you’re getting married and your partner lives across country. Maybe aging parents need care that requires relocating. Maybe you’re having your own children and childcare for them while caring for another family’s children becomes untenable. Maybe health changes affect what type of work you can do. Maybe you’re going back to school and need different schedule or work arrangement. These life transitions happen and they override even the best employment situations.
Sometimes the commute that was manageable when you started becomes unsustainable as your life circumstances change. Maybe you’ve moved, maybe traffic has gotten worse, maybe the time spent commuting is affecting your health or personal life in ways that aren’t worth it anymore. Financial needs shift over time. Maybe when you started you didn’t need high income but now you have student loans to pay, aging parents to support, children to raise, or other financial obligations that require higher compensation than current position provides. Maybe cost of living in your area has increased dramatically and the compensation that was sustainable when you started no longer covers basic needs.
Personal wellbeing requirements change. Maybe work schedule that worked when you were younger doesn’t serve your health needs now. Maybe physical demands of caring for young children are harder as you age. Maybe you need different work-life balance than you needed at different life stage. Maybe lifestyle preferences have shifted. You valued international travel with families when you were twenty-five. At thirty-five, you value stability and being home. The position hasn’t changed but what you need from employment has changed significantly. None of these changes reflect on employer quality. They’re legitimate personal reasons for making employment transitions regardless of how good the working relationship is.
Children Age Out of Your Specialization
Nannies who specialize in specific age groups sometimes leave great families because the children have aged beyond their area of expertise or interest. If you’re passionate about infant and toddler care but your charges are now eight and ten, the work you’re doing daily doesn’t align with what you love about childcare. If you thrive with newborns but current family’s baby is now four, you might need new position with younger children to do the work that energizes you. If you specialized in school-age children and after-school care but family decided to have another baby and now needs full-time infant care, the job has changed into something different from what you signed up for.
Sometimes families’ needs change in ways that don’t match your skills or interests. Maybe they homeschool now and need educational support you’re not qualified to provide. Maybe children developed special needs requiring expertise you don’t have. Maybe family dynamics changed through divorce, remarriage, blending families in ways that create household complexity you’re not equipped to navigate. The job you originally accepted has evolved into different role that doesn’t fit your professional identity. Recognize when what the position requires has shifted away from what you do well or want to do. Staying in job that no longer matches your skills or interests doesn’t serve you or the family, regardless of how good the relationship was when alignment existed.
Recognizing When It’s Time to Move On
If you’re fantasizing regularly about other positions, different families, career changes, your subconscious is telling you you’re ready for change even if consciously you feel guilty about considering leaving good employers. If professional development has stopped entirely and you can’t identify anything new you’ve learned in the past year, you’ve likely maxed out what this position offers for your growth. If compensation conversations consistently result in small incremental increases rather than adjustments that reflect your actual increased value, the financial trajectory isn’t sustainable long-term. If your daily work feels entirely routine with no challenge, novelty, or learning, comfort has crossed into stagnation.
When friends ask if you love your job and you pause before answering, that pause contains information. You should be able to enthusiastically affirm you love your work or clearly acknowledge you’re staying for specific reasons while planning transition. Hesitation suggests ambivalence that indicates readiness for change. If you’re staying primarily because leaving feels too difficult or because you feel guilty about disrupting the family rather than because the position actively serves your career and life, you’re staying for wrong reasons. Inertia isn’t good enough reason to remain in any position indefinitely.
If you find yourself declining professional development opportunities because you’ve decided you’re staying in this position indefinitely so growth doesn’t matter, you’ve given up on your career trajectory. That resignation usually means you need change even if you’re not consciously admitting it yet. When you imagine being in this exact same position in five years and feel trapped or depressed rather than content, you need to leave regardless of how good the family is. Trust your emotional response to that future vision.
Having the Conversation
When you decide to leave great family for legitimate professional reasons, communicate honestly about why. Don’t fabricate problems that don’t exist to justify leaving. Be direct about career growth, compensation needs, life changes, or whatever actual reasons are driving the decision. “I’ve loved working with your family and you’ve been wonderful employers. I’ve accepted a position that offers career development opportunities I need at this stage of my professional life.” You’re acknowledging they’re good while being clear this is about your path forward. Expect them to be surprised and potentially hurt even when your reasons are legitimate. They thought everything was going well because it was. Help them understand this isn’t about their failures but about your professional trajectory.
Offer more notice than minimum if possible. When you’re leaving good family, extending notice period allows proper transition and shows you care about making the change as smooth as possible for them. Be willing to help with transition more than you might for families you’re leaving for negative reasons. Help hire and train replacement, create thorough documentation, make yourself available for questions during adjustment period. You’re investing in leaving well because the relationship matters to you.
Don’t let guilt make you waver on decision you know is right for your career. They might express disappointment, they might make counteroffer, they might share how difficult this will be for them. Those responses are understandable but they don’t obligate you to stay if leaving is right decision professionally. Acknowledge their feelings while staying firm about your choice. Maintain the relationship if both parties want that. Leaving good families doesn’t mean burning bridges. Many nannies stay connected to former families long-term, maintain friendships, serve as references for each other. Professional departure from positive relationship can preserve rather than destroy the connection.
Why Families Shouldn’t Take It Personally
Good families need to understand that employee retention isn’t just about being good employers. You can do everything right and still have nannies leave for reasons that have nothing to do with your household. Career-oriented professionals change positions for growth, development, new challenges, and compensation increases. That’s normal professional behavior in every field including household employment. The nanny who leaves your wonderful household for career advancement is doing what professionals in other fields do when they leave good companies for better opportunities. It’s not personal, it’s career management.
Expecting nannies to stay indefinitely just because working conditions are good ignores that household employment is their profession and professionals make strategic career moves. Long tenure with single family can actually hurt nannies’ long-term career prospects by limiting their experience and professional growth. Supporting their development sometimes means accepting they’ll eventually move on to positions that serve their career goals better. Families who get offended or hurt when nannies leave good positions for professional reasons are centering their own feelings over nannies’ legitimate career needs. That perspective treats household employment as personal relationship where loyalty overrides professional development rather than as career that requires strategic management.
The best thing good families can do is wish departing nanny well, serve as excellent reference, maintain positive relationship, and recognize that providing someone with wonderful work experience that prepared them for next opportunity is contribution to their career even if it doesn’t result in permanent retention. Understanding that good employment isn’t always enough for indefinite retention prevents families from being shocked when valued employees make career moves. Creates healthier dynamic where both parties recognize employment relationship has professional component that exists alongside personal connection.
For nannies in Washington DC or anywhere contemplating leaving great families for legitimate professional reasons, know that career growth, compensation, life changes, and professional development are valid reasons for moving on regardless of how positive current situation is. You don’t have to be fleeing dysfunction to justify changing jobs. Staying in comfortable positions indefinitely can limit your long-term career trajectory and professional development. Trust yourself to recognize when it’s time to move forward even when current situation is good. Handle departure professionally and gracefully, acknowledge what the position meant to you, maintain relationships that matter. Good families will understand even if they’re disappointed. Your career and your life get to take priority over someone else’s preference that you stay convenient to them. Make professional moves that serve your development and know that leaving great families is sometimes exactly the right career choice.
