FACING a delicate balancing act between work and family obligations, young working parents in China are increasingly counting on the help of babysitters to care for their children.

This has led to a huge demand for qualified babysitters, with the best of them making well above 10,000 yuan (US$1,920) a month.

However, due to a lack of regulations and standards, the industry is dogged by negative publicity. For example, there are occasional reports of nannies caught feeding newborns sedatives to put them to sleep.

After conducting research on his own, Luo Yilin says the market is “incredibly chaotic.”

The biggest problem, he said in a recent interview with Shanghai Daily, is that a large number of care-givers are poorly educated migrants who start out as housemaids.

Lured by the prospect of better pay, many decide to make the leap into China’s booming babysitting market.

Although candidates must land certificates necessary to practice this trade, this doesn’t mean they are “sufficiently trained and prepared” for the job, said Luo. Luo heads a newly launched O2O (online-to-offline) platform called HaoGuGu — literally “good auntie” — which aims to provide primarily child-care services to parents in need, especially those with kids under the age of three.

Bitter experiences

Luo’s entrepreneurial endeavors were chiefly inspired by what he described as his “bitter” experience looking for a qualified babysitter.

In the first six months after his son’s birth, Luo hired and fired nine nannies. He settled with the 10th for two years and a half after he gave up hope of finding a better replacement.

The reasons Luo cited for burning through nannies this fast are many. Two of the most common were “a loose work ethic” and “a lack of contractual commitment.”

Apart from the loquacious child-minders who slacked off during work hours, Luo also encountered those who lied about having to rush back home to attend to urgent family businesses and never came back again. He discovered later that they had found a better offer elsewhere. “I really had enough of it,” he said with a wry smile.

Luo vented his complaints in private gatherings with friends, who echoed his account with similar tales of runaway nannies. Instead of just complaining, Luo decided it was time to act. Before long, he started the HaoGuGu platform.

Pursuing his new venture entailed a huge sacrifice, as it meant leaving behind a plum job as marketing chief at All Seasons Hotel in Shanghai, as well as the million-yuan annual salary that came with it.

Asked about the philosophy behind the name HaoGuGu, Luo explained that in classic Chinese literature, women caring for children with utmost tenderness are affectionately called gugu.

Raising v rearing

“The name represents who we are, that we want to distinguish ourselves from the traditional child-rearing practice that emphasizes the ‘raising’ part yet not the ‘rearing’ part,” Luo told Shanghai Daily. Indeed, despite the proliferation of early education institutions and day-care centers in China, those that cater to the 0-3 age group remains few and far between. And their services are often priced beyond the reach of lower-income families.

Many parents are also ambivalent about sending their children to these private institutions, for fear of abuses committed by unscrupulous staff. Sadly, such abuses have been reported in the past. What’s worse, getting a child under three into a sought-after public nursery can be very tough.

Retired grandparents can make more trustworthy babysitters, although their old-school child-rearing philosophies often clash with the younger generation’s and they also tend to coddle their grandchildren.

HaoGuGu stands out from other babysitting agencies thanks to its unique business model, which includes careful selection of care-givers.

Although he currently recruits staff from outfits including post-delivery rehab centers or home care agencies, Luo’s ultimate goal is to lead a team made up of professional nurses.

Compared to nannies who receive only scant training in child care, Luo believes that graduates of nursing schools possess more of the attributes required of a “good auntie.”

In addition to their expertise, these graduates nowadays face a great deal of difficulty in seeking employment. A typical entry-level hospital job dictates acceptance of shift work and pays between 3,000 to 5,000 yuan (US$455-759) per month — paltry compared to what a babysitter can earn. And there is little job satisfaction to speak of, said Luo.

One of his purposes in founding HaoGuGu is to unleash the pent-up potential of these professionals while also lifting the burden off the shoulders of young parents and grandparents alike.

Ideally, nurses employed by HaoGuGu can expect higher incomes, full social welfare payouts, as well as greater potential for career advancement. In return, their skilled labor can “raise the overall standards of child care,” Luo explained.

He said he will release several hundred certified nurses into the market in the second half of this year to gauge the public feedback. These care-givers will have their qualifications vetted and go through a half-year probation period before they are considered “job-ready.”

The fees for their services range from 4,800 yuan to 10,800 yuan, depending on experience.

This is not the first time Luo has gotten involved in a child-related business. He started his career as a co-founder of Edaytown, a wildly popular early childhood education center, where youngsters can play the roles of police officers, doctors, sushi chefs and many other professions. In the process, they learn about the adult world.

Though no stranger to the child-related business, his latest venture has not been without its setbacks. The biggest one, he admitted, comes from the reluctance of seasoned nannies to come around to the new child-rearing philosophies and practices promoted at HaoGuGu. “They feel they are good enough, they don’t have to train any more,” Luo noted.

He once had an employee who insisted on obtaining a contract as a precondition for undergoing company training sessions, which deeply irked Luo. “It’s hard to change the nature of those who have been in this profession for a long time. Still, I’m confident about shaking up the established mode of the industry,” he said.

Buttressing his confidence are the results of China’s six national census (released in 2010), which indicated that there are 13 million urban children under the age of three. This population is expected to grow thanks to the recent “two child” policy. Luo believes the market for child-care services could be worth hundreds of billions of yuan.

Yet so far the market has no established leaders. Luo attributed this to a dearth of industry standards and improper enforcement of existing regulations. Yet, demand for babysitters outstrips supply, thereby pushing prices sky-high.

According to Luo, the business portfolio of HaoGuGu includes more than just providing live-in babysitters.

One of his proposals is to revive the company-run nurseries that were common until the 1980s. Back then, working moms could check their children into these nurseries in the morning — often close to the workplace — and pick them up after work. Such organizations are hard to find these days.

Conducive to Luo’s intention of bringing back these nurseries is the proximity of his start-up company to the Caohejing area, a high-tech hub teeming with white-collar workers.

Interested companies can set aside a location for his team to convert into a full-scale day-care center, accommodating the offspring of their employees. Besides, he is also looking to extend the reach of this initiative into neighborhood communities, where “there is a huge gap between the demand for these centers and their limited availability.”