New Regulations Established For Nannies

The Clinton administration issued new regulations Wednesday for the nation’s 10,000 foreign in-home child-care workers that set new standards for those who care for children under 2 years old and bar them from caring for infants under 3 months.

The rules also require families employing the au pairs to pay them a weekly stipend of $115, up from the current $100 but considerably less than the $155 the administration proposed in its initial revision of the rules in December.

Officials at the the U.S. Information Agency, which issued the regulations in its capacity of regulating foreign educational programs, said the pay had been scaled back from the December proposal in response to criticisms from hundreds of families that use au pairs as well as the eight agencies that place them in American homes.

Several of the agencies had complained that the proposed higher stipend would have reduced the demand for au pairs and put the agencies out of business.

In another easing of the December proposal, the administration scrapped a plan to require that au pairs caring for children under age 2 be at least 21 years old.