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“Children know. They breathe it in early, for there's no unknowing the difference between nannies, cleaners, below stairs people and the family upstairs. Children are the go-betweens, one foot in each world, and yet they know very well from the earliest age where they belong, where their destiny lies or, to put it crudely, who pays whom. From a young age their loyalties are torn, betrayal of both inevitable, colluding in complaints with gossip passing each way, upstairs and down...love that nanny, au pair, housekeeper or any paid employee - but never forever. Never equally. Tiny hands steeped young in the essence of class and caste.” — Polly Toynbee
Children know. They breathe it in early, for there's no unknowing the difference between nannies, cleaners, below stairs people and the family upstairs. Children are the go-betweens, one foot in each world, and yet they know very well from the earliest age where they belong, where their destiny lies or, to put it crudely, who pays whom. From a young age their loyalties are torn, betrayal of both inevitable, colluding in complaints with gossip passing each way, upstairs and down...love that nanny, au pair, housekeeper or any paid employee - but never forever. Never equally. Tiny hands steeped young in the essence of class and caste.