Nannies to the super rich: They earn six-figure salaries and jet around the world. But from having to take the Eurostar to Paris for a child’s HAIRCUT to spoilt brats and 168-hour work weeks, read what they have to put up with

Published: 20:01 EDT, 2 October 2026 | Updated: 04:54 EDT, 3 October 2026

How do you fancy earning at least £100,000 a year, plus accommodation in some of the smartest postcodes in the country; endless luxury travel (usually by private jet or, at the very least, First Class); and back-to-back holidays around the world as a nanny to the super rich?

Well, happy days! Because, if you’re personable, well-presented and well-qualified, this could be right up your street.

Though, ideally, you’d also speak a couple of languages – maybe French, Spanish and Mandarin.

And it would help if you could play a musical instrument or two, to at least Grade Eight standard.

Oh yes, and be an accomplished skier, competent equestrian, know your way around a superyacht and a top-end security system, and be trained in Mossad level martial arts.

And, of course, you must love children – particularly those who are very rich and sometimes rather spoilt.

But perhaps most of all, you will need to have saint-like levels of patience to deal with their often incredibly demanding parents. Because this is the world of the ‘uber nanny’.

These are the very brave women (and they are almost all women) who look after the children of oligarchs, royals, footballers, supermodels, politicians and hedge fund managers.

Hulu’s new Million Dollar Nannies reality TV series, set in Ibiza, features six women and two men seeking jobs with rich families

The lifestyle is not for the weak, with long hours, specific demands and unruly behaviour making it difficult

Who sign non-disclosure agreements and undergo anti-kidnap training and walk around the zoo with bodyguards in tow. Who can pack 11 Louis Vuitton suitcases for a weekend in Mustique with an hour’s notice. And who are paid anything from £80,000 to £250,000 a year, plus many tempting extras, for their hard work and discretion.

And, while most of us are struggling with fuel bills and worrying about our mortgage deals, they are in hot demand.

In fact, recent figures released by NannyTax show that the number of nannies earning more than £80,000 has grown by more than 30 per cent in the last year. But many earn far, far more than that because the really rich will pay pretty much whatever it takes to secure the best nanny available for their precious little darlings.

So, while traditional institutions like the Norland Institute of Early Childhood have been around for ever, a clutch of newer, younger, agencies

have sprung up, including Fox & Cubs, Adventure Nannies and British American Household Staffing, to meet the demand.

And recently, they’ve been glamorised on reality TV with Hulu’s new Million Dollar Nannies series, set in Ibiza, where six women and two men seek jobs with rich families.

This week, I spoke to a few of this highly specialised breed. They are talking to the Daily Mail anonymously due to the NDAs they have signed and cannot name their often very famous employers, or all hell will break loose.

But the stories! The wealth! The very long hours and ridiculous demands!

The Norland Institute of Early Childhood has been training nannies since the late nineteenth century

The late Queen Elizabeth with a young Prince George and his nanny, Maria Teresa Turrion Borrallo, as Prince William encourages his son

Because while the basics of nannying remain the same – bottle feeding, potty training, sleep training, trips to the park and, the magical moments of reward when a baby first smiles, or has a dry nappy, or says thank you – everything else about this job is extraordinary. For starters, the lifestyle is not for the weak.

Louenna Hood trained at Norland and worked for years as a top end nanny living between Claridge’s and superyachts and now runs her own agency, Louenna’s Nannies. She told the Daily Mail that travelling with your family – even between their luxury villas or boats – is incredibly hard work and involves much longer hours than a regular nanny works running just one household.

This is because a big part of the job is managing the children as they constantly switch between homes, time zones and climates. Setting up all their bedrooms to appear identical and managing their anxiety between the moves.

When Sarah, 26, who has been nannying since she left a top UK university a few years ago, was travelling to the Middle East with one family she was ordered to wake their young son up at 3am and keep him occupied in the early hours of the morning, so he didn’t get jet lag.

‘They were in First Class, we were in Economy and he was three years old, so of course he just screamed and screamed,’ she says.

On top of that, with high-net-worth families there is often no set routine and travel between international homes can be last minute, so the nannies need to be flexible – not just to leave at the drop of a hat, but to fit into a wider household team. Often the family’s second (or third, or fourth) home will be fully prepped with staff – drivers, security, butler, housekeepers, sometimes even other nannies – to work around.

Another big part of the job, they tell me, is teaching the parents how to parent.

‘A lot of them don’t have a clue. I worked for a Russian couple who seemed scared of their baby,’ one nanny tells me.

And at the baby stage, some clients keep quite a distance from their newborn – just popping their head round the nursery door every so often.

‘The children are lovely and we adore them,’ the nanny explains. ‘But they need boundaries and rules, and they are much happier for having them and respond very quickly.’

That said, many of the parents have no concept of discipline or routine, refuse to tell their children off and often undermine the nanny’s rules with treats and lavish gifts. ‘One father gave me a credit card with his son’s name on it and told me I wasn’t allowed to say no to him,’ says one. ‘Whatever he asked for, I could buy. I didn’t, because that would have been crazy. He was only four, so he mostly asked for sweets.’

One nanny tells of five-year-olds regularly taken to Paris on the Eurostar for haircuts with world famous hairdressers. Another was instructed to regularly slather a toddler in beef tallow to moisturise their skin.

And all reason can fly out of the window when it comes to their birthday parties.

‘We’d order £1,000 cakes from Jane Asher (a former Chelsea cake shop), one for home and one for the party. There were party planners coming in like wedding planners and costing thousands,’ says Emma, who studied psychology and has 20 years’ experience.

‘And we once flew a group of seven ten-year-olds down to the south of France for a skiing party. The party bag contained an iPad, and we had ski jackets made for them all with their names on,’ she adds. ‘Those children are off the chain spoiled – it’s hard to put it in perspective.’

But the parents can be even harder to handle.

Like insisting their toddlers’ pants are ironed in a very particular way or that their offspring’s favourite toy is arranged at a precise angle in the cot. And that a two-month-old baby’s enormous designer wardrobe must always be colour-coded, whichever home they are in. All true stories. It’s a wonder the nannies don’t burst out laughing.

One nanny worked for a couple who owned a well-known mineral water brand and was severely reprimanded for boiling pasta for the children’s dinner in tap water.

‘It had to be bottled water, and from a glass bottle, never plastic. The waste!’

Sometimes the requests are nothing to do with nannying. Flying up in the family chopper to Scotland to pick up some grouse on the Glorious Twelfth – August 12. Or standing on guard by a zip wire for hours, just in case the father falls off it as he whizzes up and down in the garden. And, of course, the dreaded cleaning.

‘We are not cleaners. We might tidy a bit and do a cook for the children, but not clean,’ says one nanny who has two degrees and is trilingual.

Adding jobs in – ‘could you just’, ‘while you’re there’ – is called ‘job creep’ by the nannies and should be avoided at all costs.

Though I’m told by one of a parent so bewildered by a note she had been left by the family’s chef on how to heat up her dinner that she offered the nanny €200 to do it for her.

‘I was heading out with friends, but of course I did it. €200 for 15 minutes’ work!’

Over recent years, there has been a surge in ‘rota nannies’, meaning that multiple carers work in shifts so that every second of childcare is covered.

In some families, that means each child will have two nannies – a Monday to Friday nanny and a weekend nanny – which is a lot to navigate.

It is also still a lot of work because you’re often clocking in around 168 hours a week – and sleeping in the same room as the children.

Lauren, 46, speaks English, French and German and American Sign Language – ‘ASL is very good for helping kids to explain their emotions before they can talk’ – and has been nannying for the super-rich for nearly 20 years.

Right now, she’s what’s called a ‘retainer nanny’. Paid £6,000 a month to live in a luxury flat just off Sloane Square and do nothing other than be ready to jump in as emergency cover if one of the family’s regular team is indisposed. In this case, one of the nannies is waiting for surgery.

All of which does rather beg the question, when do some of these parents actually do any parenting? ‘It is often very carefully scheduled time with their children, and not too much of it,’ one tells me.

She’s not kidding. Over the last week, I’ve heard of families that barely see their children but for a daily family photo before dinner. And a supermodel who handed over her week-old baby and went to Paris fashion shows with her husband for a month. One nanny tells of a job where the parents lived on one property while the two children and their two nannies lived in another on the same street.

‘They’d text and say, “I’m coming at 7.15pm to read a book and give them a kiss goodnight. Can you make sure they’re ready.” ’

They call it ‘affluent neglect’ – all wealth and no emotion.

Meanwhile, the nannies are raising the children. Talking to them in French, Spanish and Mandarin, potty training them, instilling table manners and ramming them with educational and sporting activities.

‘Some of them do 12 to 15 extra activities a week on top of school to make them more elite,’ says one. Which means they are relied upon so heavily that there has been a surge in perks – softeners to keep them sweet and prevent them from being poached.

Student loans are discharged. Cars are gifted. In one case, a nanny was given a deposit to buy a flat. But the sensible ones know that a top salary and lavish gifts do not make a better job.

‘They think the more money they pay, they can ask you do anything,’ says one.

And while most of the children are surprisingly lovely – once they’ve got some routine – some are just too feral.

I was told one story this week of a nanny who was urinated on – on purpose – by a boy standing on the stairs in a mansion in London’s Holland Park on her first (and last) day in the job. She left through a window.

At least families with a high staff turnover get blacklisted by the nanny community – and agencies. No one I talked to would ever consider working for the Saudis, for example. ‘I’m a black woman, so I would never, ever risk it,’ says Lauren. ‘Too many tales of passports being taken away as punishment, horrors you wouldn’t risk,’ says Sarah, who adores her job and the family she works for, but tells me she says ‘no’ all the time.

‘If you’re good you can pick and choose. I’m very thorough with my contract and job description and I won’t work with cameras on me,’ she says.

Most do though. Often even in their bedrooms. So while the money is amazing and reality TV has glamorised it all, if you’re tempted, please take heed – this is not easy money. Not one bit.

These nannies are incredibly highly qualified and work incredibly hard.

Yes, for all their mad stories, they love their jobs and adore their spoilt charges. But it can also be very lonely being at the beck and call of bonkers billionaires and your own family life can be put on hold, for years.

Though of course, if you’re lucky, they might just buy you a house to live in one day. Or perhaps even better, pay you £6,000 a month, like Lauren, to do absolutely nothing.