For any readers over the age of fifty or those yet without children, here’s some free information (that should shock and appall you): the going rate for a babysitter (here in Mid-Sized-Suburban-Town, USA) is ten dollars an hour. This is for one or two children. I hear that my friends with more than three children pay more.
As one of the oldest girls in the neighborhood where I grew up with a criminal background that boasted of above average responsibility, I think I started babysitting when I was about eleven years old. Most of the neighborhood kids were the ages of my younger sisters, and to my best memory, I never changed a diaper in my life before Eliott was born.
The UnderToad 