Mysteries of The Babysitter's Club
Did it really matter that Stacey was from New York?
Like almost all girls of a certain age, I grew up reading The Babysitter’s Club.
By adult standards, these…maybe weren’t the most compelling novels?
While some middle grade books manage a surprising amount of wit, and paint complicated, multi-faceted characters who provide new insights into the world around them, The Babysitter’s Club didn’t excel at this. Rather, the series was set around a group of vaguely aspirational middle school girls living in Stoneybrook, a fictional town located in the very real Fairfield County, Connecticut.
The books followed both their friendship, and the challenges they faced working as babysitters. The main characters were likable, if not a bit one-dimensional. They all lived in nice, comfortable houses with nice, comfortable families, in a nice, comfortable suburb, and generally dealt with fairly relatable problems—overprotective parents, bad grades, rival classmates, etc.
There was nothing wrong with these depictions.
Compared to all of the Problem Novels and Dystopian World novels that would come to dominate publishing in the years since, there’s something comforting about parents’ whose biggest flaws involve putting too much emphasis on math scores. There’s something comforting about a book where the biggest problem is planning a neighborhood parade for a bunch of toddlers, or living in a house devoid of junk food.
Still, these weren’t particularly nuanced characters. Even the protagonists were only fleshed out to the degree needed to propel the story.
By adult literary standards, the books were fine.
They were basically beach reads for third graders.
But, for elementary school girls who grew up in the late 80’s through the mid-90’s, these books were a staple of childhood. I had one friend who owned the entire series; her parents taking her out to the store to pick up each new book as soon as it was released. The first chapter book I read was Stacey and the Cheerleaders. I think I had just started first grade at the time, and it was well beyond my reading level—everything I’d read prior had pictures to help give me some context clues whenever I stumbled over a word. With this, I was all alone. I may as well have been trying to read the entire bible in latin.
But, alas, I managed to do it.
It may have taken me what seemed like a month to finish, and I may have struggled with every fifth word, but I managed to read the entire book. I had no choice—it was about Stacey becoming a cheerleader.
That was easily the most compelling plot line I’d ever come across in my young life.
…
The reason that I go into this bit of literary history is because some parts of the books have aged better than others.
The premise of sixth grade girls being considered the most reliable babysitters in town?
Absurd in an era of au pairs who are expected to have a degree in early childhood education, a masters in developmental psychology, and fluency in seven languages, but plausible for the time. My own babysitter during that era was named Mackenzie. She was in sixth grade, herself, and extremely glamorous. (Notably, this was not just a case of kindergarteners having low standards. I’m Facebook friends with Adult-Her. I can confirm that she’s still one of the more glamorous people I know. She’s also still like, a size four, which kind of makes me think she’s struck a deal with Satan at some point, but that’s neither here nor there.)
The Super Mystery Novels?
Those are a little odd. I like to think most suburban police departments have like, actual detectives and stuff. And that those people know more about solving crime than a bunch of sixth graders. But it worked for Nancy Drew. And also, The Babysitters weren’t solving grizzly homicides. They were dealing with prank phone calls. That’s roughly 40% of what cops in affluent bedroom communities do, anyway, so I’m sure that both the cops and the local taxpayers appreciated the free help.
The Vacation Specials?
I’m uh, I’m not really sure why anybody would pay multiple babysitters to come along on vacation with their family unless they had 35 kids, but these people live right outside of Greenwich. I’m guessing they can afford it.
Besides, I never understood the families in town that would take their kids’ friends with them to Vail, but for some reason, that was a thing when I was growing up. Not in my family or in my neighborhood, of course, but about half a mile down the road, where the houses all had kitchen islands, and those nice refrigerators with the ice dispensers built into the door.
If regular dentists and financial planners from Missouri want to lug a bunch of kids who aren’t theirs on a ski vacation halfway across the country, then I guess there’s no reason that families in Greenwich wouldn’t do the same, but also with five babysitters in tow to help watch all of the kids who aren’t theirs.
It’s not my scene, but it worked for Jeffrey Epstein.
The break from reality that Adult-Me cannot deal with, though?
Stacey being from New York City.
…
I mean, that in and of itself would be fine.
Lots of people are from New York City.
Statistically, more people are from New York City than all of Fairfield County, combined. By a pretty large margin. The issue is that in-universe, this is treated as A Very Big Deal.
…
I did not grow up in an exciting town. We had subdivisions, a mall, and some chain restaurants. People weren’t exactly flying in from Paris and Milan to experience the wonders of American Eagle and Outback Steakhouse.
Even so, by virtue of being a regional hub, we’d usually get a couple of new students every year because of adults getting transferred for work. One year, the new kid would be from Cleveland, and the next year, somebody would come in from Omaha. There would always be a few kids from St. Louis or Chicago, and usually a scattering from Atlanta and Dayton because of P&G.
This was very much a part of life.
As provincial as we could be, and as unexciting as sixth grade was, there was not a collective care to be found when somebody moved to town from St. Louis. It just…wasn’t remarkable. The fact that Scott and Katie used to live in Creve Coeur did not, in any of our eyes, turn them into pillars of sophistication and worldliness. The very fact that their parents had been transferred to Cape told me all that I needed to know—that they too had the kinds of parents who get transferred from one boring, beige, upper middle class place to other boring, beige, upper middle class places.
Everybody understood this on some level.
It was just part of the collective reality.
…
I say this because apparently in Stoneybrook, meeting somebody from New York City was the most exciting thing that could ever happen.
If Stoneybrook were located in say, Iowa, I could get this.
New York City is a long way from Davenport. There aren’t any big economic or cultural links between the two cities. I can’t imagine that the middle schools are just packed with kids from Manhattan. I know that Cape’s certainly weren’t.
But…Stoneybrook wasn’t located in Iowa. Or Missouri. Or Kansas, or Indiana, or any of the other states that very much don’t border New York.
It was in Fairfield County.
Connecticut.
A bedroom community.
It takes an hour to get into the city.
I’m guessing that about 70% of the kids at Stoneybrook Middle School had a parent who hopped on the train into Manhattan every morning.
This would be like kids over in Wildwood or Eureka getting excited because their new classmate used to live in my neighborhood. Kids can get worked up over some weird things (yo-yos were a really big deal for a week when I was in fifth grade), but when I drive out to Saint Albans, nobody ever seems particularly impressed. I don’t go around introducing myself to random suburban kids, but I’m guessing that if I did, they wouldn’t have many questions for me. At least, not about my neighborhood.
They’ve all been to Starbucks and Lululemon before. They’ve all been to Forest Park. It’s not exactly Marrakesh.
If there were a large cultural or socioeconomic divide, that would be one thing.
If Stan Kroenke moved to Cape and built a 45,000 sq. ft. house next to all of our regular, sad McMansions, that would have been a big deal. Not because he’d moved from St. Louis, but because none of us owned the Rams. One or two guys owned a Dodge Ram, but that was about as close as it got.
Similarly, one time a regular family did move to Cape from Austin, and that was uncomfortable for everybody, not because they were any wealthier or poorer than the rest of us, but because it wasn’t a great cultural fit. They had been of the Keep Austin Weird-variety, whereas Cape’s unofficial motto could have been Keep Cape Normal. Their kids weren’t nearly as impressed with our North Face jackets and Dave Matthews Band CDs as the rest of us were, so it was just awkward all around.
But in Babysitters’ Club World, I never got the impression that Stacey was significantly better or worse off than the other kids in Stoneybrook.
It’s Fairfield County.
Stoneybrook had a country day school. I take it that Manhattan money flowed into Stoneybrook pretty regularly.
It did sound like she was legitimately more sophisticated and fashion conscious than the other girls, but not like, in a remarkable way.
She seemed to shop at the same stores as everybody else. She seemed to be speaking approximately the same design language. She just seemed to be ahead of the curve on everything. Going back to the analogies of late 90’s exurbia, somebody had to be the first kid in the class to discover Abercrombie and then Louis Vuitton, and Stacey seems like she would have been the one to do so. She would have been the “sophisticated” kid—the one wearing a Lacoste button down with her L.L. Bean backpack and American Eagle jeans, instead of an Abercrombie hoodie like the other 75% of the class.
This is what makes all of the New York fawning seem a little out of place.
…
I’m sure that plenty of people in Manhattan would want to fight me for saying this, but I feel like Stacey’s old neighborhood in the city was probably almost exactly as far ahead of the fashion curve for Stoneybrook as Creve Coeur was to Cape.
As in, Creve Coeur was legitimately a step or two ahead of Cape on most things. It was wealthier. Quite a bit wealthier, in some ways—Cape’s poorest 50% didn’t exist. Creve Coeur’s bell curve of wealth distribution began where Cape’s was peaking.
They were closer to St. Louis.
They had debutante balls.
But…it also wasn’t some magical mystery world. The McMansions in Creve Coeur were just bigger, nicer McMansions, populated by people who basically did the same things we did.
Whenever I met kids from there, I understood that they were fundamentally lameasses like myself, except that they lived closer to the Chesterfield Mall.
I did not fawn over them.
I did not view it as a glimpse into how the other half lives.
I knew that we were living in the same builder beige, Tuscan Kitchen half.
I’m…guessing it’s kind of the same way when kids in Greenwich or Darien meet Manhattanites.
Again, not a red letter day. Not a glimpse into a different universe. Just a glimpse into kids who’ve ridden on public transit alone. Being a couple of months ahead of the curve on Balenciaga isn’t that big of a deal. Adjusted for region, I’m assuming that’s a bit like walking into the early-aughts “Tuscan” kitchen of somebody who can actually identify Tuscany on a map.
I know they’re doing better than me, but I assume it’s not by much; otherwise, they’d have updated their kitchen by now.
…
I don’t know. I just feel like a ball was dropped here. Or maybe I’m being too cynical. Manhattan is definitely a bigger deal than either my current neighborhood or Creve Coeur. I’m just not sure that anybody in Greenwich thinks so.
But then again, yo-yos.
If yo-yos were a big deal for a week, I’m honestly not sure why the new kid from St. Louis wasn’t. She was definitely no lamer than a piece of plastic on a string.
She wasn’t that much cooler, but she wasn’t any lamer.