Surprise! You were not middle class.

Eh, an au pair from overseas provides childcare in exchange for rent and food, and comes on vacations.

If you aren't a stay at home parent, you can use some of the money you earn at your job to pay for child care.

Having an au pair puts one firmly above the middle-class. Not necessarily rich, but certainly flirting with "affluent."

Rightly or wrongly, a lot of people in the US consider middle class to be anything between barely putting food on the table and flying around in private jets. It's probably fair that people hiring au pairs/nannies are on at least the upper range of middle class income but that doesn't make them "rich" in typical American parlance.

Au pair can be cheaper that the day care. Middle class people from much poorer countries than the USA have au pairs.

What’s really surprising is that a stranger on the internet is an authority on my childhood and family. What else can you tell me?

You have to be in some serious denial or have complete lack of perspective to think having the means to bring a babysitter on your holidays is "solidly middle class"

There are literally dozens of comments elsewhere in this thread about how an au pair can be extremely affordable, borderline cheap. Feel free to read some of them, it's actually pretty enlightening if you're able to get over your unwarranted knee-jerk anger :)

Don't think anyone expressed "anger" so I'm not sure why you had the knee jerk reaction to assume that.

You're entitled to believe that bringing a cheap babysitter on a family road trip a few times means we couldn't possibly have been middle class, but the assertion that I'm in denial or have a complete lack of perspective is uncalled for.

What is your definition of middle class?

Probably not American middle class ;-) . In Asia it is (was?) common to have a driver, servant and yes even a dedicated babysitter for the kids.

To respond to the people who are going to say that's just exploitation of the poor, well, your Uber driver and your food delivery person would like to talk you, as well as the people who were poorly paid to mine the rare minerals found on your fancy phone.