January 1, Wealthy Parents Outsourcing Their Own Kids — What Former Senator Now Warns They’ll Regret

Wyatt’s Take

• Elite parents are hiring teams of nannies to avoid basic parenting tasks like clipping toenails and teaching kids to ride bikes — some mothers won’t even spend more than three hours with their own children on weekends
• Former Republican Senator Ben Sasse, now battling terminal cancer, reveals his biggest regret: missing thousands of family dinners while traveling for work — boxes of hotel keys in his closet became painful reminders of lost time
• A homeschool mom shares why the hard parts of parenting — teaching reading through tears, coaching Little League, getting up at 3 a.m. with sick kids — matter far more than Instagram vacations and outsourced ‘quality time’

Some wealthy parents are paying strangers to raise their kids, and they have no idea what they’re losing. A recent Wall Street Journal investigation exposed a disturbing trend among America’s elite: hiring entire teams of household staff to avoid the messy, inconvenient parts of being a parent.

The piece, titled “When One Nanny Isn’t Enough, ‘CEO Parents’ Hire a Whole Team,” revealed parents who’ve outsourced not just daytime childcare, but evenings and weekends too. Some have retained specialists to potty-train their children or teach them to ride bikes.

One mother admitted she’d never clipped her own children’s toenails because it made her too anxious. That same mother usually delegates bath time to the nanny.

Another described herself as a “max-three-hour mum,” preferring to spend only weekend mornings with her children before moving on to other things. This mother believed she could outsource the drudgery of parenting and rely “on a household team of nannies, cleaners, a chef and a chief of staff, which helps afford time for ‘high-impact, core memories’ like vacations with her children.”

The timing of this report couldn’t be more striking. Just as these revelations hit the headlines, former Republican Senator Ben Sasse — now facing a terminal cancer diagnosis — delivered a gut-wrenching message to the American public.

Sasse recently told CNN that his biggest regret was not spending more time with his kids. Reflecting on his extensive work travel, Sasse described a haunting ritual: at the end of each trip, he would throw all his hotel keys on the floor of his home office closet.

“All of a sudden, it became thousands and thousands of keys.”

Those boxes of keys, according to Sasse, represented “a hell of a lot of missed dinners.” In thinking about his children, Sasse asked himself a question that should shake every parent to the core:

“What the hell was I doing instead of being with you?”

Sasse’s words should cause every parent to think hard about what we’re prioritizing over family life. It might seem attractive to outsource the difficult or annoying parts of parenting and skim off only the joyful memories. But this approach fails to grapple with a fundamental truth: the hard parts of parenting are often the most important and meaningful.

Consider the long journey of teaching a child to read. It begins with countless hours on your lap, reading story after story — starting with board books, then moving to fairy tales and early readers. Parents answer endless questions along the way: Do bears eat people? How does the baby kangaroo pop out of his mommy’s tummy? Why didn’t the Little Red Hen share her cake?

Then comes the painstaking work of learning letters, practicing handwriting, blending sounds together. The process takes years and includes plenty of tears of frustration as families struggle through the complexities of the English language.

It would certainly be easier to send the kids to school and let professional teachers handle the annoying job of correcting handwriting, making children write comprehensible paragraphs, and insisting they memorize multiplication tables. Even the “eight times” tables.

Yet there’s something irreplaceable about all those logged hours teaching your own kids. Parents learn about their own character — the need to develop more patience, more empathy, and sometimes more firmness. They become deeply acquainted with all the areas where their children need help and those where they naturally excel. They get a front-row seat to witness the explosion of creativity and the slow development of maturity and responsibility.

The trade-offs are real. Families sacrifice wealth, career advancement, personal time. But ask parents who’ve made this choice, and you’ll hear the same refrain: it’s worth it.

Not every parent needs to homeschool. Every family is different, with different needs and gifts to offer. But there’s profound value in “in-sourcing” family life wherever possible.

Consider the hard-working fathers who dedicate hours each week to coaching their children’s baseball or basketball teams, giving up relaxing time at home to instill values of hard work, teamwork, and gracious losing. These dads could outsource that job to another parent or a professional, but they find working hands-on with their children worth the sacrifice.

In neighborhoods across America, families take pride in having kids work in the family business — learning to paint houses, do landscaping, or handle a budget. Will all these kids end up in construction or lawn care? Probably not. But the lessons learned hands-on from their parents are invaluable anyway.

The truth these parents understand: The most meaningful times with kids aren’t the Disney World trip or the Instagram-worthy nursery. Instead, they’re being the person who gets up with a sick child at 3 a.m. and makes her feel loved even though she’s violently ill. They’re the hours spent teaching phonics through tears, the bedtime stories read for the thousandth time, the scraped knees bandaged, the spelling tests practiced.

Sasse’s warning, delivered from someone staring at his own mortality, carries weight that should penetrate every parent’s heart. At the end of life, we won’t be counting money in bank accounts or professional accolades. We’ll be asking deeper questions about how we spent our irreplaceable time.

The lesson is clear: Reassess how much time goes to social media versus family dinners. Question whether career ambitions justify missing thousands of nights at home. Consider what “high-impact core memories” really means — because it’s probably not what wealthy “CEO parents” think.

When given by someone looking hard at his own mortality, it’s a lesson worth heeding. The hotel keys pile up faster than we realize. The childhood years slip away before we notice. And no amount of hired help can replace what children lose when their own parents choose to be somewhere else.

Why It Matters

The American family is under assault from a culture that tells parents their careers, comfort, and convenience matter more than the sacred duty of raising their own children. Sasse’s deathbed wisdom cuts through the lies: no professional achievement, no wealth, no outsourced “quality time” can replace being present for the ordinary, messy, difficult moments that actually build character and connection. Working families across the heartland already know this truth — they coach Little League after long shifts, help with homework at kitchen tables, and sacrifice personal ambition because they understand something the wealthy elite have forgotten: your children need you, not your money.