Parent Soother Needed
Job Description
The Parent Soother is different from the Parent Liaison and will be expected to work double the hours of the Liaison while having no personal boundaries or moral compass. The ideal candidate for the job of Parent Soother at Richard E. Rich Academy will need to act preppy and entitled enough to reassure parents that their children are surrounded by middle-to-upper-class staff, without giving parents any anxiety about their own socially superior status. A mixture of deference, familiarity and slightly ironic detachment, combined with an ability to flatter and lose at tennis, are all musts. Ability to remember the names of dogs both living and dead, and distinguish different types of Labrador, are essential skills. The candidate needs to be able to name drop schools, country clubs, distinguished alumni, horsey events, and insider places on Nantucket, without being able to afford those advantages on the salary provided.
We are looking for a candidate who has a spouse with a large income and flexible work situation, and/or a candidate with a solid trust fund and little ambition. A wardrobe with a mixture of well-worn vintage preppy standards, and expensive but not luxurious up-to-date items are requirements: LLBean, Pendleton, Sperry, Vineyard Vines and Boden for every day, with Brooks Brothers, J. Press or Lily Pulitzer for school events. At no time should the Parent Soother seem too professional, as the Soother must give the impression of a slightly-poorer family friend or hanger-on. A bit of a hard-luck story mixed with declining privilege would be a bonus, as it makes parents feel worthy and virtuous to encounter a bit of trauma and hardship, especially if it works for a good anecdote to retell on the golf course.
The Parent Soother is tasked with making parents feel loved, appreciated and assured that their child is better than all the other children at Richard E. Rich Academy, without seeming to work at it. Because the Soother must make their labor invisible, the job is suitable for female candidates and/or people of color who are used to the cultural expectation of self-erasure in the performance of a seemingly-genuine desire to serve. The female and/or minority applicant will also be expected to represent diversity in hiring, and will have additional photo consents to sign in their role as media token. While female and/or minority applicants will need to present better credentials than white male candidates, they are required to laugh along affably when it is suggested they did not earn their job through merit. Likewise, an understanding of generational and relational class dynamics are necessary in appearing lightly amused by, and fondly understanding of, the unwanted hand-stroking, unasked for neck touch, and accidental-on-purpose crotch brushing which are all part of the job and should not be understood as human trafficking on the part of Richard E. Rich Academy.
An important part of the role of Soother is implying that it is possible to get special privileges for students while stating the opposite. When parent expectations are disappointed for whatever reason, the Soother must implement deflection strategies which include suggesting that Richard E. Rich Academy is forced to prioritize poor or minority children over the children of rich alums and that is why Johnny Jr. did not make the team, get the prize, win admission at Stanford, etc.
The Soother is allowed to accept gift cases of wine from parents’ private vineyards, use of a summer house in Watch Hill, tickets to the Harvard-Yale Game, nights on a Friendship Sloop, lunch at the Union Club, investment advice, a regatta picnic or a ride in an heirloom MG. But the objective is not self-enrichment for the Parent Soother, but rather to create an atmosphere of competition among parents to curry favor with the school. The Soother prepares parents for large donations by creating an intimate atmosphere of trust and connection, but does not handle donations directly. In the chain of command, the Parent Soother, like the Head of School, reports to the Development Director.
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