Summary The Relationship between the Nanny and the Family Turkish Psychological Articles, June 2021, 24(47), 112-114 DOI: 10.31828/tpy1301996120210121m000034 Nazlı Akay Başak Şahin Acar Middle East Technical University Middle East Technical University Starting with birth, infants are in constant inter- action with the people surrounding them. Especially in urban settlements, an increasing number of families em- ploy nannies for child-care, and the nannies become one of the main actors on a child’s life (Hitt, 2016). Unlike most of the other occupations, nannies are actively in- volved in the daily lives of their employer families as well (Akay, 2013; Barnhart, Huf, & Cotte, 2014). Since the child’s interactions and their subsequent attachment patterns in the frst years of life are known to afect life adjustment in later years (Sroufe & Rutter, 1984), it is important to investigate the nanny care and their efects on the cared child’s development. However, to the best of our knowledge, there are not any publications which have evaluated the literature on the matter. In accordance with the aim of flling this gap, this review has been or- ganized around two goals: First, defning nannying and summarizing the working conditions of the nannies in Turkey, to better understand the nanny-family relation- ship dynamics; second, presenting the literature pertain- ing to the nannies and the employer families. Method For the present review, Metunique search engine (Middle East Technical University’s library search en- gine) was used to scan the databases listed in Tablo 1 [Table 1], for the terms listed in Tablo 2 [Table 2]. Da- tabase scan was performed between the dates of Octo- ber 2017 and May 2018. Articles, books, e-books, the- ses and reviews published in the felds of psychology, anthropology, applied sciences, communication, in- ternational relations, economics, education, ethnic and cultural studies, history, law, nursing, political science, politics, religion and philosophy, social sciences, social work, sociology and women’s studies were included. Scanning for each keyword / phrase was carried out in two stages. In the frst stage, publications dated between 2015-2018 were searched for each keyword in order to reach the comtemporary information in the literature. In the second stage, a literature review was carried out by providing access to the pre-2015 publications and other publications from all the relevant articles, and resulted in 7241 publications. Duplicates of the same publication, publications addressing a diferent subject, publications about professionals working with more than one child in more structured environments (such as nursery and day- care teachers and caregivers), publications the full text of which were not available, and were prepared in languag- es other than Turkish or English were excluded. Finally, 39 publications were included in this review. In addition, other relevant publications which did not appear among the scan results, and supplementary publications were included in this review. Given the scarcity of literature, the results were presented in a narrative review format instead of systematic review. Results and Discussion The results were organized in two sections: the frst section was on the defnition of nannying and the work- ing conditions of nannies in Turkey, and the second on the nannies’ role over the family dynamics and the par- ent-child relationships. Nannies and Nannying The defnition of the nanny. The nanny is counted as one of the domestic workers (Brown, 2011; Yıldırı- malp, 2014). Some factors distinguish nannies from the other child-care givers: First, nannies are usually not a member of the employers’ biological family (Desrosiers, 2008, in Weingarten, 2012; Kaylin, 2007, in Weingarten, 2012). Second, nannies still share the main responsibil- ities attributed to the mother and thus, act as a surro- gate of the mother (Macdonald, 1998; Wood & Repetti, 2004). In that sense, nannying is similar to mothering, which could be defned as being responsible for the child’s needs (Logsdon, Wisner, & Pinto-Foltz, 2006). Address for Correspondence: Res. Asst., Nazlı Akay, Middle East Technical Unversity, Graduate School of Social Sciences, Çankaya / Ankara E-mail: nakay@metu.edu.tr