Hamptons Rush: How Southern Sorority Girls Are Taking Over the East End

juillet 06, 2025

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Hamptons Rush: How Southern Sorority Girls Are Taking Over the East End

It started, as so many things in the Hamptons do, with a whisper. "There's this nanny service I know of that sends Ole Miss sorority girls up to New York each summer to work in the Hamptons…," a Brearley mom said to me sotto voce a few summers back in East Hampton at a tech executive's birthday party for a former White House press secretary. She later passed along a generic Gmail address that she wasn't altogether sure was still working. With the fierce competition to find good babysitters in the Hamptons only increased after Covid, I figured it was worth a shot—at the time I had an eight-month old, a three-old-old, and a nanny who just gave notice. This service seemed like a dream.

My email eventually found its way to Hartwell Furr, then a junior at the University of Mississippi. She was taking over running the nascent Nanny Network business from Chi Omega sister Kate Hayes, who moved to New York after graduating to pursue interior design. Hayes had started the business matching Ole Miss girls with New York families looking for seasonal childcare. The kids get someone full of energy and enthusiasm, relatable because they are not too much older, who speaks in a mysterious (Southern) accent about fascinating and faraway places like a sorority house and college in Mississippi. The parents get someone (else) to jump in the pool when the kids come home from camp, is tech savvy enough to research and register for toddler classes through a booking app, can handily drive the family SUV to playdates, and, if politeness were a sport, would reach Olympic status.

On our first call, Furr interviewed me as much as I interviewed her. She told me about the service, and (reasonable) fees, and sent me a lovely follow-up email that began, "I enjoyed visiting with you!" After reviewing PDFs for a handful of select candidates (quiet, non-partyers, please, as per my skeptical husband's request), all with smiling pictures, and glowing references, I moved forward with an SMU business major rising junior, whose main childcare experience consisted of being a counselor at a North Carolina Christian girls sleepaway camp. (We are Jewish.) Before I knew it, we were buying a round-trip plane ticket from Birmingham, Alabama for a stranger with two first names, who (initially) referred to us as ma'am and sir, to come live with us for the summer in the Hamptons.