The Baby-Sitters Club in 2016

If you want to evoke nostalgia amongst a group of thirty something women, just mention the Baby-Sitters Club. That group of entrepreneurial girls, one with their own phone line (unheard of in the eighties), who got up to innocent scrapes and paved the way for the racier twins at Sweet Valley High.

The Baby-Sitters club in 2016

What if it were set in 2016? Would today’s girls get it? I don’t know. Here’s what would have to change.

They wouldn’t be babysitting. Maybe in the eighties when parents regularly sent 10 year olds home to empty houses with a key and access to the remote, 12 – 13 year olds baby-sitting would fly. I don’t know anyone these days who would entrust their kids with a pre-teen. The modern parent requires at least three recommendations, a blue card and a police check before employing a baby sitter. But that wouldn’t matter because…

There’d be an app for that. Kristy would still have her “great idea” but it would be an app and service that bridged kids’ use of social media and their parents monitoring it. When I turned 10 the big thing was to get your ears pierced. Now kids get an Instagram account. The baby-sitters would online-befriend kids around their own age (agreed by both kids and parents), try to make sure everyone stays pretty safe and report back any problems to the the parents through said app. The storylines would be endless.

Claudia would have an Etsy store. Remember those cool, home-made earrings Claudia used to wear – flashing Christmas tree earrings, lobster earrings, fork one ear and a spoon in the other? She’d be all over Etsy.

Dawn would be an Instagram star. The Californian blonde (who was my favourite as a fellow vegetarian) would post prettily filtered shots of granola, smoothies and breakfast jars. She’d also sneak in a few bikini shots and Kristy would get mad at her for tarnishing the club’s image (they never did get on).

None of them would have lovely handwriting. Or write letters. Do you remember how there used to be those hand-written notes at the beginning of each chapter and Stacey dotted all her “i”s with hearts (and maybe I did too for a while)? Do you know any kid these days who writes letters? I am guessing some still dot their “i”s with hearts.

Mary-Anne, the introvert, would be secretly hosting a gossipy anonymous blog about the goings on at their school and inadvertently creating more work for the baby-sitters by creating a culture of online bullying. Yeah, I never did like her much. There was always a dark side bubbling.

Stacey would get into trouble on Skout or Tinder. The boy crazy one would dip her toes into online dating sites (for work research purposes) and get herself into trouble. But it would all be resolved by the end of the book and no-one would get hurt. She’d also be managing her diabetes through an insulin pump rather than needles, so those oranges she used to practice on would be safe.

Arrow 2

What do you reckon everyone would be up to?
Did you LOVE that series as a kid?

20 thoughts on “The Baby-Sitters Club in 2016

  1. Hugzilla says:

    Oh HAHHAHAHHAHAHHA! This is FECKING BRILLIANT!!! Funnily enough I almost bought the first 16 books from the op shop last week, but then I decided I was probably being stupid. I kind of regret it now but when I looked this week they were gone. Someone else must have been re-living their youth. LOL! This is SO perfect, though. So very perfect.

    • Robyna says:

      SO many people have bought them and re-read them in adulthood. I am scared it will ruin the magic. From memory, they weren’t exactly literary masterpieces.

    • Robyna says:

      I LOVED those super specials – the one where they all went on camp was a favourite. Glad to know I wasn’t the only one who didn’t like Mary-Anne.

  2. Bryce Rae says:

    It’s certainly a different world. My wife currently has one of these on her bedside drawers. We have had a laugh about that. Our daughters name in Claudia.

  3. Emily says:

    Haha! Hilarious. Claudia would have to take over my chocolate on sale updates on social media. Logan would get sprung cheating on Mary-Anne when a text meant for his bit on the side was sent to her instead. Jessie would be the clean-eating, kale-loving one and Claudia would have hidden her feed on FB (but not unfriended, because totally not cool).
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    • Robyna says:

      Oh yes, Claudia’s junk food addiction! And I just realised that I spelled Mary-Anne’s name wrong – I think it was my passive aggressive nature coming out, seeing as she was my least favourite 🙂

  4. Grace says:

    Okay…maybe it’s because I’m a little older or I was buried under a rock…but I actually don’t remember this series. (I can just hear you scream…”WHHHHAAATTT?!!”)
    I do, however remember Sweet Valley High very well. Man, those twins! Racy, or what?
    Grace recently posted…FYBF – The Old SchoolyardMy Profile

  5. Renee Wilson says:

    Robyna, this is epic. That’s so true about Claudia – she seriously would have an etsy store. Dawn was my favourite too. I had every book up to something like 120, but I lost them all in the 2011 floods. There were so many things that we lost, but I cried about the babysitter books. My husband couldn’t believe it. ‘I wanted to give them to the girls!!!’ I cried. Ahh well. Will just have to buy them again. I imagine they cost a bit more than $3.50 these days 🙂
    Renee Wilson recently posted…Thanks for the reminder Kristen and DaxMy Profile

    • Robyna says:

      Oh, I would have cried too! I went through a very minimalist stage in my late teens and threw out everything of sentimental value. Including the old BSC books.

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