Outsourcing Mommy Tasks

I was getting my breakfast sandwich from Panera this morning and noticed a curious scene I imagine being unique to Santa Monica.

Two hispanic women were chilling with strollers holding young children. One stroller had two seats for two young children, the other stroller had one seat for one child. The kids were super young - could say a few words - and were basically just sitting there with blank looks on their faces.

The two nanny-moms were chatting it up in Spanish like I imagine suburban moms are doing all over the US at 10ish in the morning at parks and coffee shops. I was looking at these ladies and thinking - are these their kids? Then I one of the kids said "Mama," I noticed the pretty fancy strollers, and not-so-nice clothes the women were wearing, and since the kids looked white and their rudimentary utterings sounded English, I concluded with fair certainty, these were nannies taking the kids out on a stroll.

The one kid started to complain and one nanny handed him part of a pretzel to shut up. Then her blackberry beeped. Yes - that's right - her blackberry and she decided she had to get going.

I suppose this is to be expected - what are working women to do? And these ladies seemed to know what they were doing. But something about it struck me as odd. How much of our work/lives should we be delegating to others? And what were the kids of these nannies doing?