Where have all the teen sitters gone?

Chris Szaj is always on the lookout for good baby sitters for her 7-year-old daughter, Olivia, but they never seem to be in search of her.

The busy single mother and vice president of Augsburg College has a rolling list of about six sitters, and even with that, she often has to take her daughter along to professional events or not go at all.

"Child care is a constant scramble, with no guaranteed results," she said.

Many parents can relate to Szaj's desperation to find good care for their children. The window of opportunity from the time adolescents are old enough to baby-sit until they get a "real job" is small. Add this to the teens' increasingly busy schedules, and you'll find a shrinking pool of available teen baby sitters.

Instead of calling the kid next door, parents are increasingly using older, more experienced sitters who've turned to nannying as a viable career option in a difficult economy. So-called "career nannies" have recently flooded online sitter services, such as Care.com.

"The teenage baby sitter has a lot of competition these days," said Care.com managing editor Katie Bugbee. "The baby-sitting world is complex -- it's now more of a marketplace."

About 2 million baby sitters and nannies nationwide are in the SitterCity.com database, and according to executive vice president Melissa Marchwick, they are getting older. When the site was launched in 2001, the average age of the sitters was 18. Now it's 21. At Care.com Bugbee says that many retirees and unemployed professionals are putting themselves back into the baby-sitting market and making a career out of it.

LeAna Kinnell used to baby-sit nearly every weekend, but now that she's 16 and is busy with band and choir, volunteering, schoolwork and her part-time job at Old Navy, she no longer has time.

"The only time I really baby-sit anymore is if the parents come to me in advance and I can take off work or get someone to cover my shift," the Newport teen said.

The challenge of finding a baby sitter for her two young children was frustrating enough for Lauren Dee to start her own baby-sitting co-op. The St. Paul mother formed the Great Escape Co-op four years ago with other parents she met through her Early Childhood Family Education class.

Not only are teens busier these days, Dee said, but the ones who are available are harder to find because neighborhoods and communities aren't as connected as they were when she grew up in the 1980s. Parents feel increasingly uncomfortable leaving their children with teens they don't know, especially if they need a responsible driver to cart their children to activities.

"When I was a teenager baby-sitting, I'd been in every house on the block, I knew everything about all the families and they knew me," she said. "Neighborhoods are different these days. We don't have teenagers nearby that we know and trust."

Despite the higher cost, many parents are turning to online baby-sitting matching services and nanny agencies to comparison-shop, even if the need is just a few hours on a weekend night.

At Twin Cities agency Nannies From the Heartland, business for temporary on-call nannies doubled in 2011 from the previous year.

"Parents aren't comfortable with the idea of a 13- or 14-year-old caring for their children, and by the time they're 16, they've found other jobs," said Mary O'Connor, the agency's owner. "Our clients are saying they want experienced, older caregivers."

Nannies employed through Nannies From the Heartland must be 21, but the average age is 41.

That's good news for Joni Remley, a 28-year-old nanny from Crystal. She's certified in first aid and CPR and has 16 years of child care experience. Remley provides full-time child care for one family through a local nanny agency, but she also does occasional baby-sitting on evenings and weekends.

"Taking care of children is a labor of love, and is not something that I take lightly," she said. "Nannying is a long-term thing for me."

With all that is asked of baby sitters these days, it's no surprise to Remley that parents want someone with more experience. On top of taking care of the kids, baby sitters are often tasked with carpooler, tutor, cook and house-cleaner duties.

Want a sitter who does it all? You'll have to pay. According to Care.com, parents in the Minneapolis area on average should pay baby sitters $9.50 to $12 an hour, based on experience. The fee goes up with more children, and parents using a nanny locator service can expect to pay even more.

"We pay our nanny more than we would pay a high school student, but I feel so much more comfortable leaving my girls with a person who has the maturity to handle emergency situations if they arise," said Carrie Knutson of New Richmond, Wis. "We also like that our nannies have been more experienced drivers than a high school student would've been."

Even though the tides are shifting in the baby-sitting world, Chris Szaj says there's still a need for the teenage set. Szaj continues to keep her eyes peeled to add more options to her Rolodex of sitters. She recently lucked out meeting a few neighbors with 12- and 14-year-old daughters who've come in handy when Szaj has weekend errands to run.

"We're like locusts around them," she said of the parents scrambling to get the phone numbers of the after-school helpers. "I'm always on the lookout because these kids graduate, they get jobs and they move on."

Aimée Tjader • 612-673-1715