Ever wished you knew someone — not quite a therapist, and definitely not your mother — who would listen to you without interruption, wrap a gift, or bring over a big casserole dish heaped high with comfort food?

[lz_jwplayer video=”bYDi8f9a” ads=”true”]

If you live in the New York City area and are between ages 20 and 35, now you can rent that “someone.”

Nina Keneally, 63, is the Bushwick, New York, owner of the Need a Mom business. For $40 an hour (plus expenses), she will be a mom without the judgment, collar straightening, or nagging a real mom might engage in. But she will offer to do any number of mom-like things, such as cooking, sewing on a button, or just listening as a client works through an issue.

For a mere $20, she will text or email with you for half an hour.

Her company’s tagline? “When you need a mom — just not your mom.”

Millennials are her target clients. “I baked something for a millennial yesterday!” she told LifeZette, laughing. With a solid theater background as well as a certification in drug and alcohol counseling, Keneally has learned how to listen well, which is the key to her business.

One thing that has prepared her to be a paid mom: raising two sons. “I always listened very carefully to my kids,” she said.

Keneally’s unique business was an extension of what she found herself already doing, soon after moving to the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.

“My husband and I had raised our kids in Connecticut, and when we moved back to the city, a place full of young artists and young people in general, I found myself interacting with a lot of young adults — at my yoga class, and friends of my sons, too,” she said.

Who do you think would win the Presidency?

By completing the poll, you agree to receive emails from LifeZette, occasional offers from our partners and that you've read and agree to our privacy policy and legal statement.

“People got to know me and trust me. They began to talk to me, coming to me for advice or if they were upset.”

Keaneally had her lightbulb moment. Perhaps millennials she didn’t know would need her listening ear and thoughtful counsel — and pay her for it. “If it didn’t work out, I could always tell everyone this was a conceptual art project,” she quipped, laughing. “I mean, this is Bushwick.”

[lz_table title=”Number of Young Adults Living with Family Rivals 1940 Levels” source=”Pew Research Center”]1940
Men,47.5%
Women,36.2%
|1960
Men and women,24%
|2014
Men,42.8%
Women,36.4%
[/lz_table]

Keneally makes clear she is not a maid. Do not call her to clean your loft or apartment.

“It seems like I’m a couple of things,” she said. “I’m a personal mentor and a life coach. Also, I’m someone who can sit back over coffee or tea and say, ‘Take a deep breath, let’s look at where you are now.’ This generation living in the city is so busy, they often don’t have perspective.”

Keneally’s clients are not just those who have fractured relationships with their mothers.

“I like to think they come to me because I have a more ‘boots on the ground’ perspective of what it’s like to be young, and trying to make it here — the long commutes, working so hard, the social pressures, too.”

Keneally sees millennials’ interest in a “rent-a-mom” as a natural generational progression. “Every generation seems to grow up a little later. My mother and father got married when they were young, but I was in my 30s before I married. This generation is often waiting even longer. We’re all living longer, too, and they know they have good years ahead of them.”

Keneally feels that one key difference between her services and those of a therapist is her ability to share stories of her own.

[lz_related_box id=”113484″]

“Traditional therapists can’t do any self-disclosure about their own experiences, or very little. I can say, ‘I went through the same thing when I was 25, too.’ I can empathize with them, relating that ‘it changes and it gets better if you work on it.’”

She will not hesitate to refer clients for professional mental health services should they need them, and will help them locate a support group or the right professional.

One tip she shares with younger clients is to get off social media when it comes to true interaction. “I have no moral objection to social media, but I always encourage them to meet people as soon as they can,” she said. “What we interpret about someone in conversation, about 90 percent of our actual knowledge, is from body language.”

Keneally has had several requests about franchising, but is not interested. “That’s a different ball of wax. I’d have to find people who have the same sort of philosophical approach as I do on this sort of thing.”

An agent has approached Keneally recently to put together a book proposal for a book aimed at parents of millennials. So she is working on that, along with being a paid stand-in mother figure for anyone who has lost direction, needs a shoulder, or needs some validation.

“I help their process,” she said. “They know what the answer is, in their heart of hearts.”