Maids

Lifestyle Relationships
1

While my anger is getting the better of me, let me give life1 some more business.

I don’t get why stay at home moms/wives who talk about the virtues of being a good muslim woman who dekhs-baals her family while poo-poo’ing at working women, HIRES A MAID TO TAKE CARE OF HER HOUSE???

What dekh baal are you doing? Just following the main around and busting her arse for your own entertainment?

2

Re: Maids

What's wrong with getting help with chores so that you have more time to spend with your family doing other things? How does looking after you family/home = working alone to clean?

3

Re: Maids

Then why do we crap on working women who don't sit at home and work alone to clean?

4

Re: Maids

I don't, so I can't speak for them.

I do think most people who are anti-working women are concerned about the time away from children and maybe cooking, not so much time away from cleaning.

5

Re: Maids

Those women did provide employment for a working woman.
Maid is a working woman.

6

Seriously now that I have chosen to be a stah mom . I see how much of my time goes towards cleaning, mopping, cooking. Although important they take me away from my kids and if our income allows me to outsource a few these montonous chores I will gladly do it in a heartbeat.

7

Re: Maids

^ This.

I'm not sure why this is so complicated. If I'm at the office all day working....obviously I'm not at home with my children (assuming they're not in school). I'm also not at home making sure that cooking, cleaning, laundry, errands etc. are all taken care of.

Even if there is a maid doing the cleaning, laundry etc.......stay-at-home wives/moms are still at home making sure that the work is done to their standard. They're still at home with their children and know what's going on....as opposed to depending on a daycare/nanny/other caretaker to update them.

Just b/c someone has a maid, doesn't mean that the maid does every-single-thing in the house. So unless you personally know the woman and have SPECIFIC details on what duties the maid has.....its ridiculous to pass judgment on her saying that she's not doing anyones dekh baal. Especially if that woman has children who are not going to school.

8

Re: Maids

The whole ant-feminist argument is that women need to stay home and take care of kids PLUS do cooking/cleaning - if you can hire a maid for the cooking/cleaning part, then what are you doing with all that extra time? Smothering your kids with your presence and not letting them be remotely independent?

Maybe some people are more interested in raising mommy boy's then we wonder why we have a mommy boy culture?

9

Re: Maids

when you have kids, the house gets dirty every hour or so. i wouldn't mind hiring a maid once in a while to get my house spotlessly clean. I'm not lazy and do all the cleaning myself, but maids do it much better and it feels like you've got a brand new home which is easier to maintain. once they are done with it.

in pakistan there are a lot of housewives but everyone has a maid. its almost unheard of to not get domestic help there. its considered ok there too.

10

Re: Maids

But then it nosedives the argument that the proper muslim woman should stay at home and tend to the household.

11

Re: Maids

tending to the household does not equal to cleaning alone.

12

Re: Maids

Work or not your kids deserve the full attention from their parents. So you just have to make it work who cares what everyone else says....

13

Re: Maids

I am stahm for 3 months now. I don't cook or clean everyday. However at the end of the day I am drained from running after my little one. He wakes up at 7 and that is when my day starts, it ends around midnight. There are days like today when he was up at 4:30. My day with him includes feeding him both milk and solida, changing him, potty training, playing with him, reading stories, playing with and without toys, constantly talking with him, telling him things around us, sometimes going out on walks or grocery shopping, etc, bath time putting him for nap, putting him to bed....

There are so many things you have to do with little ones and it is quite time consuming. If you as a working parent aren't doing it then your child care provider probably is.

I am going to go off topic now but it annoys the hell out of me when ppl think that teachers at child care centers and preschools don't do much, they just play with those little munchkins.

All I want to say is that children are lot of work and if you care about their well being then it means you are upto some hard work. Please don't underestimate mothers who choose to stay at home and take care of their little ones, working mothers who work all day and take care of their children when back from work, and child care providers.

They deserve any break they can get from cooking and cleaning.

14

Re: Maids

Met a childhood friend this past weekend and she has such adorable toddlers, MashaAllah. But they can be a handful...keeping them busy, safe, clean, fed, handling their tantrums, toilet training, monitoring hat goes in their heads and comes out of their mouths, even teaching manners and other things........there is much that a maid won't do...that is better done by the mom/parents. And along with the upbringing, you'd be handling all those chores that you have not assigned to the maid as her responsibility. So, emphasizing Paheli's point that it can also depend upon what the maid does. And when kids start going to school...helping with homework/projects, being involved in their extracurricular activities, allotting time to interact with...etc. Again there is much that a maid won't do that a sahm or working mom will have to tend to. If you feel that smothering kids will turn them into needy mommy's boys...then hardly being around or being too bogged down by work to spend time with your kids can't be healthy for them either. Home/family takes first priority as having a career is a right/haq not a farz for women. That said, if getting some help allows her to devote more time to her family and is a means of livelihood for someone, great. It's easy for all us to give opinions/to judge without the experience.

15

Re: Maids

^ :k:

16

Re: Maids

Actually if my son sleeps through night then my day starts at 5/6. If he doesn't then I don't really get 5 hours of sleep at stretch at night. I am not complaining but just thought I would add this to my earlier post. Oh and my little one is holding his bottle since he was 3 months old(alhamdulilah) now he wants to eat with his own little hands. (MashAllah).

Oh and how can I forget handling his tantrums , teaching manners..... There is just so much to parenting and you only understand it when you have to takecare of a child.

17

Re: Maids

I only hired a maid once a week 3 hours each after I had my third child and starting working again .. its such a blessing to have one, as she does the cleanings on friday and we have the weekend to do the fun stuff with kids, before that I was spending all sunday doing cleaning myself. If I would not have been working, I can say for sure I would not have hired one and done the work myself, because I cannot sit and watch the maid do work. So when she is here while she is cleaning I am sorting out laundary, ironing them .. takes 2-3 hours, so its not I am sitting and doing nothing while she is here.

18

Re: Maids

well u can train ur kids to pick up after they are done, just as they do in K-G or schools ..

I have to defend PcG here hate this maid concept too, in pak we have housewifes chatting / watching dramas while paying petty money to domestic help, why cant they do something good for the society, heck even for their familes and do their own work ( this does not apply to working females of course)

19

Re: Maids

Yup in preschool and kindergarten but not quite when children just start crawling.

Ps. Not all SAHMs in Pakistan spend their time infront of tv or on phones. Every household is different and we cannot make these generalizations.

20

Re: Maids

when they are crawling, the mess is not bad, u give them a corner, they play there..

when my kids were babies, I did the cleaning during their midday nap, mind u I slept no more than 5-6 hours.

I am sorry lusi, I have seen housewifes in pak .... mostly are like this