Salah wrote:How much freedom you give your maid depends on the maid's attributes. I'll be more at peace knowing who her friends are and what she does on her own and where is she at all time. My mother's maid is a married woman in her late 30s, she is given many freedoms given that she is mature enough handle her life on her own. Having said that, there are maids who are rather young, hardly out of their teens. Some have come from the countryside, the city urban settings can be too overwhelming to these new comers. I believe it's a case to case basis how much freedoms they shld have.
Having lived here for coming 6 months soon, i have seen and heard about this topic.
I agree that the amt freedom to be given to your maid depends on her attribute. How much trust she has earned from you.
My current helper is a passed down from my FIL who has worked with him for many years. We are comfortable with her and she's great with my daughters.
So after living together with her for a while, i feel she's accountable and did her jobs well, took care of my girls well.
I give her as much "say" at home as possible within means. And we enjoy living together. There was once we bumb into her relatives living in SG too and we get to know each other too.
I am one who is NOT keen to treat helper as "secondary" class member of the family. We are part of the family. It feels better to have that mutual respect.
One of my Indonesian friend was flabbergasted when she saw my helper feeding my girl with her spoon. She's asking, aren't you afraid she may have some germs and pass on to your kid? After talking more, I found out it's about the culture there. Cos the domestic helpers there do not go through any health screening and all, plus it's in the culture to treat domestic helper as secondary class member.
This is the fact of life I supposed.
Some are born in well to do family, some don't. Who choose to be born as a "maid"?
In my conversation with her, she always refer other maid as "auntie" instead of calling those "maids" downstairs. I assume they also don't like to be known as maids. So I'm more careful in the words I use when I need to refer to those "aunties"...