S/o. Servants ( staff)

Nope. We didn't have that kind of money.

Who still says servants?

Nope. We didn't have much money growing up.

My roommate freshman year of college is from a very wealthy Egyptian family. She had no idea how to do laundry. "What is the blue stuff?" (It was laundry detergent.) she said she and her siblings would make their nannies (full time nanny for each child) do their homework if they didn't feel like doing it.

Many people live in servitude, even in this modern era. It's terrible.

We never had servants. My Mum was a housekeeper. Some of her customers treated her terribly. One would only let her use a small 3 inch square cloth to clean the toilet. My Mum tried to take her own rags once and this customer was enraged. She had to use that ladies rags or else lose that job. People with limited options don't really have a choice.

I went to school with a gal from India. Her Dad was a scientist. They had an aya (I think that's what it is). Basically, the aya's family were the servants of my friends family for generations. We live in New Zealand and when the Dad came here, it was just a give that the aya would come. I'm not sure how it all went down legally, but this woman never left their home. She was always cooking and cleaning and looking after the kids.

My Dad's family had servants when he was growing up. He was practically raised by his nanny - apparently my grandmother wasn't very interested in kids. My mother's family didn't have live in servants, but they did have a cleaning lady who came a few times a week. I'd say that was pretty normal for the time and location - Vienna, Austria before WW2.

I worked in India for a few years and had a maid who came every day to clean and do the laundry. Again that's normal. Cooking, cleaning, washing could take nearly the whole day and I was there to work.

I was born and raised in the colonies. British colonies. In Zambia we had housemen and gardeners galore. Our head houseman ruled certain aspects of my childhood with a rod of iron- school bags in the breezeway? Not tolerated. Uniforms not in the laundry? Trouble. He had the dignity of Downton's Mr Carson. His name was Jackson.

The guy in charge of the packing for camping & fishing? His name was Firewell. The kindest person you can imagine. One of my abiding regrets is that I never had the opportunity to say a final goodbye to these two men and a few others.

For 40 years plus I have lived in South Africa. I / we have staff. Some things have changed from the bad old days, some have become mega uncomfortable and some will never change. Big girl panties are on if anyone wants to ask Q's /hijack

Erm...no. My great grandparents were housekeeper, cook, chauffeur and gardener, among other things.

Yes, I feel strangely hard done by 

No.

It was the biggest eye opener for me in SA. That it is not just a black/white issue. That there is racism between blacks there was something I had never realised. And some of it is that people are people and you will get those who take advantage. And for white South Africans there is, as you say, so much guilt. Basically...i know nothing. I can't judge.

Not when I was growing up, but after my mom started getting older and having health issues she had a neighbor lady who provided part time housekeeping services come in a couple times a week to help her keep up her rigorous cleaning standards.

I dated a guy in college for my freshman year who grew up with a live in nanny/driver, and a live in maid/cook. It was strange being around this 18 year old man who'd never driven a car, never washed his own laundry, never prepared his own food, never balanced his own checkbook, and never cleaned his own room. He had a lot of struggles with being self-sufficient and functioning semi-independently in a dorm setting. He was also very, very sheltered and would become uneasy about being out in "the big bad city" whenever we went off-campus for a date.

I've had other college friends who grew up in homes with maids and nannies and cooks and drivers, but they seemed to embrace their independence and relish in their new domestic responsibilities after they left home.

Except for Michael, he lived in his own apartment but had a part time housekeeper, a grocery delivery service, and a laundry service. He liked living independently but wasn't having any of that tedious domestic shit.

I think this is very, very cultural. I'm an American who lives overseas and the vast majority of people where I live have a household staff - many have upwards of 10+ employees to run their lives. Of course in the USA, mostly the ultra wealthy have true staff but that is certainly not true everywhere in the world. My kids orthodontist CAN NOT get over the fact that I have 4 kids and no nanny/maid. She is local and it is totally foreign to her that I wouldn't have help. I do have a gardener who takes care of my yard and a guy who cooks for me a couple times a month. It is so inexpensive to hire help that most people have some sort of help.

Ha! No.

My in-laws in India all have very well staffed homes. It seems weird and uncomfortable to me.

We did have a full time maid and part time gardner when I was growing up in the 1950's until the 1970's. Mom was a school teacher and Dad was a plant supervisor working rotating shifts. There were 5 children so Mom could use the help especially if one of us was sick and needed to stay home. Our maid was like a second mom to us. As we got older we had chores we were responsible for doing. By the time we were teenagers our maid was only part time and then she had to retire after a bad car accident.