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Post by peano on May 20, 2017 11:56:31 GMT
Well, we had Rosemary from the time I was born until I was a teenager, although to call her a servant sounds just weird to me. She cooked and cleaned and cared for my brother and me; she was essentially my mother, as my own mother was sort of emotionally a child who found she wanted no part of parenting, and because she didn't want to be there, she was never home.
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Post by Merge on May 20, 2017 12:01:41 GMT
Growing up? Hahahahahahaha. No.
We currently have a once a week cleaning lady and every other week guy to cut the lawn. Very common here - it's cheap.
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Post by lisae on May 20, 2017 12:02:26 GMT
No and I can't think of anyone I knew who had any help in the house or with their children. There was only one daycare in our county when I was growing up. Mother's stayed home with their children or they went to grandmas while Mom worked. In my case, I hung around my parents business when I wasn't in school.
It didn't really become common to have someone clean your house for you on a weekly basis until 15-20 years ago and it is still a great minority of households here that have regular help.
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grammanisi
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Jun 26, 2014 1:37:37 GMT
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Post by grammanisi on May 20, 2017 12:29:33 GMT
Nope. My mom pretty much did it all.
My daughter had a very close friend in elementary school that was from an extremely wealthy family. They had all kinds of live in help...chef, maid, nannies, driver. The friend would practically beg to come to our house, because it was so comfortable and she loved being in a family environment. I remember one year our daughter had a Christmas party for her friends and the girl's driver never picked her up after the party. We couldn't get ahold of anyone at their house(before cell phones) and we had plans that evening so we just took her with us. Her parents never even wondered where she was.
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Post by Delta Dawn on May 20, 2017 12:53:55 GMT
I had Mrs. Yumura who was my nanny, cook, house cleaner, life saver and friend. I needed a babysitter and she did all of this and more. I loved this woman. I would grocery shop in the morning sometimes assuming I would make dinner after I got home from teaching and dinner would be made. She took such excellent care of DS. He liked her better than me. She was such a wonderful person.
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Post by supersoda on May 20, 2017 13:02:53 GMT
Growing up we were dealing with utilities being shut off and having to drink powdered milk, so, no.
As an adult, I have had nannies (not live in) for my kids, which is fairly uncommon around here. I also have a bi-weekly housekeeper and lawn service.
I would never refer to any of these people as servants.
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Nanner
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Jun 25, 2014 23:13:23 GMT
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Post by Nanner on May 20, 2017 13:11:11 GMT
No, never, lol. My parents/grandparents/great-grandparents were always working class, and never in a position to pay for that.
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QueenoftheSloths
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Jun 26, 2014 0:29:24 GMT
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Post by QueenoftheSloths on May 20, 2017 13:12:23 GMT
I think I would be uncomfortable with non-family members in the house all the time. Fortunately, I will never be in the financial position to have to find out if I could get used to it!
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georgiapea
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Jun 27, 2014 18:02:10 GMT
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Post by georgiapea on May 20, 2017 13:21:10 GMT
Nope, but my mother was one. She was a housekeeper for a doctor, who also had a cook.
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Post by M~ on May 20, 2017 13:23:54 GMT
I had servants growing up. I had a nanny. We had a cook, several people to clean the inside of the house, a washerwoman, a gardener and several drivers. My half sister had her own nanny.
Here in the US we have a housekeeper/caregiver for my granny.
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scrappinghappy
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“I’m late, I’m late for a very important date. No time to say “Hello.” Goodbye. I’m late...."
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Post by scrappinghappy on May 20, 2017 13:43:06 GMT
I grew up in South Africa so yes. They were a huge influential part of my life and my parents were unusual in that they treated them with tremendous respect which was returned. We had a large property and they lived in one of the guest cottages but other domestic workers lived in appalling conditions of poverty right next to white "wealth". It was one of the many reasons dh and i decided to immigrate
And we are fortunate enough to be able to employ a wonderful woman here who has been coming to our home twice a week for over 15 years. She does a lot for us in terms of cleaning and laundry etc., hubby, myself, my kids and pets adore her.
We pay all her taxes, she is totally legal.
Would i call her a servant? No! But she is an amazing help to our family and we love her very much.
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Post by Zee on May 20, 2017 13:46:05 GMT
No. We never had money for that. And I'm far too cheap to pay someone to do what I can do for free. Besides that, I don't want extra people in my house.
I wouldn't mind having a gardener, though. I loathe weeding and watering.
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Kerri W
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Post by Kerri W on May 20, 2017 13:54:03 GMT
No. I do have somebody clean my house biweekly but that's not anything close to having a servant or "help."
One of the people I work for has a full time maid, a handyman and a personal assistant. All are treated with the utmost respect and like family. If they host an event all of those people are there and you'd have no idea they weren't the dearest friends boss and his wife have.
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Deleted
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Jun 2, 2024 7:53:25 GMT
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Post by Deleted on May 20, 2017 13:54:40 GMT
I've worked as a nanny, I wouldn't have described it as being a servant. I was very well paid, it was a job, not servitude.
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iluvpink
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Jul 13, 2014 12:40:31 GMT
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Post by iluvpink on May 20, 2017 14:32:29 GMT
At first I was going to say no, we were not rich.
But for several years we did have a babysitter who came to our house after school for a few hours and my parents ended up paying her more to also do some light cooking/cleaning (laundry, dishes, picking up, maybe vaccuming?). So I guess that could count.
This is way back and I'm not sure how accurate it is as my grandmother didn't talk much about her family history. But we recently learned that my great grandfather's family were landowners with a decent size estate in Hungary and that apparently my great grandmother's family were the servants. Great grandfather fell in love with great grandma and was disowned by his parents and that's why they came to the U.S. But again, I have no idea how accurate that is. They certainly couldn't afford servants once they got here and scraped by along with most other immigrants in the early 20th century.
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DEX
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Aug 9, 2014 23:13:22 GMT
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Post by DEX on May 20, 2017 14:34:28 GMT
Growing up in Beirut in the 1950's we had a maid. Everyone did.
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Post by refugeepea on May 20, 2017 14:35:35 GMT
Did your family have servants? Yes, they had 16. Oh wait, that was the number of children they had and they all worked on the farm.
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Post by pondrunner on May 20, 2017 14:48:09 GMT
Growing up in Beirut in the 1950's we had a maid. Everyone did. We had family lived in Beirut also, in the 1950s and 1960s and they remember it as a city they loved dearly but no longer recognize. I concur that everyone had household help there during the time. Even their small apartment had a room for a household helper. I think they thought of their maid as a dignified and respected person. As a child we lived in Eastern Europe and it was also common, though we did not have a maid. My grandparents in Latvia had household staff. I think in many places families just have household staff and it isn't a wealthy family thing. In our current life we wouldn't have money or space for living in help, because American lives aren't set up that way for most people.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 20, 2017 14:49:27 GMT
I have a cleaner who comes once a week for 5 hours. Many of my Expat friends here in Japan have live in 'helpers' as they're commonly known. They often come from the Philippines or Indonesia. They usually work 6 days a week doing childcare, cleaning, cooking, etc and the family pays for them to go home once a year.
My friend's helper almost never leaves the house. She spends all day every day just cleaning (vacuuming the mattresses!!) and watches tv in her room on Sundays.
A lot of families bell no their helpers over from Hong Kong - every household has one there and on Sundays, they sit on flattened cardboard boxes in the streets and hang out together chatting and doing their nails!!
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Post by gorgeouskid on May 20, 2017 14:52:32 GMT
My family does/did not. (Well, we have a housekeeper who comes in weekly, gardener twice a month, and DS had a live-out nanny, but I would never call these people servants.)
However, my grandfather's family did. He attended boarding school at Phillips Academy Andover and would send his dirty laundry home in a trunk via train. The laundry would be cleaned and folded by the servants and sent back. He had a French nanny/governess and she taught him fluent French, which allowed him to briefly evade the Gestapo when his bomber was shot down over occupied France. He spent 2 years in a Polish camp as a prisoner of war.
Writing that down makes his life sound crazy! It wasn't actually, and he was extremely hard working and humble.
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pridemom
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Post by pridemom on May 20, 2017 15:12:25 GMT
hahaha. I was a household worker. I was a live in nanny for two years
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Post by leannec on May 20, 2017 15:51:33 GMT
I'm in Canada and grew up in the early 70's ... no servants at all
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milocat
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Post by milocat on May 20, 2017 15:52:45 GMT
My grandma left her abusive husband and raised 4 children on her own. Lived in one room shack and eventually bought the house on the property. No, no servants. My dad started his farm from nothing. They never even had running water when I was born, 40 years ago. So no, no servants. I've had house cleaners before.
There is a big farmer in this area who hire extra help to get the crop in and out and they call them "hired hands" makes my skin crawl. Why don't they just call them slaves? They are your employees, even if seasonal.
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Post by auntkelly on May 20, 2017 16:03:27 GMT
My mom was a single parent and ran her own business so my brother and had a full time babysitter and we had a once a week housekeeper. We certainly didn't think of these people as servants.
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Post by Lexica on May 20, 2017 16:27:45 GMT
well my grandparents were sharecroppers... so... no but my mom did hire a housekeeper once a week for a few years when i was growing up, she came in and cleaned while we were at school. i would think that's fairly common among the peas. That is what we had. My father owned a business and worked long hours. My parents divorced when I was very young, and then remarried when I was about 7 or 8 years old. Mom had become a nurse during their time apart and she wanted to continue working after they remarried. The house we moved to after they remarried was more than double the size of our first home. There was no way Mom had time to clean it while working full time. Dad insisted she hire someone to help and Mrs. Banks came into our lives to clean the house and do the laundry. I would have never classified her as a servant because she did not live in our home and she was well paid. Plus, Mom loved to bake and was always making cookies and various treats to send home with Mrs. Banks for her family, and we always gave her birthday and Christmas gifts. She was really nice. As she got older, the housework became increasingly more difficult for her to do. The quality of her work dropped considerably, but Mom would have never fired her because her husband had passed by this time, her kids were all married and gone, and she needed the money. She remained with us until she officially retired. And around the time that her work was dropping, my sisters and I were old enough to start doing more of the chores ourselves. We had always been responsible for cleaning our own bedrooms; Mrs. Banks vacuumed them. As her eyesight failed, my sisters and I started cleaning the main house before she came. I don't think Mrs. Banks ever realized that we were doing that. Mom would just say that the so-and-so didn't need cleaning that week. And we always had to redo certain things after she left like the streak-filled mirrors and anything else that wasn't up to Mom's standards. By the time she retired, she was only doing the laundry for Mom. Mom would have her sit at the kitchen table to fold/hang and then put the clothes into sorted piles on the dining room table. That house was a tri-level home, and Mom wouldn't let Mrs. Banks keep going up and down all those stairs all day, so we kids brought the baskets of clean laundry up to the kitchen for her. The washing machine was in the garage on the first floor, the kitchen on the second floor, and our bedrooms were on the third. We would each gather up our pile of clean folded clothes to take upstairs to our rooms. And I remember some days being so irritated at having to do be home on laundry day to help. I would sure love to find a clean, folded pile of my laundry waiting for me these days! My oldest sister has a couple that clean her home twice a week. My younger sister cleaned homes for a number of years. I have had to hire a pool guy since my surgery that caused my chronic pain, but everything else is my responsibility. That's one reason I want a single story smaller house with no pool! SaveSave
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Post by iamkristinl16 on May 20, 2017 16:35:37 GMT
No. I know a few people now who have someone come in once or twice a month to clean but have never known anyone who had live in staff.
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Post by ntsf on May 20, 2017 16:38:09 GMT
I wrote on the other thread about having a part time cleaning lady/babysitter in Hong Kong.. very unusual to have a local chinese lady. she and I were very friendly to each other. now I have a cleaning lady 2 times a month (I hate housework, am terrible at it and my allergies act up) and a yard guy once a month..for sort of the same reasons. my dh is physically disabled and has worked long hours all his life so not much help around the house at times.
we lived a very middle class life when I was growing up.. no help.. 4 kids who helped out.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 20, 2017 16:42:40 GMT
LexicaMy mom started taking the woman that was their house cleaner to her appts and errands.
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Grom Pea
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Post by Grom Pea on May 20, 2017 16:44:17 GMT
My grandparents in Hong Kong did, they had a lady that lived with them that took care of the home and a driver. I think it's more common in China at least to have a driver because driving there is insane. I was on a bus tour once when the highway got backed up and the bus literally turned around and went the wrong way for one exit to get off the road. It's like there's no rules when driving so you need a professional. My aunt and uncle in Shanghai have a driver and a cook as well. My mom tells me when she was young everything was done for her so she was happy to clean our rooms etc when we were kids. I plan to teach my kids to clean, since I feel like I was a bit spoiled by my mom. I would help her if I felt like it but I never had the responsibility of keeping anything neat with chores or doing laundry etc.
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Post by ktdoesntscrap on May 20, 2017 16:55:15 GMT
I grew up in a family of girls and we all had our chores to do.
But my Mom grew up in the 30's with a nanny, cook, maid etc. My grandmother always had help. When my Mom or any of her 7 siblings had a baby my grandmother would send some "help for a few months" I am sure Daisy was kept very busy as I have over 30 first cousins.
When I lived in Cayman I had what was called a "helper" she worked 20 hours a week, she picked up my daughter from school, cleaned the house, did laundry. etc. It was a good job for her, we paid her well, and included benefits, and she could bring her daughter along, she was nearly the same age as my daughter. So it was good.
Until one day she said she couldn't find my daughter at school so she just figured that I had picked her up. She never called me, I htink her cell phone was out of minutes. She was supposed to bring my daughter to where I taught after school classes. When my daughter didn't show up I tried to get ahold of the helper and couldn't. The school got ahold of me and my daughter was hysterical, and I couldn't leave to get her because I was on my own with about 15 kids. My ex was out of town, eventually, I got ahold of someone to pick up my daughter.
She didn't work for us after that!
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