Recently, I had the occasion to live under my father’s roof again, for a few days, whilst on a short trip to Hong Kong.
My father lives on his own most of the time. So he employs a domestic helper to come once or twice a week to do the laundry, clean the apartment, and generally put things in order. I know very little about this lady, "Ah Jee" except that she is originally from China, has a son, and lives nearby. Whenever the “kids” (me and my siblings) stay, she would come a little more frequently, perhaps three times a week because, as you can imagine, the domestic workload explodes. During past stays, I, perhaps too embarrassed to be served, would try to clean up after myself as much as possible. But this time, time-poor and with a full house, we became lazier and lazier. It got so bad that at the end of the night, we wouldn’t even wash the three dirty dishes in the sink because alas, in the morning, Ah Jee would come and wash them! To the saying “many hands make light work”, should be added, “too many hands cause no work.” A phenomenon observed in every shared house in the country. But that’s a topic for another day.
Back in normality land, where the laundry basket is forever a work-in-progress, and the kitchen gets dirtier faster than it gets cleaned, I wonder why it has always been the case the wealthy (and increasingly, the middling rich) outsource their domestic duties to others. The arrangement takes many forms but inevitably, the master or mistress of the house will not be the ones dusting the photo frames, scrubbing down the shower recess, or replenishing the fridge with groceries. Is it because we feel compelled to free ourselves from manual work so that we can devote ourselves to “higher pursuits”, like being a professional, or running a business, or bettering society; something more "meaningful"?
So I surmise that therein the household unit is a microcosm of our international economies. Rich nations export jobs that are low-tech, labour-intensive (in domestic terms, housework) and aspire to jobs that are high-tech, value-added (in domestic terms, anything else really). So, in this market for domestic services, who are the Chinas and the Indias of the world who will offer their labour for a pittance? Sadly, they are often the elite from developing countries, attracted by the relatively higher wage. A job as a maid in a wealthy country pays better than being an unemployed university graduate in South East Asia, and feeds many more mouths back home. So go figure.
Growing up in Hong Kong, our family, like many others, employed live-in Filipino maids whilst my mum worked a full time job. Our maids would go back to their home country once a year to visit their family. One of them has a daughter who is my sister’s age. That maid stayed with us for at least 6 or 7 years. It is hard to miss the irony: a mother leaves her child - in order to look after someone else’s. If you are familiar with the film, Je t’aime Paris (Paris, I love you), you might remember this situation captured poignantly in one of the twelve vignettes. The phenomenon is spreading in Europe where Eastern European migrant workers are leaving behind a generation of “Euro-orphans” to be looked after by grandparents and extended family, for better paid work in Western Europe. Even in Scandinavia, where gender equality is one of the world's highest, and where it is socially taboo to leave your own children, there is a hidden underclass of migrant workers for whom, it seems, none of these social standards apply.
Will the invisible scissor-hands of market forces always win? I have heard arguments about how repatriated moneys from domestic workers stimulate the developing economies and help those countries lift themselves out of poverty. That might be so. But I cannot overlook the moral quandary in all of this. Are we, in innocently trawling the classifieds for domestic services, complicit in the larger phenomenon that is breaking up families? Because that is what will happen when someone, somewhere down the food chain, makes family togetherness secondary to economic survival.
I know too little about anything really to speak on every industry that uses foreign labour, but there is perhaps one partial antidote to the domestic help industry. Is it possible, just possible, that we are giving our best jobs away? Isn’t cleaning our home and cooking our food a core and intimate part of our life? Doesn’t doing it make us whole, authentic and consistent people? Isn’t it a joy to serve those you love? You might not get a pay rise, accolades, or even appreciation, but isn’t it fulfilling to make a home – not as large, clean or tasteful as the one next door, but a home you built with your personality and hard work. In economics, everything has a price and everything can be traded. But you can't trade your home and family away.
There is a happy irony in my case. As children, we hardly lifted a finger to make our own beds. Now, in my household, the buck stops with me. I am very blessed to have family members who make no complaints about my standards of tidiness and culinary ability. They are the ones whom I gladly work for. In fact, I have one last daggy confession to make. It is when my husband is at his busiest, most stressed, and least “useful” around the house, that I find a reinvigorated purpose and vigour to my homemaking.
And I hope, wherever they are, our dear maids, Vita and Gloria, you are happily reunited with your families now. At the tender age of thirty, I can finally manage to look after myself.
My father lives on his own most of the time. So he employs a domestic helper to come once or twice a week to do the laundry, clean the apartment, and generally put things in order. I know very little about this lady, "Ah Jee" except that she is originally from China, has a son, and lives nearby. Whenever the “kids” (me and my siblings) stay, she would come a little more frequently, perhaps three times a week because, as you can imagine, the domestic workload explodes. During past stays, I, perhaps too embarrassed to be served, would try to clean up after myself as much as possible. But this time, time-poor and with a full house, we became lazier and lazier. It got so bad that at the end of the night, we wouldn’t even wash the three dirty dishes in the sink because alas, in the morning, Ah Jee would come and wash them! To the saying “many hands make light work”, should be added, “too many hands cause no work.” A phenomenon observed in every shared house in the country. But that’s a topic for another day.
Back in normality land, where the laundry basket is forever a work-in-progress, and the kitchen gets dirtier faster than it gets cleaned, I wonder why it has always been the case the wealthy (and increasingly, the middling rich) outsource their domestic duties to others. The arrangement takes many forms but inevitably, the master or mistress of the house will not be the ones dusting the photo frames, scrubbing down the shower recess, or replenishing the fridge with groceries. Is it because we feel compelled to free ourselves from manual work so that we can devote ourselves to “higher pursuits”, like being a professional, or running a business, or bettering society; something more "meaningful"?
So I surmise that therein the household unit is a microcosm of our international economies. Rich nations export jobs that are low-tech, labour-intensive (in domestic terms, housework) and aspire to jobs that are high-tech, value-added (in domestic terms, anything else really). So, in this market for domestic services, who are the Chinas and the Indias of the world who will offer their labour for a pittance? Sadly, they are often the elite from developing countries, attracted by the relatively higher wage. A job as a maid in a wealthy country pays better than being an unemployed university graduate in South East Asia, and feeds many more mouths back home. So go figure.
Growing up in Hong Kong, our family, like many others, employed live-in Filipino maids whilst my mum worked a full time job. Our maids would go back to their home country once a year to visit their family. One of them has a daughter who is my sister’s age. That maid stayed with us for at least 6 or 7 years. It is hard to miss the irony: a mother leaves her child - in order to look after someone else’s. If you are familiar with the film, Je t’aime Paris (Paris, I love you), you might remember this situation captured poignantly in one of the twelve vignettes. The phenomenon is spreading in Europe where Eastern European migrant workers are leaving behind a generation of “Euro-orphans” to be looked after by grandparents and extended family, for better paid work in Western Europe. Even in Scandinavia, where gender equality is one of the world's highest, and where it is socially taboo to leave your own children, there is a hidden underclass of migrant workers for whom, it seems, none of these social standards apply.
Will the invisible scissor-hands of market forces always win? I have heard arguments about how repatriated moneys from domestic workers stimulate the developing economies and help those countries lift themselves out of poverty. That might be so. But I cannot overlook the moral quandary in all of this. Are we, in innocently trawling the classifieds for domestic services, complicit in the larger phenomenon that is breaking up families? Because that is what will happen when someone, somewhere down the food chain, makes family togetherness secondary to economic survival.
I know too little about anything really to speak on every industry that uses foreign labour, but there is perhaps one partial antidote to the domestic help industry. Is it possible, just possible, that we are giving our best jobs away? Isn’t cleaning our home and cooking our food a core and intimate part of our life? Doesn’t doing it make us whole, authentic and consistent people? Isn’t it a joy to serve those you love? You might not get a pay rise, accolades, or even appreciation, but isn’t it fulfilling to make a home – not as large, clean or tasteful as the one next door, but a home you built with your personality and hard work. In economics, everything has a price and everything can be traded. But you can't trade your home and family away.
There is a happy irony in my case. As children, we hardly lifted a finger to make our own beds. Now, in my household, the buck stops with me. I am very blessed to have family members who make no complaints about my standards of tidiness and culinary ability. They are the ones whom I gladly work for. In fact, I have one last daggy confession to make. It is when my husband is at his busiest, most stressed, and least “useful” around the house, that I find a reinvigorated purpose and vigour to my homemaking.
And I hope, wherever they are, our dear maids, Vita and Gloria, you are happily reunited with your families now. At the tender age of thirty, I can finally manage to look after myself.
