A Benevolent Rule
I recently read an interesting exchange about having servants.
Why Parents Need to Be Able to Hire Help for their Kids
My sympathies are with the no-servants side. Most decent people cannot count on being able to afford it. I certainly don’t see it as an evil for people who can do it to do it, but our society already sets up way too many expectations for running a household that price most people out. The key is to reject the expectations. Also the desire of upper middle class people for cheap help is a real problem for our society.
That said, I recently took my wife on a work trip. Nice hotel, nice area, all that. She took dresses and for a few days blossomed into real chic elegance. She is usually classy, but being away from burdens made a real difference to her.
Bookslinger
July 2, 2021
I like the idea of disguising, or combining, the babysitter as a tutor. Telling the kids that you’re paying a tutor to teach them something may help them focus their attention. Maybe even “ok guys, what do you want to learn this week while your mom and I go out for date night?”
T. Greer
July 4, 2021
I am strongly on team hire-help. This is something that should be normalized. It might be easier to normalize this in upper class/upper middle class families than the reverse (lower lifestyle expectations).
I read a study a few years ago that suggest there was a direct correlation between a woman’s happiness and the amount of time she spent doing cleaning and other sorts of chores. Having eliminated both hired help *and* overburdened children’s schedules so that they don’t participate as much in that sort of thing, mom is left doing at all–and likely working a full time job as well.
I like the au pair model, where the help lives in with the family itself over the Uber esque, here-is-a-cleaner-we-found-for-thirty-minutes-on-an-app type.
In all cases I think there should be no shame in providing someone with an honest wage.