Did ya'll have a maid/housekeeper when you were a child?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m a voracious reader, and it seems that I naturally gravitate towards southern literature. It seems that beyond the occassional “Tobacco Road”-like family, most white families are often portrayed as being financially comfortable enough to afford maids, always black women. And the wife doesn’t work. Sometimes, but not always, the maid bonds with the mistress and they become friends. The children come to treat the maid as a surrogate mother. Sometimes they befriend the maid’s kids.

Stories that come to mind:

Ferrol Sam’s Run with the Horseman
Carson McCullers’ Member of the Wedding
Rebecca Wells Little Altars Everywhere
Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird
Jacqueline Guidry The Year the Colored Sisters Came to Town
Pat Conroy’s The Great Santini.

And movies/shows like:

I’ll Fly Away
The Long Walk Home
Corina Corina
Sophie and the Moonhanger

And a million others I haven’t listed.

How widespread was this phenomona and does it still continue? Do people still employ black women in their homes to do the cleaning and child-rearing? Or did this custom fall by the wayside with Jim Crow?

I guess I’m asking because I grew up in the south (Georgia, specifically) and although I do recall as a child seeing black women lined up at bus stops on the “white” side of town, I don’t remember instances of my white friends talking about their black housekeepers. Nor seeing them when I went over their houses. I just can’t see it being as widespread as the literature makes it out to be (“it” not being black women working as servants, but rather the high percent of white families employing them).

Surely not most white mothers in the South, even if they were middle-class, felt it necessary to have another woman doing the cooking, cleaning, and child-rearing in her home, right? But besides stories about the poorest of the poor (As I Lay Daying, Tobacco Road, etc.), the literature is full of stories about middle-class white families with maids. It may be the case that stories are just skewed towards the lives of writers. I would imagine a writer would tend to come from a comfortable backgound. At least one more comfortable than the “everyday” man or woman who doesn’t have the luxury to write a book and couldn’t afford a maid. But I don’t know. Maybe having a maid was just something everyone had?

I guess what I want to know, especially from the older Dopers from the South (over 45 years old): Did you have a maid in your house growing up? Was she treated as almost part of the family? Did she have a positive impact on your development or was she just “there”? Was having a maid commonplace back in the day? At least moreso than it is now? When did this change and why?

2

I’m 31, so I can’t speak to that exactly; but my parents are in their late 50s. My father definitely had a housekeeper who was a black woman; he grew up in Charlotte as a baby boomer. I believe he really liked her, and he’s mentioned her as part of his early understandings of racism, although I forget the details. His family was pretty wealthy, I believe.

Daniel

3

Monstro, I am much to young to answer your querey, but I will say that my own understanding is that a lot of black housekeepers worked in several homes: it was very common for middle-class women to have someone come in and do the “heavy work” (and housekeeping had some seriously heavy heavy work in those days) a couple days a week.

I suspect that rather like my students all assume that they are my only students, children (and to some degree, adults) would tend to assume that they were the only house their housekeeper visited–even if they understood, abstractly, that that wasn’t true–and I rather suspect a shrewd housekeeper would foster this to some degree, in the way a shrewd hairdresser or doctor makes you feel like the relationship is exclusive.

This sort of relationship is seen in Florence King’s Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady, which is a pretty hysterical account. The family in that were barely middle class–in fact, that’s pushing it–but they still had someone come in.

4

I’m not 45 or older (nor from the South – unless you count San Diego as ‘South’), but we did have a woman come in (I think) once a month. She cleaned the house and cooked dinner. What a treat it was to come home from school and hear the ‘slap-slap-slap’ of her making tortillas! There’s nothing like a fresh, warm, handmade corn tortilla with melting butter for an after-school snack! And the tortillas went into dinnner, which was home-made beef enchiladas. Yum.

5

I’m 40 and my dad was in the USAF. When I was 4 we lived on Clark AFB, which is in the Phillippeans.

We lived there about a year and we did have a maid. She was a local and her name was Sophie. She cooked and cleaned and such. I don’t really remember clearly.
She made a fried rice dish that we all refered to as Sophie rice and it was much latter in life that it wasn’t her creation.

6

Oh, yeah! We had a maid when I was a wee’un in Japan.

7

I’m 38 and when I was a kid in Gainesville, Florida (basically a small Southern city with a large university), we had a black maid as did all the neighbors. The only neighbors who didn’t were the Germans across the street. And we weren’t rich; we lived in a modest middle class neighborhood. (three bedroom, cinderblock ranch houses on dirt streets that the city would coat with tar to keep the dust down)

However, something happened around 1973-ish (when I was around six). Suddenly nobody had maids. It was weird how suddenly the change happened. That’s also about the time the local schools were fully integrated but I don’t know if that’s connected in anyway.

Having a maid was prety much standard for most Southerners of a certain generation.

8

I was born in Montgomery, AL in 1960. Both of my parents worked and we had a black housekeeper/nanny named Mary. I remember my paternal grandmother telling me Mary was quite upset when my parents divorced and my mother took me away.

9

Yes, we had a maid up until I was 12 or so. She cleaned and did laundry and ironing. Just once a week, on Tuesdays. (Funny how I remember what day!)

Her name was Edna Fields and she was from Shreveport, Louisiana. She seemed ancient to me at the time, but she must have been around 50-60 yrs old.

My mom said I learned to read in defense. Mom would go out sometimes, and leave my brother and me in her care. Edna would feed us sandwiches and Campbell’s soup - but she couldn’t read. I had to learn to read the labels so we wouldn’t get some icky flavor!

She was a sweet lady. I guess times got hard, and my mom went to work for my dad in his dental office as a receptionist. I’m sure they let her go because it got too expensive.

I got to do laundry and light cleaning after that. Oh boy! :wink:

10

My mom didn’t need a maid - she had 5 kids who all did chores. :smiley:

For a few months (while we were in FL), we had someone come in every couple of weeks to give the house a once-over. I don’t think that counts, tho.

11

I grew up in Louisiana and we had a black nanny/housekeeper from the time I was 1 under well after I graduated from high school. She really was (is) a part of our family. She was old even when I was a baby but she took incredibly good care of me and my family. I always joke that I was raised a poor black child because it is partially true. Lola largely raised me and I played with her grandchildren and nieces and nephews. My mother didn’t pay Lola much because we were pretty poor ourselves. Instead, she did all of Lola’s shopping, made sure her paperwork was taken care of, took her to doctor’s appointments etc. It was a pretty good arrangement all around. Lola is still alive and in her mid 90’s and sharp as a tack. She has been addicted to the Price Is Right for as long as I remember and she reads books like they are going out of style. Lola had to have both legs amputated about 5 years ago because I diabetes complications. I feel terrible about that but I make it a point to drive to see her anytime I am within a few hundred miles.

12

I had an honest to god English nanny from 1983-1986. We weren’t wealthy or anything but the dollar was really good in Germany and my parents didn’t have to pay her much and we provided her with room and board. We lived in an old apartment building that included servants quarters in the top floor so she had her own private living space and could come and go as she pleased.

So far as the United States goes, I never knew anyone who actually had a full time maid.

Marc

13

I didn’t have a maid or housekeeper, but my mom did. This was in suburban Chicago. I knew she was privileged compared to most people brought up during the depression, but I know they weren’t “loaded” in the sense that my grandmother had such a busy social calendar that she needed help with the house. I think she was just a cold bitch who wasn’t capable of showing affection to her children, so she hired someone to love them. 'Course…I could be wrong. But I doubt it.

14

I’ll second this–I am 43 and was a child in Gainesville, FL, too. We had a housekeeper/maid who was black. My parents had 5 kids in 5 years-so I think they needed the help.

When we moved to Chicago in 1967, we never had domestic help again.

15

I appreciate the responses.

16

I’m almost 43 and when I was growing up in a small town in Arkansas in the 60s/70s, we had a maid named Mary, who came over to the house and cleaned and did laundry once or twice a week for maybe half a day. She chose us, actually. I used to sit and play The Price is Right with her. She was a lovely woman, sharp as a whip and told it like it was. I stayed at her place a few times when my parents were out of town. I went to church with her family a couple of times. It was a small black church out in the country. The worshippers seemed fairly bemused at the two skinny white boys visiting their church. It was a great place.

Damn, I miss her.

17

Yes, but Mom hated it when we called her that. :slight_smile:

18

When I was a tad (shortly after we came down out of the trees), my mother had a cleaning woman come in once a week.

And she always cleaned the house beforehand, because Og forbid that the cleaning woman should see a dirty house. . . .

19

My dad was career Navy, and when we were stationed at Subic Bay Naval Station, Philippines in the early '80’s, we had a live-in Filipino maid. Her name was Evelyn, and she happily worked her ass off for peanuts - cooking, cleaning, helping my mom shop at the local market, basically anything that was asked of her. In exchange, she enjoyed a much more comfortable living than the average filipino, all the food she wanted, her own room and bath, etc. She would go home on Saturday afternoon to see her family and be back early enough on Monday morning to fix us breakfast before school. All for about $32 a month!

We also had a seamstress that came one day a week and could sew just about anything from a catalog photo. And then there was the yard man who also came on Saturday and worked all day for $5 and lunch. Our backyard was basically nothing but a very steep hill on about a 60 degree grade and he used to cut the whole thing with nothing more than a scythe.

I have nothing but respect for hardworking Filipinos after experiencing that.

20

In California during the 60’s, when my divorced Mom went back to school, we had a wonderful Mexican woman, Juana, who lived with us and took great care of us. Not affluent, but middle class enough to swing it. I count it as a great experience, I learned Spanish from her at 4, and learned a lot about Mexican culture, an appreciation I’ve continued all through life. She was very nurturing, and opened a lot of windows to my suburban white kid self.

In living in the South, I have two good friend families who grew up with Black (not live-in) housekeepers, and they were very close, counted as family, who influenced the children under their care greatly. This was in a university town, Chapel Hill, with Professor’s/Doctor’s children, so educated. All of those kids have major kudos for the Black women who nurtured them. One of those kids went on to make his career in researching blues musicians, and editing Living Blues magazine, greatly influenced by the cultural windows that housekeeper, Julia Bell, and her family, first opened for him.

As I see it in Chapel Hill, now, Monstro, the housekeeper/maid job is being filled by Hispanic women here. I have no idea if it is as intimate a role as it was in the last generation, or if it’s simply hire by companies to provide the service, so then the women are “invisible”.

This is such a good question on many levels, I hope more people can weigh in to illuminate it.