Maids of a variety of sorts are very common in El Paso. They are almost exclusively Hispanic and (from what I’ve seen) usual not working legally. Some live in the houses where they work. Most seem to travel from Juarez daily. They will often work at multiple houses. The more full-time ones will often be responsible for cleaning, cooking, and sometimes even taking care of the kids. This can sometimes lead to unfortunate situations where the kids are raised by someone who a) has a lot of other crap to deal with, b) isn’t fully invested in the children’s success, and c) is often not fluent in English. When combined with neglectful parents, the situation can be pretty bad. Note that this can be a possitive situation too, as noted by elelle. The sum of contributing factors is complicated, and I should actually attempt to keep this post on topic
To answer the OP, my parents hire a woman to come clean the house 1-2x/week. Both parents work, and one is disabled, so this helps them out greatly. She was there when I was ~high school age. Language issues prevented a higher level of interaction, but we would attempt some conversation (this helped me inprove my Spanish skills too.) I’d say she’s was definately more like family (eg. my mother just made a blanket for her granddaughter) than “just there.” My parents don’t speak Spanish (they try, but the result is pretty ugly), so again, this inhibits interaction. I can’t imagine having some invisible “help” in my house. It would feel so akward for me to just ignore someone.
I guess I don’t exactly fit the model in the OP because we were older when she was first hired, but I felt like typing so y’all get to read about it anyway
I never had a maid growing up, but both my parents did.
My dad lived in California and his mom worked full-time at their business. They had a housekeeper who took care of the house and kids, but I don’t know if she was full-time.
My mom’s family had a maid while they lived in Japan in the 50’s. Given all that they were doing at that time, and that they were living in a Japanese house (not on base), it was probably necessary. The same family did not have help while living in the US.
Grew up white and poor in the Midwest, and not only did we never had a maid/housekeeper/nanny of any kind, but my mom worked as a maid for a short time.
I’m the youngest of six children. My parents are both doctors and both worked a lot when my brothers and sisters and I were growing up. Annie Mae did came to work for my parents when they married and stayed with us until I was about ten. Probably twenty years. When my parents packed the clan up in the motor home for a trip to Disney World, Mae came along. Eventually her arthritis left her nearly crippled, and she had to stop working. It’s a generally acknowledged fact that Mae did a lot of the raising up of our family. My sister named her oldest daughter after Mae, so Isabel is Isabel Mae.
-Lil
I was born in 1954 and grew up in Washington DC. We had a housekeeper, Mildred, who worked for our family for years. She was from North Carolina. I adored her. We all adored her. I mentioned to my husband just yesterday that every day when I went home from school for lunch, Mildred made me lunch - tomato soup and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I can’t eat tomato soup without thinking fondly of Mildred.
Our parents made sure we treated her with the respect.
Both my parents worked, which was unusual back then. When I came home crying because I’d fallen and cut my knee, she’d put me on her lap and hug me and dry my tears. I’d join her in watching her favorite soap opera from time to time. If she was angry with something one of us children had done, she’d say ‘I’m going to skin you alive.’ That threat was terrifying.
As a kid we had a white woman who came in once a week to do the cleaning. I didn’t really know her as she came while I was at school. I guess so my brother and I didn’t get in the way. My parents arn’t wealthy, but they both worked full time. They still do, but my mum took a pay cut to get a job she actually enjoyed so they don’t have a cleaner anymore.
Yes - we had an African-American maid for about 6 months when my mother had a back operation. As she insisted my brother, my father & I clean the house from stem-to-stern each time before the maid was due (I think she came 2-3X a week), I failed to grasp the necessity of having a maid.
My mother hired a black woman to come in twice a week to clean and iron because mom went to work. This same woman also did work in some other homes in the neighborhood I grew up in. The people up the street had a full-time maid. She was there everyday and did all the cooking, cleaning and ironing. I was friends with the three boys in that family and fondly remember Lizella (their maid) yelling out the back door at them to “get your little white butts in this kitchen, it’s dinner time!”
I remember a young black woman who came in and was mean to me and my dog, but nice to my sister. In my memory, this woman was always there.
My mom hired a babysitter for one day to watch after three kids (12, 10 and 5) while Mom was in hospital with the three year old after a dog attack. One day during my entire childhood. Any other time, we were shuffled off to various aunts around town. I don’t remember staying with the aunts at all, but I remember the woman in the yellow dress who told me to sit down and shut up. Weird.
We had a woman who came in once a week for a while when I was a kid (Midwest, 1970s). My folks also currently have someone who comes about twice a month.
It’s very common in the neighborhood where I live and work to see women waiting for the bus at the end of the day to take them to the trolley that goes to the Mexican border.
I cleaned houses for while, part-time, when I was in college.
We grew up with a cleaning lady who came in one day a week to help with the house. But she was Polish (I think); we called her “The Crusher” since she had a tendency to break things (or so we thought – probably she broke one or two things in the begining and we just hung the name on her – behind her back, of course).
My aunt used to hire a maid to help with her dinner parties; I assume she also cleaned house.
My cousin current ekes out a living cleaning houses.
I fit your age requirement and have (almost) always lived in the South, entirely so while growing up. Back then, no, we never could have afforded to have a caregiver or maid. Dad was in academia and Mom stayed home with my sister and I.
Now though, with my wife having advanced degrees and enjoying her work, she’s elected to continue her career after we had a child and, yes, we do have a stay-at-home caregiver plus a once-a-week maid. Our caregiver is black but race was absolutely no consideration in our hiring process. She’s simply a wonderful, caring person and we love her and treat her like a family member which, in fact, she is.
Our maid is Hispanic but I’m guessing that’s simply a result of geography than anything else. In south Texas we have a very eager and capable community of Hispanic workers and several industries seem to be dominated by that ethnicity here. Again, nothing to do with preference, we just liked her very much and it was just a natural consequence of circumstances.
White, middle-class (both parents were schoolteachers), 1-kid family in suburban Boston, growing up in the 70’s and 80’s. We didn’t have a full-time maid, but we had a housekeeper who’d come in once a week and do some of the ‘heavy lifting’ stuff. No cooking, shopping or babysitting (she’d come in while we were all out) and she was usually done in a few hours. I believe she worked at a number of different houses. She retired about the same time I got old enough to do the heavy lifting, but when I went away to college my parents hired someone new with the same kind of arrangement.
Both women were white, and lived in the same area we did.
RAF child in Singapore in the mid-1960s. We had an amah, a local girl a little older than my big sister (so mid-late teens I should think). I’ve no idea what she got paid but I think we spoiled her rotten * including sharing my sister’s room - there was an amah’s room built onto the back of the bungalow but it looked like a prison cell and we’d never have dreamed of making her use it.
We’re still in touch - my father had a card from her this year, and I’m sure he sent one - and she is now a grandmother, having married the Peter Seow we used to sing of her “sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g” all those years ago.
(* Figure of speech. Moi was lovely and anyone less spoiled would be hard to imagine.)
When I was growing up, we had Elizabeth. She was a lithuanian woman who cleaned once a week (on Wednesdays) - she always had a glass of wine, and we always had grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch on the days she was with us. My mom would pick her up at 119th and Harlem - she took the bus there - and then bring her back after she was done. My brother and I loved her - she always had little treats for us - and one winter, when it was really bad out and the bus wasn’t running, we got to take her all the way home in the city - and see her neat little house. She gave me the very first china doll I ever had. After she died, we had a lady named Sue - she was ok, but she was never Elizabeth.
I was born in 1940 and grew up in a small Texas town just south of Dallas. My mother worked, which was unusual for the time and we had a Black woman who came daily. She cooked, cleaned, ironed, and was, for all practical purposes, a surrogate mother. She was as sweet and loving to me as she was to her own children and I loved her without reservation. I wish now that I could thank her for all she taught me; manners, tolerance, acceptance of others and a love of reading that has never faded—she was a lady by any definition.
That is very close to my story: Born in 1969 in extreme northeast Texas. Mom didn’t work and we were basically white, middle-middle class (not lower-middle class or upper-middle class) and we had a large black lady named Ethel who came in one day a week. She was really sort of my family’s maid in that she worked for my grandmother two days a week, for one aunt one day a week, a second and one day a week, and us one day a week. She would come in and do laundry and dusting, vacuuming etc… She never really cooked for us although she would fix us snacks etc… if she was babysitting us. She was always so loving and kind to us, she taught me how to iron and do clothes and vacuum, etc… I thought ‘working’ with Ethel was the best thing in the world. I’m sure she had to re-iron 1000 shirts that I had ‘ironed’. When I was really young I used to introduce her as ‘my grandmother’ because I think at that age I really thought she was. I’m not sure how the adults felt about her but to my cousins and I she really was like a member of our family.
When I got married I walked out on the stage and noticed Ethel, her husband, and one other older black couple sitting together at the very back of the church. I though to myself ‘this won’t work’ so I looked at the minister and said “time out” (giving the appropriate ‘T’ gesture with my hands) and walked down the aisle to get them. I had her and her husband sit in my family’s section while the other couple moved to join the rest of the congregation. Once out of college I moved away but would go visit her when I went home (my kid’s pictures were the only little white babies on her refrigerator but I told her they were her grandkids as well). After she retired we would still go by and check on her when the weather got bad and such. When she died my parent’s didn’t bother to tell me and I didn’t find out until several weeks after. I went absolutely ballistic yelling at them for not telling me.
My family’s other maid was Christine. She was my great-grandmother’s maid and best friend. They did so many things together including skinning squirrels, shelling pecans, and all those other things we southerners do.
including sharing my sister’s room - there was an amah’s room built onto the back of the bungalow but it looked like a prison cell and we’d never have dreamed of making her use it.