Very common in El Paso, although most people I new just had someone for cleaning 1-2x/week. Others did have the whole shebang. You sometimes find some unfortunate situations where the child has been raised by someone with limited English who is highly distracted by her other duties. We would have kids coming in for tutoring who weren’t stupid, but they had so little exposure to everything that it made it harder for them to make new connections.
With contractor vs direct hiring, is there a liability difference? I’m assuming a properly insured contractor would cover workman’s comp issues.
Whether you’re contracting an individual who’s self-employed or a company with multiple employees and in those locations I’m familiar with, if you’re contracting you’re not responsible for tax withdrawals, workman’s comp, health insurance (if required by law), etc. If you’re the employer, you’re responsible for all that.
That’s another thing. Why don’t we have footmen and lady’s maids these days? Why not?
My friend has a housekeeper. She has been taking care of his home for over 10 years. From what I understand, Bill promised his wife a housekeeper when his ship came in. His ship came in and he delivered.
She keeps the house sparkling clean, does the grocery shopping, does the laundry and deals with the people who clean the windows, pools and gardens. She cooks dinners and makes his lunches.
She doesn’t live in and she has has the weekends off. She makes sure to leave food that just needs to be nuked over the weekend.
She isn’t “part of the family”, its very clear that she is paid to do this. She is a very nice lady who is nice, polite and does her job, then goes home.
Thinks its because we have learned to button our shirts up ourselves. You do know why your buttonholes are on the left, right?
My next door neighbors have a full time maid; they’re ~70-75 yoa and so’s the maid. I think the maid’s been with them since the mid-60s. She cooks, cleans, does the shopping, walks their little dog. They travel, separately and together, quite a bit so I see the maid around more than the home owners.
They also have a yardman/car and home maintenance guy who’s there ~every other day…he takes the trash cans to the curb Sunday night, returning Monday afternoon to take them in, that sort of thing. He sets up for their parties…their back garden looks like something from House Beautiful. The front and side yard has huge live oaks and pecan trees, so lots of maintenance.
The people on the other side use her parents’ live-in family as helpers on home improvement work, which never seem to end.
Across the street both parents work; they have a live-in nanny/house keeper for their 3 year old.
My husband has me but I ‘live-in’ more than work. He’s gone for weeks at a time so it’s pretty necessary someone’s here.
if i wasn’t staying in a managed residence, i’d have three instead of the present 1 (driver.)
Back in the 80s I was living in Kansas City, MO and working in Overland Park, KS and took the bus every day from the Plaza. And every single person on the bus (other than myself and the driver) every morning and afternoon was a middle-aged African-American woman in a uniform. It served as a sort of maid shuttle.
So some folks have them. Personally, I believe that rich people should hire full-time servants, just to supply jobs. But most of the ones I know have only part-time crews that work for a lot of other people.
That’s exactly the social pressure that I was referring to in hiring a servant that neither my wife nor I really want nor need. In my case the CPC backs the social pressure. In the United States, I’d say screw that crap. But of course in the United States, I’m not rich. 
In complete seriousness, though, the use of part time work working for other people is a more efficient allocation of resources, and is overall better for the economy. A better economy means more, better jobs in the long run.
It’s a technological shift. More labor-saving devices means fewer man-hours required to do things like laundry.
I wonder how much a chauffeur costs, even if it’s just a to-and-from-work thing. I could totally go for that. One of the reasons I like taking the bus to work (although it takes 3-4x as long as driving) is that it gives me a chance to read papers and such. It’s not always a conducive working environment though, such as when I’m dripping wet from rain or when it’s really crowded.
I don’t know anyone who has one.
When my brother flew small planes for the Catholic mission in Central Africa a couple years back, the compound had servants. But circumstances make that a neccesity. If chicken is on the menu that night, you don’t go to the grocery store to buy chicken parts. Instead, the cook starts out by chasing and catching the chicken.
I know a family who employs a full-time “houseman” whose real job is to keep the Father out of trouble. Father had a stroke very young - 30-ish and has never been quite the same since. He is technically able to drive and care for himself, but his decision making is very poor and his memory fails unpredictably. So he has this full-time “buddy” system going and the two of them spend their days working together on projects around the house or running to big-box stores to replenish the household.
They also have a full-time housekeeper who’s been with the family for 30+ years. She is getting on in years and so they also have a cleaning service come in weekly to do the heavy cleaning.
Neither is a live-in.
I’m pretty sure women like Michelle Obama or Hillary Clinton have “assistants” who travel everywhere (at least on official trips) and do their hair, makeup, pack/unpack luggage, and keep them supplied with the appropriate feminine products. I’m also pretty sure that these assistants are female. But they aren’t called maids, and don’t wear a uniform or dress any differently that the other women in the entourage.
My spouse, in her previous marriage, had a non-live in nanny/housekeeper/cook. When she left her husband she went to live with the nanny.
I must say it had set up some…how shall I say…unrealistic expectations in her when we got together. le sigh 
Hijack
Icarus, my SO had unrealistic expectations about me when he first met me and I referred to my longtime girlfriend (in the American sense) and he heard it in the English sense. Good laughs.
/Hijack
This thread reminded me of something: My great grandmother was a housemaid at the age of ten. Ten.
My cousin has full-time live-in help and lives in upstate New York. She hired the lady who lives with her as a nanny when she first started having children, though she’s always been a stay-at-home wife/mom and had help to clean the house as well. The nanny just never left, even though all three kids are now in college or have graduated college and have jobs. I think the nanny serves as a housekeeper now, managing the cleaning help and making the meals. My cousin’s husband used to commute to the west coast every week - he worked as an ad buyer for the film industry and had interests in the dot com business in Silicon Valley before the bubble burst. I don’t know a ton of details about what he did, but apparently he did it very well.
My husband’s family has servants, too, but again, he’s from India - it’s common there.
My driver makes 10 RMB per hour on weekday overtime, 15 RMB on weekends, and 20 RMB on holidays. So I’m guessing that the straight-time rate is going to be 10 RMB or less per hour. The 40 hour work week is standard. Of course he augments his income by providing fake gasoline receipts for much more than the value of the gasoline that he put in, lies about his overtime, and I suspect that he runs a black taxi service in my car (my car that I pay for – no free car on this assignment).
Oh, 10 RMB is about US $1.50 or so.
My ex mother in law was a maid at fourteen. It’s been over seventy years, but you can still hear the anger in her voice when she tells the story. Of how her “lady”, barely six years older then she was at the time, traced a white gloved hand over ridges and reprimanded her if the glove came up with a speck of dust.