The role of 'Maids' in our society.

A couple of weeks back, I was looking at an album on my friend’s profile on Facebook. It was a Birthday album of a little girl. What really struck me was, not the lavish birthday party, which was thrown for a little girl aged 4 but the fact that the mom’s were busy socializing, where the kids were shown in the other picture with their maids. So much so, that in one of the pictures which was the cake-cutting picture, I did not see the mom’s around but all the maids with the kids.

It made me at unease. I began to wonder, in our society, we actively put the burden of our work on others. Well one of the arguments is that, these people (the maids and the servants) are there to work and we provide them with employment. But then, it has also become a social symbol. We very proudly say, the number of servants and maids we have. Besides, all this, the main issue that struck me was, that the kids were being handled by the maids and not their mothers. So their mothers were at the time of the birthday party busy socializing their kids were with someone else.

Apart from this, I sensed an untold feeling, a fear an emotion in the pictures. I saw a kind of helplessness on the faces of the maids was, that the poor maids, who were carrying those little ones, and actively involved in managing them. They might have wondered, or fancied coming to such parties, dreamed of having such birthday’s for their kids but, these kids who they were with were not their own. I was wondering if they were wishing at that point of time that they were with their kids and if their kids were there to see and celebrate such an event. On the other hand, the fortunate ones the elite mom’s who were there with their kids, were obviously not there with them. So the kids might be wishing if their mom’s could spend sometime with them rather than chitchatting.

This is the dilemma of our society. I am not against, employing maids. But those pictures just raised a number of questions in my mind. Why, the mother’s could not spare sometime, keep the maids at home and be with their kids. Or if the maids were there, they could still be actively engaged with the kids.

Parents in the west work, full or part-time, based on the understanding and law that one of parent/adult/grandparents have to be home to be with the kids. In some of the cases, they hire a nanny or a baby sitter, but that is just for some special occasions and not always. One of the reasons is off course that a babysitter or a nanny is not affordable for all households. Apart from this, single parents do get compensation to be with their kids at home. But we don’t have any such issues in our society. That one of the partner has to work, to make ends meet. I am aware of the issues that the kids do face later in the west. But that is when they go for their schooling but during their early ages, they are very much in contact with their parents unlike the social structure in our society. Our society is socially rich, our culture is deep and relations are tied up together. The pictures that I saw were not of all working mothers but those belonging to the elite, showing their status to carry maids.

I felt after looking at those pictures, the sadness, when you have something, a blessing, that you are in the position to be with your kids, and you leave them to be handled by someone else. And on the other side, the maids, who wants to be with their kids and there they are, because of circumstances handling someone else’s.