Batgung

"or am I right to not abuse a system..."

That makes it sound like hiring a helper automatically means abuse. I don't think that's true, so I'd suggest asking two separate questions:

• Should you employ a helper?
• If you do, will you be an abusive employer?

We've hired one of MrsB's sisters in law to come to our house in the daytime, Mon-Fri. She looks after our two young daughters, and helps with housework. Since we had our second daughter, she has less time for housework, so some tasks like ironing have come back to us.

Both MrsB and I enjoy time with our girls, but are happy we don't have to look after them 24x7. We spend the whole weekend with them, and as we wind down on Sunday evening we're both looking forward to sister-in-law's return!

I don't like the idea of having a stranger in the house all the time, so this arrangement works well for us.

Mr Tall has taken a different approach and has a full-time live-in helper. It'd be worth looking at his thoughts about this, as he's covered the above questions in some depth.

Also check Gweipo's blog - I think she has one of the best reasons I've seen to think carefully about how you'll manage life with a helper.

It's certainly common to have some sort of help here - outsourcing on a small scale. But it's really up to you to choose how it fits in to your life, or whether you want it at all.

MrB

You write: "The backround I come from culturally nearly always has extended family 'helping out' with the kids/ house and sometimes they get paid".

That's fine, but it is also potentially filled w/ abuse as well. I have read many memoirs where older sisters, aunties, uncles, cousins have hurt the kids in their charge, or been hurt by the family they live with. In some ways, because they are family, that system may be more ripe for abuse than having a "stranger" in the house who is employed with a written contract for an agreed upon wage. 

In the background  (decayed haut bourgeois in No. America) I come from - my parents' generation grew up w/ some live-in help (nannies, house-keepers). In that time and place, most of them were country girls from the Maritime Provinces of Canada or Maine.  As a child, my parents had student couples living in who provided help in return for rent-free accomadtion. 

In my youth (high school & college) I worked as a part-time domestic helper. One family I worked a couple of afternoons a week - cleaning mostly. Another family, I  cleaned twice a week and looked after the daughter & prepped dinner. Another customer was an elderly lady - I vacuumed and cleaned and changed her sheets once a week. I also did big spring cleanings for various people from time-to-time. I also has regular baby-sitting customers for evening work.

 I think it really depends on the employer and the employee. Yes, it is possible for there to be abuse, but that possibility arises in any situation between two human beings. I remember last winter there was a case of a local shop owner (female) who physically abused her employee (male, also local, not mentally or physically handicapped) for a period of years. He did not live in

I have employed domestic helpers for the past 11 years and I do not think that there was any abuse on either side. 

Yes, having a full-time domestic helper seems very weird for many westerners at firs. But, in many parts of the world, it is a normal part of life. 

 So, I see the question as  not "employing a helper, good or bad" but rather "Do I want or need domestic help?"

 If no, then no problem, I won't hire anyone.

 If yes, what kind of help do I want: part-time (once a year, once a quarter, once a month, once a week,  1/2 a day....?   Then proceed from there. 

Hmmm. As I mentioned in that article MrB referenced above, there are some potential problems that are more or less built into the domestic helper employer/employee relationship. But abuse certainly isn't inevitable, as skmama has said.

Having asserted that, we've just had another helper leave us, this time for reasons so depressing I don't even want to get into it. Suffice it to say that although she was the best helper we've had, she was arrested on suspicion of committing a fairly serious crime. There were no warning signs that anything was going wrong. Since her case is pending, I'll leave it at that . . . .

What I found very interesting in your post, Stef, is your worry that you'd feel so sympathetic to your helper that you'd likely be a pushover. I think this is very common, especially amongst westerners who employ helpers. Many employers seem to worry that they'll be perceived (by their peers, mostly) as racists if there's any indication whatsoever that they're 'not treating their helper well'. And are some helpers both sufficiently aware of this predilection, and willing to exploit it? Sure, just as some employers are more than willing to exploit their helpers' desperate need to make money.

So I guess although I agree with MrB and skmama that abuse is certainly not inevitable in a helper/employer relationship, the situation does have a lot of built-in opportunity in which it can occur.

On another line, I am reading a most fascinating book called "Superior Servants, The legendary Cantonese Amahs of the Far East" by Kenneth Gaw.

It doesn't really have anything to do with the current situation with the Filippino helpers, but a lot of the situations are similar.  One thing did strike me as I've been reading this, is that as a stay at home mother and wife, who has had to cope without help for periods in time (like the summer vacation and when living in Europe), is that at times my life is not that much better than an amahs!  I too have to rise at 5 or 6 am, cook all the meals, make sure the house is clean, kids are happy and aired etc. etc.  The difference is that I have the conveniences of a washing machine, dishwasher, vacuum cleaner, electric iron etc.

I also have to do the "marketing" daily since we have a minute little fridge in our poky little kitchen.

 Life here is geared to having a helper, it is just not very practical to try and survive without one.  I had a friend who insisted on doing so - ostensibly since the occupational therapy of housework stopped her from feeling she was useless.  As a result she was completely inflexible in joining us in the more fun things HK has to offer.  Her son never had a regular babysitter, so wouldn't let her go out in the evenings as he didn't like / trust the temporary ones.  Her husband travelled all the time.  She was desparately unhappy and depressed and lonely.  In the end, she said to me (just before she left for Singapore)  - you were so right.  The first thing I am going to do when I get to Singapore is hire a helper.   I hope she does.

Having lived in Hong Kong a long time and now Canada, I notice there is a different mindset when it comes to house chores between Hong Kongers and North Americans. GENERALLY, Hong Kongers consider vacuuming, mopping floor, ironing, and even tending to garden flowers are time consuming, boring, and for some below their dignity. Their life-style, disposable income and easy availability of amahs and gardeners fuel such practice.
Whenever my Hong Kong friends visit me, some of them are surprised, some feel pity too, that housewives of well-to-do families in Canada have to do these chores. There is no need to bring a stranger into my house. The modern household appliances have freed up much of the time our mothers and grandmothers had to bear in their time.

I've seen the difference first hand. As a Chinese Canadian born in Hong Kong, but having emigrated to Canada for most of my life, there is a huge difference between living in Hong Kong and living in Canada. I spent the summer of 2006 in Hong Kong working and it's pretty easy to see the reason why many people have Amahs or Hired Help. While in the case of MilkMonster, she's a stay at home mom, many households have both parents working, often long hours. I could easily see this in the case of my relatives that I lived with, who probably not be able to juggle two kids and two jobs.

I easily see why people think that people are exploiting hired help (as seen by the hired help always doing things that most westerners do themselves), but I think it's just a hallmark of the past. And while I don't agree with it personally, it's easily to see why many families have some form of hired help in Hong Kong. Hours are long, and work's stressful, and there's a need for someone to make the home life easier.

Here's an interesting article from the Toronto Star http://www.thestar.com/living/article/257946 about the shift in views about having "help", not an Amah but paying for services that make your life easier. I know a lot of my Canadian mommy friends now have live-in "nannys" - that's what they call them there, so in a few years things may be very different perspective wise.