Mother and Maid

My college friend, a high-powered corporate lawyer, once told me that a mother should not be a maid for her children. Now her kid is a full-grown teenager. In retrospective, she realized that she missed many opportunities to share her values with him. Maybe those were the same opportunities that she missed being a maid of her child because she always had a maid (or nanny).

Every kid needs a mother. If a kid needs a maid, the first choice should be the mother (or/and a father, that would be a different topic). The second choice I would make for the kid is the daycare center where the caretakers take care of a mini society of many kids. You don’t give the large part of the raising job to a maid.

A maid helps your child dress up everyday in the morning and feed her food because that’s the maid’s job. The child doesn’t need to do it herself or the maid would lose the job. A mother would do the same things and it’s her job to guide the kid to learn how to do everything themselves. Being a maid is the opportunity to pass love and wisdom to the child. Certain small habits are formed very early on.

I look around here in China. Because there are so many cheap labors, people give the job of raising their children to the maids. This way, they could run their busy life or enjoy their easy life. Sooner or later, they will realize how much a high price they have paid for not being available or willing to be the merry maid of their children.