THE BOOM IN HOUSEMAIDS: New Prosperity for an Old Calling

THE BOOM IN HOUSEMAIDS

MOST Americans think of housemaids as they visualize the noble redskin—a monument in the old days but a vanished American in 1957. Nothing could be farther from the truth. After a decade of decline, the number of household helpers is rising again, has climbed 50% in the last few years to 1,971,000 chambermaids, laundresses, cooks and cleaning women, another 50,000 butlers and valets—to say nothing of that uniquely American profession, the dollar-an-hour baby sitter. Today’s maid shortage is a scarcity of financial plenty. For every U.S. woman who has a maid, a dozen others want and could afford one.

The revival of the U.S. maid—and the fact that there are still not enough of them—is one more byproduct of the prosperous ’50s. With more money than ever before, people have bigger houses to keep tidy, more meals to cook and clothes to wash, more places to go and problems to cope with every day. The migration to the suburbs means more chauffeuring for mothers, more gardening, more sports and club meetings, all jammed into an already crowded day. Despite all the labor-saving new gadgets, the U.S. woman wants and needs a maid to help out.

More often than not, today’s maid-hunting housewife will not find just what she wants—she never could. The supermaid, the magnificent cook, the perfect butler have always been jewels beyond price; Catherine of Aragon had the same problem. The surprising thing is that the standard, oldtime maid of all work has practically disappeared from the U.S. scene. Like everybody else, the modern domestic is a specialist—or at least acts like one. Many maids will not mind children; a special “mother’s helper” does that for an extra 50¢ an hour. Others do not do heavy cleaning (a cleaning woman comes in twice a week), will not climb ladders to wash the outside of windows (an off-duty fireman or cop does it for 50¢ a window) ; an upstairs maid does not dust downstairs; a downstairs maid will not clean upstairs.

With the demand for more and more help, domestics know only too well what wages they can command. An experienced live-in maid or cook frequently draws down as much as $250 a month v. $150 a few years ago, and a couple gets $600 a month, all plus free room and board; even live-out maids earn upwards of $200 a month, and the increasingly popular part-time cleaning woman averages $10 a day. What is more, the servant chooses the family, not vice versa. Says Mrs. Betty A. Heinke, who runs a California employment agency: “First, I ask the client’s telephone number and address. If it’s not a good location, that presents a problem right off. Then I want to know how many people in the family, how many children, their ages and sexes, whether it’s a one-story or a two-story home, what their religious preference is. How much laundry do they send out? Do they have pets? What does the employer mean by a day off? What type of cooking do they expect? How often do they entertain? When do they serve dinner?” If the client boggles, says Mrs. Heinke, “I simply tell her, ‘If I don’t ask you, the employee will.’ ”

The answers had better be good. All the standard lures—a private bath, a TV set, a good home—are so old hat that few agencies bother to inquire. The woman who wants help soon learns to rearrange meal schedules to keep cook happy (no more 8:30 dinners), give at least 48 hours’ notice before having company. She gladly jitneys the live-out maid to and from home (and waits while she does her shopping), sometimes even turns over the family sedan for the live-in maid’s days off (two a week). Modern dayworkers want a solid breakfast as well as a thumping good lunch on the job, the same food the family eats—or better. The wise housewife watches her maid’s health—and pays the bills —helps buy her clothes, listens to her love life and family problems. For those with couples in help, a marital declaration of war or an unwanted baby becomes a major disaster. Says one Atlanta housewife: “Katie just seems like one of the family now, and we would miss all the crises she creates.”

The trouble with the new boom is that so few maids are well-trained. As the quantity increases, the quality of the work has slipped until U.S. housewives often put up with inefficiency that no businessman would stand for. The washing machine, the mangle, and the modern stove are as baffling to some maids as a Univac electronic brain; the housewife herself operates them, or they get broken. While Americans will put up with high prices indefinitely, the time may be at hand when employment agencies would do better to set up training courses for maids instead of an inquisition for employers. As one Los Angeles agent says, “We’ve got to do something to give these people more pride in their work.” The alternative for the harried housewife is do-it-yourself.