When did the uber rich stop having live in servants?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP who says that the staff doesn't have keys knows nothing. Obviously nobody wants to have to open the door every time someone comes to work at the house. Ridiculous.

When I nannied for a billionaire, his house manager gave us a keypad code to enter/exit parts of the property. They were always watching remotely. I assume when you're done, they just change the code.

No, they have different codes for different people. That way they know who’s coming and who’s going.

You too can have this fancy technology with a yale lock for $200. This is not rocket science.

[Anonymous]

Only our houses in Europe have accommodations for live-in help. Those houses are also a bit more remote than our US residences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most in home housekeepers and staff have their own place and come to the jobsite to work just like you and I.

Ok, but when did this change?

After World War II like the other poster said. During World War II servants left their in home servant jobs to work factory jobs for the war effort. They never returned to being in home servants. This is true in the US and in also in Europe.

This is what happened to my father’s household. After the war servants were much more expensive. My grandmother was not thrilled about having to raise 5 kids with reduced help.

My eyes are rolling too.

This. With men away at war, women without college degrees were offered jobs in factories, shipyards, agriculture, and even offices that were not previously available to them. These jobs paid much better than domestic work and many stayed after the war.

[Anonymous]

I looked at the 1900-1950 census for the neighborhood I grew up in (not DC).

In 1920 many houses- not grand mansions, just houses or duplexes- listed live-in servants. By 1930, very few did. By 1950 many homeowners who didn’t come out even maintaining their initial economic level were renting rooms out.

[Anonymous]

Come out = following WW2

[Anonymous]

With civil rights.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My rich Asian mom always says it's a hard and sad life in America that we have to live without helpers as we did overseas; she's shocked that I have to cook, clean, and do my own laundry.

I was also annoyed by this but i married an american spouse they seem to think i am entitled.

However, I bet once you experience the lifestyle of the asian upper class, you don't want to live in the US.

So go live in Asia? I don’t know what to tell you. Asian, European and Latin American “wealth” just doesn’t get you much here. America is expensive and culturally we value privacy.

We also value self-sufficiency. Most Americans find the idea of someone who relies on someone else to cook, clean, and do their laundry as deadweight. Even among the upper classes. That behavior is considered childish, and an adult who couldn't work wouldn't do them would be seen as burdensome to their family or a spouse.

Even our wealthiest friends cook most of their meals, do their own dishes, and do their own laundry. People will hire cleaners in to clean multiple times a week, wash and change sheets, organize the pantry, do deep cleaning like the fridge and the stove, mop floors, etc. But day to day, if your spouse couldn't rinse a dish a stick it in the dishwasher, prepare a simple meal, or wash and fold a load of laundry, it would be such a liability.

Yep, Americans value self-sufficiency. Many wealthy people overseas have no idea how to operate a vehicle and have a live-in driver who is available to them 24/7. On the other hand, very rich Americans will still drive sometimes and might not have a 24/7 driver. Of course, that's why our superrich people and celebrities getting DUIs is a thing.

We had house guests who are expats in a country where staff is the norm. I was stunned at the day to day behaviors they didn't even notice. It was eye opening.

Yes, a friend of mine married into a family like this and having kids revealed a lot of assumptions about who is "supposed" to do things like get children dressed and bathed, feed them, etc. His family had help for all of that -- children would be presented to parents bathed, clothed, and fed, for interaction. Neither mothers nor fathers did those things themselves -- they were either working or engaged in leisure activity. All actual childcare beyond decision-making about the child's education and appearance was outsourced. So the American style of parenting, where parents are much more hands on and involved, even wealthy parents with multiple full time nannies, was very odd to her Asian ILs. To them, the most important early parenting decision was the staff you hired to care for them, and then later which boarding school you sent them too.

[Anonymous]

It changed because there is much less labor involved in taking care of your daily needs. It’s easy to have a live out housekeeper come once a week, do laundry, clean change bedding etc.

People like to cook now and if you don’t then there a zillion options from restaurants, easy to prepare meals, DoorDash etc. With just two people, it’s not hard to throw your dishes in the dishwasher and put them away.

[Anonymous]

Well, we are private and hate overnight guests of all sorts, including family, friends, and help. Happy to host parties and dinners, but not overnight guests. Our kids don't even do sleepovers. We have plenty of housekeeping and a nanny, but we pay them enough to live in their own home. I can see why someone might choose to have live-in help if they have separate quarters, but otherwise, why would you give up peace and quiet?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Live-in help is not great unless you have a separate guest house. We hated having a live-in nanny, for example, and after a brief experiment with it, we found we were happy to pay a higher rate for a live-out nanny.

This. My SIL said I would get used to it but I never did. Live-out help is the way for people that value their privacy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Live-in help is not great unless you have a separate guest house. We hated having a live-in nanny, for example, and after a brief experiment with it, we found we were happy to pay a higher rate for a live-out nanny.

This. My SIL said I would get used to it but I never did. Live-out help is the way for people that value their privacy.

I didn't even like having a live-out nanny. I've always found the relationships my friends' families have with their nannies to be strange with kind of blurry boundaries, plus I'd hear stories about things like salary negotiations with an existing nanny where you are negotiating with someone that you think of as kind of an extension of your family and it just made me feel icky. We didn't do a nanny for this reason. I prefer the professionalism of a childcare center where the staff is more like the teachers at a preschool -- we had warm relationships with them, my kid really loved them, but the childcare was happening in a facility designed for that purpose and they weren't in my home and we weren't in each other's lives in such an intimate way. I think it makes things blurry in a way I do not like.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Live-in help is not great unless you have a separate guest house. We hated having a live-in nanny, for example, and after a brief experiment with it, we found we were happy to pay a higher rate for a live-out nanny.

This. My SIL said I would get used to it but I never did. Live-out help is the way for people that value their privacy.

I didn't even like having a live-out nanny. I've always found the relationships my friends' families have with their nannies to be strange with kind of blurry boundaries, plus I'd hear stories about things like salary negotiations with an existing nanny where you are negotiating with someone that you think of as kind of an extension of your family and it just made me feel icky. We didn't do a nanny for this reason. I prefer the professionalism of a childcare center where the staff is more like the teachers at a preschool -- we had warm relationships with them, my kid really loved them, but the childcare was happening in a facility designed for that purpose and they weren't in my home and we weren't in each other's lives in such an intimate way. I think it makes things blurry in a way I do not like.

+100

[Anonymous]

It's a mix of high costs; American culture valuing independence, plus things being easier here.

I have friends living in various Asian countries with help. One household I know has 2 cooks, 2-3 maids, a couple gardeners, a driver for each car, plus a "boy" who just does random odds and ends like getting the mail.

It's partly a way to employ the poor -- the gardeners at that house are a family.. as they get housing, room and board along with a salary.

Also driving in certain countries, due to poor infrastructure = horrible traffic and many hours per day spent sitting in a car in chaotic traffic.

Then some places have a dusty climate so you need to wash the floors (and the cars!) daily.

Even shopping and cooking is an ordeal, since there may not be a supermarket so you need to visit the butcher, vegetable place, baker, etc.

One of my friends is a couple in their 80s and the wife is not doing well health-wise. They have 3 helpers, one to cook and the other two to help her 24/7, including monitoring her glucose and waking her up at certain times to ensure she eats (blood sugar thing I think). Thats's a pretty nice standard of care when you're that age -- we've considered moving there when we get old too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Quality of service in America is horrible across the board - domestic help, at stores, at work, at school, on calls. Many are illiterate and/or ESOL- more lost in translations (voluntary or involuntary!).

Think of how many times you find mistakes in orders, sizes, your instructions, the final product? Now multiply that for someone you give the keys to your house and your kids to.

Other countries people have more pride in their work- like Japan. No need to double check anything.

Other countries domestic service industry is more professional- se Asia, Mideast, Eastern Europe. No matter, they get here, act entitled, assume everyone is a multi millionaire, and quality of service declines— especially if you’re weak at managing people and tasks.

So many do-the-bare-minimum workers here. Such a PITA. Thus when and if you find someone who cares you pay more. But do not pay more for imposters.

Um, no.

We're expats. I've had live-in help in multiple countries, including Russia, India, Singapore, and China. It isn't what you think. It isn't good for anybody, even the fortunate employers of the live-in help. In India, especially, you have to deaden part of your soul in order to share space with someone so very unfortunate, with so limited a future and so miserable a life, to have this, and EVERY lower to upper middle class to upper class person there has a maid. The maids are regularly taken out of school and put into live-in servant (slave) situations, and beating, rapes, and mistreatment of the help is, from what I saw, the norm. It warps something in the culture that embraces such a system.

That’s an exaggeration.

- multiple times expat and FSO

That's my post you responded to, and it absolutely is not an exaggeration.

We're in Singapore now, and I wouldn't say the "helpers", as live-in maids are called here, are treated well, but they are treated SO MUCH better than the house maids in India.

It's very much against egalitarian American culture to desire that kind of personal waiting on and as another PP said, it's seen as lazy, weak and a liability to not care for your own basics no matter how wealthy you are.

Anyone who feels so small inside (looking at you trump) who feels like this is a good system and they can lord it over people have something very wrong with them. People who brag about how it is in other countries are being very unself-aware and extremely out of touch.

There is a long history of servants and help in the US. The idea that Americans are uncomfortable with home help is always more fiction than reality, given that Americans had no problems having help in the past. My 1930s UMC colonial was built with a live in maid's room and bathroom and my own American ancestors had cooks and maids and housekeepers and they were solidly UMC people, not Vanderbilts. Most of their help were immigrants. Live in help died out due to costs and lack of interest from people who'd have been help in the past. But even today there's not much to differentiate cleaning services dominated by recent immigrants or the waves of Irish or German or Scandinavian girls who served a few years as maids in the 19th and early 20th century before finding a better job.

Incidentally, that is what Trump's mother did when she first came over from Scotland. She worked as a maid for a year or two before she met and married Trump's father.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Live in help was commonplace for the UMC up through the 1940s. Cheap immigrant labor and cheap black labor made it possible, along with far fewer labor saving devices. Cooking wasn't as fun as it is today, for example. And when it's relatively cheap to have many servants, the very wealthy could create lifestyles and elaborate homes based on having full staff, their lives were really that much more formal.

After the war the pool of affordable labor dried up, though lasted another 20 years for inexpensive black labor, but by the late 60s it was rapidly fading out for the UMC (according to my mother, it went from 1940s live in to 1950s daily help who came in the morning and left once she got dinner ready to the 1960s several times a week to the 1970s once a week). Labor costs spared and now comes with all the social and Healthcare benefits if you have full time help.

There are still very wealthy with help but even that world has changed. It's far more private, people don't want to see help around so they're not waited upon at the table, but the help takes on different forms. You have personal assistants, personal stylists, personal chefs, house managers.

Something tells me that your definition of UMC is a lot different from mine.

She's not wrong. I live in an apartment building that was built in 1915 in a neighborhood that was a favorite of the UMC of the late 1800s-1930s . . . doctors, lawyers, bankers. All of the original apartment layouts have maid's rooms and formal entertaining spaces, including the 1100 sf one-bedroom apartments.