Honey, I spoiled the kids!

We raise our children with the best of intentions but somehow end up mollycoddling them, to their detriment.

THE shortage of domestic servants in Malaysia gets worse every year, driving people urgently needing their services crazy with exasperation.”

That was the opening sentence in a report in The Star published on March 4, 1976. As the song goes, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Uh huh.

Thirty-six years on, we are still facing a shortage, although “domestic servants” have morphed into “domestic workers” a.k.a. “maids” of foreign origin.

Let’s see, in 1976, I was in secondary school and sharing household and cooking chores with my sisters. We had long dispensed with the services of a servant/maid. When the last local woman who did our laundry became unreliable, my parents bought our first washing machine and that was it.

Going further back, we had a mother-and-daughter team who did the laundry and cleaned house as well. Actually the daughter, Bedah, was more our playmate. We had fun playing hide-and-seek and masak-masak in the wooden doll-house my dad built.

And when I was a very little girl living in Penang, my mum had a young live-in servant. Poor Ah Hong had a hard time managing my unruly brother, who slashed her arm with a butter knife after a nasty spat. After we moved to Kuala Lumpur, we lost touch with her.

For most of my growing years, my family was fortunate enough to have domestic help who did the heavy-duty stuff. But we kids still had our chores: washing our school shoes, taking out the garbage, weeding the garden and mowing the lawn. One chore which I really hated was peeling and cleaning prawns as I would always end up with bleeding fingers.

When we were in-between servants (we never called them maids in those days), we did the sweeping, mopping, windows, fans, bathrooms and, the most back-breaking of all, the laundry by hand.

I also learned how to hammer nails, saw wood, change light bulbs, use an electric drill, paint walls and fences, build chicken coops, dig wells and even mix cement from my extremely clever handyman dad.

So where did I go so wrong with my own kids?

Do I blame it on the fact that both my husband and I work and we had no time nor the energy to mend and clean on the weekends, leaving it all to the maid, thereby setting a poor example to my kids?

Do I excuse myself that middle class families mollycoddle their children in these prosperous times?

Whatever the reason, I stand guilty of raising children who are inadequately skilled in a lot of things my generation took for granted or were expected to know.

Mind you, they are great kids. They never did drugs nor partied excessively; never got me summoned to school over their grades or discipline problems. As adults, they are articulate and interesting individuals. They are respectful and caring towards their grandparents who live with us.

Yet, they have never toiled at anything in the house and won’t even wash their own cups simply because they grew up with maids who did everything for them.

But to be fair to them, the rot started earlier. By “rot”, I mean the diminishing ability to be self-reliant in keeping one’s house in order without external help.

Because Dad could build, mend and repair just about anything and Mum was an excellent cook and extremely house-proud, between them, my siblings and I were taught a lot of skills.

My husband, on the other hand, isn’t as handy. His answer to fixing anything is super glue. Despite my childhood training, I haven’t applied my skills much either. I quite happily gave up gardening when my lawn-mower broke down,

Fortunately, we can enlist the services of a gardener, plumber or electrician to fix whatever stuff that goes on the blink because they are affordable.

And for now, a maid.

With all these support services, our lives are really easy and comfortable. The downside is today’s convenient ways have made us soft, lazy and wasteful.

Yet, things are changing. If 36 years ago, we moaned the extinction of local servants, now we moan about the availability of foreign maids.

The news isn’t good. No matter how hard our Government is trying to re-establish the supply line from Indonesia, the fact remains that Malaysia is not the first choice for such workers.

What’s more, the countries that have long supplied us with cheap labour are enjoying economic growth and with it better job opportunities for their people.

For now, we can take pride that almost any middle class family can hire a maid. In the not-too-distant future, it may not be the case any more. Already, the agency fees and the salaries are getting painfully high.

Ironically, the richer and more developed a country, the more expensive hired help is. So in countries like Australia, the United States and Britain, DIY stores are huge business because there they don’t call in the plumber or electrician at the slightest trouble. Live-in maids are only for the wealthy.

In all likelihood, the time my daughters marry, they will have to figure out how to keep house and raise kids without a live-in maid.

My son? He sheepishly admitted he didn’t know how to sew a loose button or a tear in his pants. For the sake of my future daughter-in-law and grandchildren, I have decided he’s going to start becoming a bit more like grandpa.

It starts this Saturday when my Indonesian maid goes on home leave for Hari Raya. As they say, “Necessity is the mother of invention” so this mother who has been terribly remiss with her children’s basic life skills, is going to invent some necessity on the home front.

More importantly, better late than never, especially when we still have clever grandpa to teach the kids a handy tip or two. No super glue for them.

So Aunty, So What? By JUNE H.L. WONG

 > The writer, if she could turn back time, would certainly have done some things differently in the way she raised her kids. On a more cheerful note, Selamat Hari Raya Aidil Fitri!

Indonesia's ‘one maid,one task’ is raw deal in the new deal!

M’sian side never given chance to object to ‘one maid, one task’ 

By P. ARUNA aruna@thestar.com.my

PETALING JAYA: Indonesian officials appeared to have decided on their own on the “one maid, one task” ruling at the meeting of the joint task force in Jakarta on Thursday.

“They just announced the ruling and did not ask the Malaysian side whether or not they agreed,” an Indonesian participant told The Star in a telephone interview.

“Dr Reyna Usman (the Indonesian Labour Placement Development director-general) made the announcement and the meeting then moved on to other matters,” said the participant who asked not to be identified.

The ruling had caused an uproar in Malaysia, with the associations for both agents and employers now wanting to know whether the Malaysian officials had agreed to it, and if so why.

Dr Reyna had said the fresh batch of Indonesian maids would be trained in four household chores cooking, babysitting, taking care of the elderly and housekeeping but each would perform only one of these tasks for her employer and be paid RM700 a month.

She added that the ruling was to prevent a recurrence of the problems affecting maids and employers.

The Association of Foreign Maid Agencies (Papa) acting president Jeffrey Foo said the officials, led by Labour Department director-general Datuk Sheikh Yahya Mohamed, should explain what transpired at the meeting.

“If our officials agreed to it (the ruling), they must explain it to us,” he said.

Malaysian Maid Employers' Association (Mama) president Engku Ahmad Fauzi Engku Muhsein concurred, saying: “There are many doubts that need to be cleared. We want to know what really happened at the meeting.”

None of the Malaysian officials present at the meeting have commented on the decision.

Sheikh Yahya could not be reached for comment.

Raw deal in this new deal
 
On The Beat By Wong Chun Wai

Malaysians are not amused with Indonesia’s latest condition on hiring of maids.

I HAVE only one Indonesian maid and come July, she would have worked with my family for seven years.

Yuli, who comes from Way Halom in Sumatra, is regarded as a family member. She eats the same food we eat. She goes on annual local holidays with us and her birthday is celebrated with a good dinner and cake. Occasionally, she goes to watch concerts with the family.

My wife insists that she gets to return to Indonesia during her break on Malaysia Airlines and arrangements are made at the airport so she would not be hassled by Indonesian Immigration officers and hustlers.

Yuli gets a say in most decisions involving the household and I have my lucky stars to thank, considering that many Malaysians have a horror story to tell about their maids.

She has picked up the English language, learnt how to cook some of my favourite Penang nyonya food, and she can even laugh at the Hokkien sitcoms on Astro.

But my sister-in-law has not been lucky. She has had two maids and both were a disaster.

The first was an Indonesian from Flores who spent most of her time in the living room in front of the TV rather than in the kitchen. Her addiction to instant noodles would have made her worthy of an academic study.

The second, a Cambodian, was worse. She put on weight within weeks of her employment after she discovered the magic of the refrigerator and oven.

But that wasn’t enough. She stole food, secretly storing them in a bag in her room. Apparently, she’s never heard of expiry dates.

Still, that was tolerable until she decided to go on a mutiny, snubbing directives and snapping back at her boss. Then she walked off and refused to come back.

Here’s the best part: the agency had the audacity to ask for her salary to be paid despite her absence without leave and work not rendered.

I won’t be surprised if she has been “recycled” and is now with another desperate Malaysian couple who needs a maid.

There’s another story. Lady boss asked the Cambodian maid why she had not prepared the husband’s breakfast as she was told.

The maid’s reply: “Madam, Sir is already big. Sir knows how to make breakfast. I no need.”

I swear this is not made up, but I am not sure if the maid has gone for counselling or if she has been sent back to Cambodia.

And here’s another one. There is a friend who installed CCTV at his home so he could monitor what’s happening there from his office. Lucky for him – he found out he had a psychopath on his hands when he saw his Indonesian maid regularly talking to her image in the mirror and rolling on the floor laughing hysterically.

She would burn so-called blessed papers, presumably jampi, and insist that his children consume them before they went to school. The final straw came when she asked my friend to post her “love letters” – addressed to President Suharto!

Again, we are not sure if she’s safely back and undergoing mental treatment in her home country or if she’s with another new Malaysian tuan. Hope someone tells her there’s now a new Indonesian president.

There may be stories of maids being abused and certainly Malaysians in their right mind would not tolerate such incidents. It gives our country a bad name and also leads to pressure from their countries to slow down the numbers coming in to Malaysia.

But there are also stories of Malaysian employers who suffer emotional and financial abuse from maids. These are less reported but that does not mean they are isolated cases or it’s simply because non-governmental organisations are not taking up cases of abused employers.

So, Malaysians are not amused when Indonesia tells us that their maids headed here will only perform one task and must be paid RM700 for that.

I believe Malaysian employers would not mind paying more, but not for less work. Pressing frustrated employers with such unreasonable demands is certainly going overboard.

It has been reported that the fresh batch of 106 Indonesian maids headed here would only carry out one task for their bosses. They would be trained to do four household chores – cooking, babysitting, taking care of the elderly, and housekeeping – but will perform only one of these tasks for their employers.

The report stated that the workers were undergoing four skills training courses over 21 days and must be paid RM700 a month by their Malaysian employers.

The Malaysian Maid Employers’ Association and Malaysian National Association of Employ­ment Agencies have rightly questioned the announcement. Come on, this one is surely a bad deal.

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