'The maid will sleep in the dungeons...and this is the corridor that she will walk along so she can go and clean the toilets.'
---A student, while describing her ideal home to classmates.

Don't you think there is something fundamentally wrong with that statement?

Doesn't it sound like something a master of a medieval castle would say, instead of someone living in the 21st century?

And yet, my classmates saw nothing wrong with it; they even derived amusement and laughter from it! Odd, isn't it? For goodness sake, even the student who said such a thing was laughing and giggling all the while. And the instructor who was standing next to her? Not a single word uttered against it.

This is very disturbing. Why? Simply because this apathy reflects very badly on society and the morals of society. Their apathy towards this statement implies that it is apparently alright and normal for maids to sleep in the dungeons and clean toilets all day long. Does this mean that maids are alike to servants living in the Middle Ages, when they used separate corridors and passages from their masters?

Of course, the statement could have been said in jest, and I could be over reacting because jokes do alot to lighten up the mood. However, there are certain things that cannot be joked about, and I feel that the issue of maids is one of those things.

Singapore is well-known for its dependence on foreign domestic help; better known as maids, and almost every household employs one. In fact, households that do not have maids are becoming rarer by the day.

Most times, the maid is asked to do everything from looking after the child, to cleaning the house and cooking the meals; it is not unusual to walk into school at the end of a school day to find the school overflowing with maids waiting for their charges.

However, it is precisely this point that worries me the most. Nowadays, families are becoming more and more affluent, and thus, because this usually means the parents will have to fly overseas for business trips, the parents will not be home all the time to look after their children.

Solution? Employ a maid. The thing is, parents do not seem to realise that maids are actually called 'domestic help' for a reason. Their job is to help around the house, with the housekeeping or perhaps a little cooking. They are not full-time babysitters as well as the seamstresses, butlers and gardeners.

And because children are under the impression that maids are inferior to them - as can be seen from what my classmate said - they will tend to demand the world from the maid. And of course, under their employees' orders, they will have to obey. The problem is, this creates an entire nation of spoilt children who think of maids as their 'one-stop-fits-all (job descriptions)', which will only lead to the breeding of more spoilt children.

Maids are human beings too. They should not have to do everything from housekeeping to babysitting. Besides, parents should take responsibility of their own children; it is the parent's job to bring up a child correctly, not the maid's.

So the next time you ask your maid to do something, think before you speak, and ask yourself if you have done your part.

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