Are dogs and cleaners "must haves" everywhere,or does it depend where you live?

[Fizbosshoes]

When I grew up (1980s, London suburbs) I think maybe 1 school friend had a dog. Having a cleaner (I dont think) was a common thing, although my mum used to do cleaning for an older lady we knew, alongside apart time job.
Now I live in a commuter town. There seems to be an unwritten law that you'll get a dog (mostly cockerpoo/cavapoo/other-poo variety) when your youngest child is between year 3 and year 5.
And I think I have 1 other friend who doesnt have a cleaner.
Is it a generational thing, or defined by area? (I guess the area I live now is "naicer" than where I grew up)

Everybody had a dog where I grew up in the 70's but most were mongrels and roamed around in packs - I do remember one of them was an Afghan hound though!
We had a corgi which wasn't allowed to roam.
I didn't know anyone with a cleaner.

Have neither. Few friends have dogs and I only know one person who has a cleaner. Not home enough to have a dog and I can’t imagine working that many hours we didn’t have time to clean our own home,

I have two dogs - we’ve had dogs throughout our kids’ lives.

I have a cleaner - hired one four weeks ago so still in my novelty phase.

We live in a comfortable MC area .Lots of people( inc me! )have dogs .Dont know of anyone with a cleaner save my Cousin ,who is over 75 and very well off!

We had a dog but no cleaner growing up, and have a dog but no cleaner now.

I only know a few people with dogs but lots of people with cleaners - most of my friends have toddlers!

In our village there are a few households without dogs because they’ve reached a point where the risk of falling over an excited cocker or the need to exercise is too much now. They like visiting dogs but don’t want the responsibility. Younger households (under 70) do usually have a dog but we’re rural and it’s the norm.
Usually labs, spaniels or setters. Shepherd has borders. All pure. All working types.

I don’t know any household locally that doesn’t have a cleaner or housekeeper.

CherryPavlova that's a very country specific type of rural. I live in very rural Bavaria (village population 550, fairly young population, 5 working farms within the village, nearest supermarket 7 miles away) and there are 3 dogs in the village - one irritating yappy chihuahua belonging to the slightly shouty family who run a car repair business, one German Shepherd belonging to a very elderly couple and walked by their neighbour's teen and young adult children, and one Weimaraner which is owned by a farming (more forester) family but as a pet.

None of the other farming families or nin farming households have a dog. There are a fair number of cats but most don't have pets at all.

I wonder a lot about the normalisation of dog ownership, its not unequivocally a goid tjing IMO especially as the more people have them, the greater the number of untrained, neglected animals who are not picked up after and cause a nuisance.

We hired a cleaner because we had two dogs. Then she retired over lockdown, and now we have a Eufy.

Lots of my friends, and our family, had dogs when I was a child. Don’t know if anyone had a cleaner - I wouldn’t have known!! I don’t have a dog, have a child in Year 5 and am a cleaner!!

It's not very common to have dogs here. I'm in central London, living in a flat, and most people I know live in flats, families included. I don't know many people who have a cleaner either, as the flats aren't big enough to need one. Most people I know are financially comfortable, but not your traditional middle class (most weren't raised in the UK) as those ones tend to move out to the suburbs when they have a family.

@MidnightFlit

We hired a cleaner because we had two dogs. Then she retired over lockdown, and now we have a Eufy.

This exactly

We’re fairly standardly middle class and but northern. I think London middle class is a different thing altogether! We had a cleaner and gardener before lockdown but we moved during lockdown and DH and I are both WFH so we can’t justify getting a new cleaner and they’d have to clean around us anyway. We don’t need a gardener now as we have a new build house that just has patio and grass.

Oh, we don’t have a dog but most people we know do across all ‘classes’.

This reminds me of a conversation between my parents.

Mum: Of course when I grew up, everybody had servants.

Dad (muttering): The people I knew where the servants.

Don't think anybody around here has a cleaner, but I know several people, including one relative by marriage, who work as cleaners.

correction: were the servants, even

We have neither. I certainly don't have the time or money that a dog would require...nor spare cash to get someone else to clean. Nothing stays clean anyway, so it would probably annoy me more if I'd paid someone for it IYSWIM.

We don’t have a dog. I’m allergic. (And also don’t want one). We have a cleaner because it’s cheaper than a divorce. If I had a dog, I’d want the cleaner more frequently so maybe they go together in a way.

@Honeyandapple

I grew up in a N London suburb and most people I was friends with had a cleaner.

In fact, during secondary school (same area) they brought someone in to teach us about respect, one of the questions was 'if you dropped a grain of rice on the floor would you pick it up or wait for your mum to pick it ip' a boy answered 'if the cleaner is coming the next day I'll just leave it'. Most of the class agreed.
We continued on with the respect lessons, needless to say.

But if you had a dog you wouldn't have to pick up any dropped food!

I have neither dog or cleaner but a lot of people here do seem to have one or both .

I live in Aus in a "naice" area and most people have dogs and a cleaner, I'd say 80%. We will get a dog in the next couple of years, but I like doing my own cleaning!

I work from home permanently so my dog is always with me. There are however, lots of neighbours who have dogs that are left to bark all day and never have walks.

I also work 50 hours a week, and I'm a single parent, so employ a cleaner, as I feel I deserve to be able to go to bed or have a bath to relax, rather than walk upstairs and start to clean.

With the stupid prices that animals are going for these days, if you can afford a puppy, I'm pretty sure you're also the sort of person who can afford a cleaner.

Where we are I would say that at least 80% of people have a dog, mostly a poodle cross / Shitzu/ shnauzer kind of dog. I don't think I know anyone who doesn't have a cleaner and I'm pretty sure that every single one of my neighbours do too as I usually see them coming and going.

As a child we always had cleaners / au pairs and mothers helps. My perfectly fit and healthy parents in their 60's still have a cleaner 2 x a week, a weekly gardener and an ironing person.