to ask my nanny to sleep in the lounge?

[LaLaLaLayla]

OK, a bit of background... we live in the gulf where there are no childminders or after-school care. School finishes at 1.30 pm. In situations where both parents have to work, the only viable option is to employ live-in help.

So, we are employing a girl from the Philipinnes and she arrives in the next week or so. We are currently living in a 2 bedroom apartment but plan to move to a small 3-bedroomed house within the next few months. We have a 6 year DS who has his own room. So, we don't have enough bedrooms for her to have her own room at the moment. It is only temporary, but still, I want her to be comfortable.

These are our options...

1. We could rent her a studio apartment somewhere, but public transport is limited and she doesn't drive.

1. We could turf our son out of his bedroom and put him in with us so she could have his room. I am reluctant to do this, as I can imagine there being a few problems when it is time to move him back into his own room.

1. She could sleep on some kind of put-you-up bed in the lounge and we would make it a rule to vacate the lounge by 10 pm every evening, say. She could use one of the cupboards in my DS room to keep her things. She would also have her own bathroom.

Now, I much prefer the third option, but is is not ideal as I think she needs her own space. So I was thinking of paying her 25% of her salary on top, as a kind of 'inconvenience payment'. This is about what we would have to pay for a studio flat anyway and I would rather give it to her. She is coming to work to support her family, so I imagine the extra cash would be handy.

But is it totally unreasonable to ask this of her? If I ask her, I know she will just give me the answer she thinks I want to hear. I would really welcome some views on this, as I don't know what to do.

Thanks.

The only (practical) issue with waiting until she gets out here is that you won't have a room ready for her. She'll have come off a long flight and everything will be new and she'll just want to be able to dump her bags and take a few minutes to chill out. Unless she has experience working for westerners before, she'll most likely be terrified of putting a foot wrong (as are most people in a new job) and being sent straight home and so you won't actually get a real answer out of her.

Again the discussion between Freudian and bedubabe is hilarious to me. We called our helpers ahmahs - I used the term "helper" in my post above because I assume few posters on this thread speak Cantonese. Our ahmahs would have stared at me blankly if I had tried to explain the different overtones to an English person of the different implications of the terms nanny/maid/servant/au pair/helper.

What matters is how you treat them and whether you enable them to make their own economic decisions, usually by paying them enough so they feel they have a genuine choice in the matter, and consulting them about their wishes and how they want to live their lives while working for you. Usually it's the combination of high unemployment in their home country and the high barriers set up by immigration authorities in their country of employment that do the most to take away migrant workers' economic self-determination though.

But what mother wouldn't choose to have the opportunity to go home to be with her family even if that meant hardship and indignity to her own person?

If I were ever in the unfortunate position of having to move halfway across the world in order to support my family by looking after another's, I would be willing to put up with a lot if I were offered the chance to go home and see them.

Things must be rather desperate for highly educated women to choose to be live-in staff far away from home.

I agree. I would have chosen to go home to my family even if it meant living in a shithole the rest of the time.

Tyel, that's what I was saying. There's no easy equivalent of 'ahmah' in the middle east though (I grew up in HK as well) which is annoying as saying 'maid' gets a reaction in the UK!

TheReal, sorry you don't get it. It is desperate. To be honest, we're not talking about highly educated women here. However, my maid is extremely bright and would have gone to university and done quite well if she'd been born in the UK. She's working with us to try to ensure that her daughter(s) don't have to do the same thing.

I know plenty of educated filipina who work here, away from their families, who aren't maids. They often get paid less than a maid.

We're not talking about living in a shithole. We're talking about not having enough money to feed and provide medical care for your family. What mother wouldn't live away from her family if that meant they could survive?

No bedu I do. My last post was merely an acknowledgement of how difficult the choices must be for these women.

That's no excuse to exploit them though, is it?

And before you jump down my throat, I'm not saying the OP (or you) are exploiting them but the fact of the matter is that these women have little choice and it is important to consider that.

I think your son coming in with you is a reasonable option but I don't think your maid would see your suggestion as being as unreasonable as some people are thinking.

Not every culture makes a big distinction between sleeping areas and living areas. In my DH's family in North Africa it is quite usual for some of the familiy to sleep on the floor of the living room on mattresses and for bedrooms to be used as more social areas during the day. When one if my DH's neices came to stay (she is in her 30's) it was the first time she had ever had a room to herself.

You sound like a thoughtful person.

I was bought up abroad with servants. My parents would have turfed us out of our room to accommodate a maid if there had been no other room for her. We were always made to treat the staff with a lot of courtesy. My parents insisted that servants worked for them not for us and we were to treat them with the respect we would show to any adult. These are good values to instill in a child.

We are still in touch with our ayah from when we lived in Delhi. 38 years ago!

I think your choice was sensible. I think if it was just going to be a couple of weeks until you moved then you could have written to her and asked her if she would rather have her own room or have sitting room and more money and left the decision up to her, but sleeping in the sitting room for a few months is too long, especially if the house should have been ready by now, there may be further delays if the builders are messing about.

Thanks CBA. She will have her own room. I stilll can't help thinking she would have preferred the extra GBP200 a month, but there you go.

So if you can afford the extra money, and think she?d jump at it (and I?m sure she would) why not offer her extra work but with her own room?

There isn't really enough to do, as it is. The extra money was meant to be for the extra inconvenience.

Agree with shagmund - we also always had to say please and thank you when asking for things and manners were non-negotiable. We weren't allowed to give orders and the one time I think I tried to push the boundaries I was in major trouble.

I am amazed that people can look at a system whereby women have to leave their homes and countries, and be separated from their families from their children for years, performing menial work with few protections from abuse, and not think it is exploitation.

It may be the way things are and you may be the nicest employer around but at least call it what it is. You may not personally intend to exploit her but the overall system in which you are participating is incredibly exploitative.

The most fair option, since it is not her fault that your move was delayed, would be to pay her now as a retainer but delay her actual move until you have space for her.

we have had something similar happen with us, but i have chosen to send ours to her home country and carry on paying her the full salary until we are sorted out.

having said that, i know that if i offered her the option of staying with us and paying her more money, she would have taken that option in a heartbeat. i didnt though, because it wouldnt suit me (the employer).

where my maid is from, everyone sleeps in one room together, and she finds it strange being on her own, isolated from the family. in fact, when my DD was littler the maid used to ASK to sleep in with DD rather than sleep in her own room. i sometimes said ok, especially on a weekend if she wasnt going somewhere as she then used to quite like watching movies with us in the evening and then getting up with DD and doing cartoons in pjamas. but the rest of the time, i didnt say ok, because it wasnt what i was comfortable with.

essentially, when you live in a foreign country, and employ someone from a different culture from that, you kind of have to negotiatie your way through what is comfortabkle for both of you

and i really dont like the assumption on here that the british way fo doing things is right, and anything else is inferior and if only people had a choice they would live just the way you do in the uk.

it simply isnt true, and is very patronising.

how is giving someone a job, and paying them a good wage, exploitative?

Unfortunately, I cannot afford to pay the agency childcare and our future helper at the same time. Combined, it would be more than my salary.

Lots of people here are huffing about treating her differently than you would a UK nanny, based on the fact that she is from the Philippines and will have different expectations.

If you think this is outrageous, do you make sure you only buy clothes, shoes and goods manufactured in the UK by people with UK pay and working conditions?

Thought not.

bottleofmilk - Good point. You are right, I was looking at at from the pov of what I would want as a British person.

It's exploitative because:

A. the condition of that employment is that they leave their families behind

B. the system encourages human trafficking, forced labour and personal abuse

C. countries are losing some of their brightest and hardest working people to menial jobs abroad for which they are way overqualified. I mean really, 'oh should we hire the brain surgeon or the professor', is that supposed to actually be funny?

I worked in the restaurant industry in the US which relies on cheap kitchen labour from Mexico and Central America (legal and illegal). Everyone says the same as you, 'well at least they have jobs and are supporting their families.' But believe me, there's only so many times you can see your coworkers sobbing because they miss their children so much, before you get incredibly angry at this system.

I doubt these women WANT to leave their children behind for years, they only do so because they have to, hence it is exploitative.

25% of what, I wonder?

Dreaming I'm confused. Based on your point 3. I should actually pay my helper less because at the moment I'm encouraging her to be part of a brain drain from the Philippines.

There are no jobs in the Philippines. What are they supposed to do?

LaLaLaLayla: Surely it's still not too late to offer her the money over having her own room? I think you should give her the choice.

The money will probably be more useful to her than having own room, especially if she has kids to support. Also the situation is only temporary.

You sound like you want to do the right thing, and I think you should give her a say in the situation. Honesty is always the best in these situations, and giving her the choice will also add some goodwill to the mix.