What is below is correct. And some women (and men) are not happy employing others. Many of us are not brought up to manage people including staff and it feels unnatural. I also prefer the house when there is no one in it who isn't the family so we never had a live in nanny. You also retain more privacy. Even now having people who come in to help I am balancing that inevitable loss of privacy against the fact someone else is cleaning the house which for me at present I can live with as I'd rather have the cleaning help and childcare although now the boys are older th need for the childcare is getting less and less anyway.
The guilt bit is interesting too - it does feel wrong for me for people to do nothing and yet even the bible I think exhorts people to sit around doing nothing as God will provide or something like that (which doesn't seem a very sensible way to go about things) - remember the lilies of the field, they neither toil nor spin or whatever.
There is certainly a protestant work ethic in a lot of British people and being a housewife but with a housekeeper and nanny might offend that principle -= women would then feel more like they were being "kept" by a man although I suspect some men quite like that concept and if they can easily afford the help at home then why not?
"Xenia - your last post got me thinking. I am a SAHM to three. I could, theoretically, have a nanny, but would no more do so than fly to the moon because I would feel GUILTY and UNCOMFORTABLE. I can't even employ a cleaner, because when I have tried I am so soft with them that they don't do much work and burden me with all their problems grin
I am not proud of this trait in myself, it infuriates me. I believe it has something to do with seeing my mother work full-time, keep house and raise three children plus pander to a crap husband. Something in me feels I can't have too much more than she did and I already have a nice DH and enough money to be a SAHM so that should be enough. I don't expect you to understand this, I just want to make the point that whether or not one is COMFORTABLE with outsourcing your cleaning/childcare etc can be as much about your social conditioning as about your current financial situation."