Did any of you ever grow up with a housekeeper in the house?

[bluestateguy]

So many television shows feature a housekeeper character, usually person (usually female) who is a witty, wisecracking, lovable character who is almost like one of the family. The housekeeper is depicted as being very close to the family. Shows that follow this example include the Brady Bunch, the Jeffersons, Maude, Mr. Belvedere, Who's the Boss and Diff'rent Strokes.

Do you think this is a realistic portrayal? Do housekeepers usually get this close to the family they work for, or is that just a lot of TV fluff?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. I don't think many middle-class families have housekeepers.

TV shows are written by people who have wads of money and apparently can't imagine a household without "help." It's also a way of throwing in a character sort of like a Greek chorus, who stands outside the family and comments on it. I don't know anyone at all who has a housekeeper. When I was a kid in the early '60s there was a period of time when we had a cleaning lady who came in for an afternoon every two weeks. In retrospect even that seems like a luxury.

[femmocrat]

2. Yes, they were called mothers.

Actually, some of the women in my family worked as housekeepers.

[Gormy Cuss]

8. Same here.

None were live-ins like those on TV.

[hippywife]

10. Same at our house

until we became old enough to clean house and then we were the house slaves. LOL

[elleng]

3. My cousins did, and I've never figured out why,

whether my aunt didn't like to cook etc? I don't know. She and my uncle (my mothers brother) appeared to have a 'normal' relationship with the 3 children (tho I disagreed about some of their attitudes.)They were not particularly wealthy. The kids were fairly close with the housekeeper.

[Nikia]

4. One of my mother's boyfriend's parents had a live in housekeeper

She was nice to my sister and I while we visited one weekend and watched us in the evening. I must have been around 8 so I don't remember too much, but it didn't seem like the adults talked to her much.
My grandmother was a live in housekeeper before she married my grandfather. She said that the family treated her kindly, but she was also considered apart from them. Aside from class difference, there was also an ethnic difference.
My great grandmother (my other grandmother's mother) was also a housekeeper. She was widowed when her children were young. While her children were still at home, she was not a live in and worked for a few different families. Later, she became a live in housekeeper for a widower and they eventually married, although there was a prenuptial agreement to protect his children's inheritance.

[rcrush]

5. I thought Arrested Development had realistic housekeepers.

[Capn Sunshine]

6. we had a housekeeper

her mother actually worked for my dad's family. She was pretty cool and we loved her as little children, because we all watched Disney and houskeepers always loved their charges. She annoyed me when I was a teen because she loved to search my room for incriminating stuff. Always under the guise of rearranging the furniture. I think she was pretty typical for the day; she took zero crap from the kids, was a pal to mom, and was deferential to my dad.

There were periodic traumas caused by her things like ruining several of the antiques by overpolishing or other meaningless crap.

Imagine the housekeeper in the 40's movies. She was like that.

[tigereye]

7. we did have a cleaning lady/helper who came in a few times a week

I think that was basically because my mom had 5 young kids... the lady was very nice, but I'm not sure that she was close to us, per se.

:shrug:

[Chan790]

9. Yes.

Two of them over the span of about 5 years...they were sisters. Both had started out as tenants who couldn't afford the rent and subsequently became boarders and later became, at first, nannies in exchange for free room and later housekeepers for the same deal while they finished college.

I can't say we weren't close but we weren't distant either. They were live-in help...not that my parent's needed the help but my mother the RW weapons contractor has a soft-spot for the downtrodden as long as they're willing to work to improve themselves.

[MiddleFingerMom]

11. Yes, but not live-in

.
The Nelson's down the block had a housekeeper who would come in
almost daily for a full shift.
.
Nancy Nelson and I, both 6-years-old, down in their huge finished
basement playing a completely innocent game of buck-naked tag. The
housekeeper came down to check on what all the screaming and
laughing was about. We didn't have time to get to our clothes, but
hid, TERRIFIED, behind the furnace (OK, not COMPLETELY innocent --
we knew it was naughty; we just didn't know why... nor did we
really care).
.
The housekeeper saw our clothes, knew immediately what we were doing,
and simply said, "You children better PUT those clothes back on before
the missus comes home" and went back upstairs.
.
She never said a word to us nor, MUCH more importantly, to "the missus".
.
Nancy and I worshipped her.
.

.

[GoCubsGo]

12. We had five of them, along with five groundskeepers.

Housekeepers=Mom and her four children
Groundskeeper=Dad and his four children.

[katkat]

13. I have a couple of friends who have cleaning ladies

who come in once a week. Can you imagine that? It's like your house magically cleans itself :-)

[crispini]

17. I have a cleaning "guy" that comes in every two weeks.

I am SO HAPPY. Best thing I have ever done. I was reluctant because a) it seems so un-Democratic and it's kind of embarrassing not to clean up after yourself and b) it's not like I'm rich. However, I am a natural slob, and I don't like cleaning much either. So I mostly lived in semi-squalor, punctuated by frantic cleaning periods where I'd try to get the house habitable. Now that I have my guy coming every two weeks, I keep it picked up and neat so he can clean, and I tidy up after myself a lot more as well. I would say the house is company-ready all the damn time now and it's WONDERFUL. Totally has changed my quality of life.

[Orrex]

14. At my former job...

I once had a meeting with my manager, her supervisor, and a guy of equivalent rank to the supervisor. While waiting for the conference call to begin, the three of them chatted amiably about how many times they have their cleaning services come through the house. It was agreed that four times was excessive, but three times was quite reasonable.

After about ten minutes of this, I very calmly jumped up on the table and said:

"Screw all of you worthless fuckers! Two of you assholes are directly responsible for determining my salary level, and every goddamn year you come up with an amazing excuse to justify why the department isn't giving raises or a bonuses, and now you have the fucking gall to sit here and complain about how hard it is to spend your money? Well, pardon me while I piss on each one of you and smear my shit all over the white-board."

[katkat]

15. I guess now we know why the job is former :-) n/t

[Broken_Hero]

16. Well, I was the housekeeper

:) I was the eldest of 12 siblings, so I was the housekeeper/aka Slave.

Not sure if its realistic at all, I have never experienced, nor seen the dynamic you are talking about first hand.

[brendan120678]

18. My parents had a cleaning lady who came in...

once a week. I suppose she was fairly close to the family.

[bigwillq]

19. Yeah, my mom.

:P

[blueamy66]

20. We had a lady that came and cleaned once a week

but she didn't live in.

[RebelOne]

21. After my stepfather was killed in an auto accident,

my mother hired a housekeeper to take care of me and my younger sisters. The woman was a religious fanatic. She would drag me to her Pentecostal holy-roller church services. The congregation would roll around on the floor and speak in tongues. Glad she did stay round for long.

[mulsh]

22. My brother introduced our mom as "our housekeeper." once.

It was the angriest I ever saw her get. When I was around 8 we were taking care of my terminally ill grandfather, one dying elderly great aunt, my year old baby brother my folks hired a housekeeper but she didn't stay long. My mom kept making us "tidy up" for the house keeper. The lady quit telling my dad he was wasting money paying for her to watch her soaps. My twin brother an I did a lot of house work maybe we were the live in housekeepers.

We had neighbors who had live in house keepers. When we moved to a real swanky neighborhood we even had a couple of neighbors who had butlers. This was in the mid 60's in Oakland, Ca. By the early 70's butlers were a thing of the past in that neighborhood.

[Heidi]

23. Is your brother still living?

I can assure you that neither I nor my siblings would have lived to tell the tale if we had ever dared refer to our mother as "our housekeeper." :scared: