The Decline of Domestic Help
The absence of maids—exploited, largely invisible workers who decades ago made keeping a house in order look much easier—<span>is one of the biggest reasons today’s middle-class families feel stretched for time.</span>
For centuries, a woman’s social status was clear-cut: Either she had a maid or she was one. Servants—often live-ins—who did the bulk of the cooking, laundry, and childcare were an indispensable part of life for virtually everyone who wasn’t a domestic worker him or herself.
Live-in maids, though, are now an anachronism—their outfits are more often seen as Halloween costumes or part of sexual roleplays. The fact that servants used to be a fixture of domestic life and are now reserved for the wealthy is one of the key, but little discussed, reasons why contemporary middle-class
