Working mothers: Why we’re better off without nannies

Managing a career and being the same person responsible for household chores is hard work.

However, some working mothers have made the conscious decision to live without hired domestic help.

They have weighed the options and decided that for them, the struggle of managing two jobs (office and home) is better than the trouble of dealing with what they perceive as nanny drama.

Michelle Anyango, 28, works in pharmaceutical sales. She has a 4-year-old boy. She decided to give up on the idea of a live-in house help after hiring (and firing) seven of them in a span of a year.

“It seemed like I was always in the process of looking for one even when I had one in the house! People told me that I was the problem …” She trails off with a laugh.

Michelle admits she can be a little controlling, “I just like things in a certain order and nannies find this hard to conform to. I take it as disrespect, as if they don’t take me seriously because I am young.”

INTIMATE SPACE

Michelle says her house just wasn’t running in order; she was always angry; the house helps were always sulking, and she in turn got worried about their attitude and how it would affect how they treated her child.

“I just got tired of living in constant angst. It doesn’t matter who was wrong; the bottom line is that my house was a toxic environment.”

Domestic managers, (popularly known as DMs), have access to people's most personal and intimate space — the home.

For most women whom Saturday Magazine talked to, the sentiment of having a stranger ‘all up in your space’ came up occasionally.

“When someone is living in your home, it is hard to know where to draw the boundaries,” says Joan Muthoni, a restaurant manager in Westlands, Nairobi.

“For example, when I get home I want to slump in the couch, have a glass of wine and unwind. I had this DM who would come and chill in the sitting room with us when she was done with her chores — and she would always want to talk! It gets tricky because you don’t want to be mean.”

"How do you, for example, tell someone you want to watch your show by yourself without sounding like a jerk? Do you ask her to leave or do you accept that having her budge into your intimate space is the price you have to pay for a lighter load of work?”

RECKLESS

Joan, a single mother to two boys aged 10 and six, says she reveres boundaries: “I used to be friendly to my house helps. But I learnt the hard way that familiarity creates contempt. When my children were younger, I thought that if I became extremely friendly with my house helps - gave them all the freedom, made them feel at home - it would ensure that they took better care of my children. I was wrong,” says the restaurant manager

One day, Joan received a call from her neighbour telling her that her then-seven and three-year-old children had been in the neighbour’s house for hours.

The help’s phone went unanswered. Joan hurried home to find the door to her house ajar, help nowhere to be found.

“A few days later, I received a call from the girl’s mother asking me for her pay. I was livid. This girl had abandoned my children, left the house unlocked and you are asking me to pay her?!” It later emerged that the house help had left because she was pregnant.

When Joan shared this with her neighbour, the latter revealed that the help’s boyfriend had spent the day in Joan’s house on many occasions. “The neighbour said, 'that girl always told us you were cousins; so I didn’t find it odd when she had guests in the house."'

PERSONALITY

The problem, Saturday Magazine found out, is not the inability to find ‘good’ house helps, but the trouble in making two strangers with extremely different personalities and sensibilities coexist in a closed intimate space.

One of the ladies interviewed, an academic and research writer and mother of three children (14, 12 and eight), said she had to let her recent help go because the latter didn’t understand the concept of ‘going about her work quietly’.

“I work from home,” she explains. “I would be buried in my work or be on a work call and she would be in the other room either talking on her phone or playing the radio too loudly. I don’t think she was doing it intentionally — she just had one of those really vivid and imposing personalities.

"I know it is a little probably too much to ask someone to tiptoe around the house especially if she has to clean. But my work requires silence and isolation — in fact, I work from home because the office space, even if it’s quiet, the fact that there are people around makes it distracting.”

In spite of a heavily involving workload and three children, she has since opted to stay without domestic help.

CAREER

Although not well-documented, the International Labour Organisation estimates that there are roughly two million domestic workers in Kenya.

Reports of mistreatment in the industry have necessitated the implementation of policies such as the Employment Act (2007), which defines the basic rights and fundamental freedoms of domestic workers on issues such as leave, wages and working conditions.

Under ideal terms and conditions, domestic work is a credible and much needed source of employment.

Besides, in an economy that is demanding that both parents have an income, the reprieve (from household chores and child care) that DMs offer makes it possible for mothers to hold increasingly demanding full-time jobs and pursue career ambitions.

Working mothers have a lot on their plate. While quitting a job to stay at home is not an option, how do those who choose not to have help handle it all?

ROUTINE

Michelle says not having a house help does not mean that she hasn’t been asking for help.

“My husband and I have had to reorganise our schedules so that either one of us is at home when our boy gets home from kindergarten,” she says, “otherwise I don’t think I could handle it by myself”.

She reckons the most challenging parts of her days are the mornings. “I wake up at 4am, do my prayer and meditation and a 30-minute yoga session. When I oversleep and skip meditation and exercise, I am less grounded and the morning gets disorderly.

"When you are trying to manage so many things, the most important thing is focus, order and a very strict routine that everyone is on board with.”

The goal of Michelle’s morning routine is to have everybody ready to leave the house at 8am.

“After my meditation and exercise, I shower and dress up. By this time, hubby is also up. He starts the day by making us breakfast and packing the child’s bag. As he’s getting ready for work, our son is up and I am prepping him for school. Then we all have breakfast and voila.”

BONDING

Michelle agrees that having a house help could probably afford them an extra hour of sleep or a less stringent morning, “but then again the unexpected gift has been the intimacy that him making breakfast and me dressing my son for school has given us. It’s hard work but we have learnt how to work as a team.”

Joan has to do it all herself. “I have had to cut back on my social life,” she shrugs. “I don’t have the luxury of staying out late unless I am working. This has been a blessing in disguise because I realised that the extra hours I spend with my children are hours I should have been spending with them anyway, help or no help.”

Joan says she manages her chores by "planning for the important stuff and not sweating [over] the unimportant".

“I have a meal plan, so I don’t waste time wondering what to cook. I buy a week’s worth of groceries and have as many precooked meals in the fridge. My children are older now so they are able to manage simple things.

"If I am going to be home late, the 10-year-old knows how to microwave food. By not sweating [over] the simple stuff, I mean, that if I am tired, I allow myself not to do dishes and to not have a perfectly kept house.”

DEMAND

Both Michelle and Joan reiterate that even though they have cleaners coming in once or twice a week to do thorough clean, managing everyday chores (otherwise handled by live-in helps) is still hard work.

“It’s in the details,” Joan says. “For example, even if you work twice as hard (which you have to) and meet your work obligations, you will still feel judged when you rise from your desk at 5pm on the dot so that you can be home early enough.

"Quite simply, you will always feel that something or someone needs your attention around the clock. Paying attention to yourself feels like a guilty treat.”

With this in mind, is the struggle of fully managing office and home still worth not having to deal with DMs drama?

“There is no perfect scenario,” the academic researcher and mother of three says. “You make a choice depending on what you can and can’t put up with; you accept it and try to make it work.”