Housekeeper paradox in modern parenting

Corruption, aggression, misappropriation of public funds, violence, divorce, sexual harassment, homosexuality, and other immoral behaviours among Tanzanians may be linked to children’s upbringing.

Despite these risks, families have relied on housemaids, who occasionally stay for extremely brief durations in their households for a variety of reasons, including dishonesty, indiscipline, and marital violence, to name a few.

As a result, children are subjected to care and upbringing by a variety of housemaids and carers from various sections of the country with varying behaviours, increasing the likelihood of ethical degeneration among them.

Even when students are sent to expensive boarding schools, they are treated to special care that does not lay a solid foundation for their future simply because their parents pay.

Ms Zainabu Idrissa, a sociologist, told The Citizen that the world has rapidly transformed to the point that both men and women are equally engaged in economic generation activities.

She claims that the current tendency differs from the past, when wives were primarily responsible for their children’s upbringing and husbands were the family breadwinners.

“Couples fully engage in economic generation activities, making it difficult for them to have enough time to spend with children and therefore accurately shaping their behaviour as expected,” she says.

Ms Idrissa says parents and guardians are forced to look for housemaids to ensure cleanliness is maintained and children are taken care of, including guaranteeing their safety.

She reveals that sometimes housemaids are employed from different parts of the country, introducing the possibility of subjecting the children to mixed cultures as they grow up.

“Frequent changes of housemaids are sometimes caused by families struggling for cheap workers without considering the fact that they are given important responsibilities in raising their children,” she says.

“They are concerned with money paid to households instead of considering the impacts on their children, which is utterly destructive to society and the future generation,” she adds.

She was seconded by another sociologist, Mr Alfan Mduge, who says most housemaids are immature enough to provide guidance to children, noting that their majority are teenagers younger than 20 years old.

“For them, giving them the responsibility to shape children’s behaviour is a burden. Primarily, housekeepers themselves need the guidance of well-matured people in order to behave well,” he said.

Mr Mduge says the move adversely affects the behaviour of children due to a lack of appropriate people who can provide them with guidance in order to become good future citizens, as expected.

“Most of the time, parents and guardians are ignorant of the behaviour of their children due to the insufficient time they spend at home. Whenever they come to understand the misbehaviour, it is always too late, forcing them to deal with damage control,” he says.

“Most of the youth today have been brought up and taken care of by their upbringings, turning parents and guardians into family providers,” he adds.

A psychologist, Mr Saldin Kimangale, says many Tanzanians have been severely affected by frequent changes of housemaids in childhood.

Furthermore, he says children need more adaptation time in order to adapt, socialise, and have better interactions with new people (housemaids).

“Whenever a child starts to adapt, have confidence, and freely interact with housemaids, parents and guardians terminate contracts with them,” he reveals.

“At that juncture, children have already acquired some of the characters and behaviours from the housemaid and are preparing to welcome the newly recruited housemaid, leading to an amalgamation of characters,” he says.

According to him, it is an indisputable fact that no housekeeper had the dream to work in that capacity; therefore, some of them pay little attention to the job because they are dreaming of something else in the future.

“The bad thing is that housemaids are not treated well in most houses or workplaces. It is easy for a stranger to know the housemaid and children during the very first visit to the house,” he says.

“Mistreatment ranges from their appearance to their tireless working while the children are seated playing video games or watching soap operas. This could lead to unfair treatment of children once the parents or guardians are away,” he shares.

A Dar es Salaam resident, Ms Juliana Massabo, says when these incidents are coupled with the luxurious treatment the children receive in boarding schools, they totally end in destruction.

“Some of the expensive boarding schools have employed maids who would do everything, including the laundry of underwear. Maids are threatened to lose their jobs, and some of them have been victimised by advising students to take care of their undies,” she laments.

“Parents and guardians should be careful with schools that have admitted their children because instead of preparing them to be good citizens (future parents), they are making late discoveries of destruction,” she suggests.

Mr Mduge urges parents and guardians to handsomely pay housemaids in order to make them enjoy the job they are doing.

“They should be paid in line with the weight of responsibilities they are carrying because, in most houses, they are the ones sleeping late and waking up early in order to get things moving,” he suggests.

“The more the housemaids are loved, the more they love their job and members of the family, especially the children,” he says.

Ms Idrissa says parents should strive to spend more time in their homes after work hours in order to understand the grievances facing their children and resolve them with immediate effect.

“Parents and guardians should turn housemaids into their best friends and incorporate them in their families, something that will increase their confidence in sharing issues pertaining to the children and the general children’s socialisation development,” she says. According to her, parents and guardians should also accept the fact that housemaids are the ones who better know the behaviour of the children and therefore increase collaboration in the resolution.

However, Mr Kimangale was of the view that parents should research and get appropriate people to serve as housekeepers to prevent frequent changes of housemaids at their homes.

“They should make enough efforts to choose proper individuals who will fit their families,” he says.

Community Development, Gender, Elderly, and Children minister Dorothy Gwajima said when tabling the 2023/24 budget in Parliament in Dodoma that the government has conducted capacity-building training for 110 housemaids.

Furthermore, she told the Budget House that the training aimed at building a common understanding of the best way to provide care in the homes for the children and the country in general.

She said the training is slated to be continuous, noting that they would expand to all regions across the country, with Dar es Salaam being the starting point.

According to her, the government, in cooperation with the private sector, will continue to build the capacity of housemaids in order to improve their efficiency.

“We will ensure that they are trained to acquire useful knowledge and skills that will enable them to perform their responsibilities as intended,” she revealed.

“During the training, we emphasise the need for them to be accountable in performing their responsibilities and abide by the principles of human rights,” she adds. The minister went on to advise parents and guardians to allocate enough time to spend with their children so that they can be aware of the challenges they are grappling with and collaborate with housemaids to end them.

“Parents must know that housemaids cannot fit in their shoes; rather, they are there to provide assistance and play the role of acting parents whenever the parents and guardians are not at home,” she says.

“They should create good rapport with housemaids to make sure everything goes right as expected,” adds Dr Gwajima.