Domestic Help

A RECENT book on marriage is filled with splendid suggestions for happy home-life. One of its most interesting chapters is entitled “Those Who Help Us.” It glorifies the domestic personnel, those who despite the beautiful derivation from the ancient word prefer now to be called the help.

It is clear first of all that their reason for existence is not that their employers have a right to lead a lazy life because the help dispense them from working. Those who secure help for themselves must work as well as their servants. Since the demands of motherhood or of education for the mother or father, or professional duties outside the home constitute heavy obligations which will not leave time for all the housework too, it is easy to understand that they will call in helpers.

The ancient Latin word, famuli, which was used to designate the servants who shared the life of the family, familia, strikes the right note. Hired help should not be slaves in the service of hard and overbearing idlers; they are an enlargement of the family for a common task in which all hearts and all activities performed together form but a single unit, with each person in his proper place, but in intimate cohesion with the rest, or ought we not say, “intimate communion” with the rest.

Thanks be to God, we can still find employers who do consider their servants in this light and also servants whose spirit of charity makes their task if not always easy at least always loved, servants for whom it is an honor to serve.

In reality, masters of the house as well as hired help have the duty to serve. The useless have no place at all in Christian society. Saint Paul says that they who do not work have no right to eat. But the same kind of service is not required of all. In an army, there are those who fight on the front line, those who transport food supplies and munitions, those who prepare the ammunition behind the lines or spend themselves in the numberless tasks the country needs done. All contribute to the good of the whole.

To serve in the more humble positions requires a greater virtue, above all when this service requires subordination to those who have authority; we will never praise those too much who accept the employment of serving others, not with jealousy in their hearts and only because necessity forces them, but with humility and charity.

Those who are obliged to have domestic help ought to hold them in high esteem. They would of course fail in their duty if they let each one have his own way in the running of things; in domestic society as well as in every other society, there must be authority to be respected.

Employers must not demand tyrannically more than is fitting; they should give sufficient recompense for the services rendered. They need not think they have fulfilled their whole duty just because they pay a just wage; in a family all have rights, each one according to his position has a right to the affection of all. Employers who are parents must insist that their children be respectful to the help. The help should be invited to live in the atmosphere of the home and while high moral standards must be required of them they should be allowed liberty in their religious life.

A family is a domestic community. The zeal of all must be aroused for the well-being of each and in such a way that God may be glorified to a maximum degree in this nest where the great rule is understood to be not the code of the worldly spirit but the peaceable demands of the Gospel.