More women are discovering that they really can do it all — but only with a little paid help. Housekeeping jobs have seen a spike in popularity over the past year, with more upper-middle-class women hiring household managers to help them do everything from packing lunches to planning vacations.
Tech entrepreneur Jessica Peterson told the Boston Globe that she’s seen more women express interest in either working as household managers or hiring them, including herself.
“One of the things that I went through is, ‘Oh my gosh, this is so privileged,’” she confessed. “I’m a middle-class kid. We didn’t have this help growing up. How do I deal with this guilt of doing this? But you’re giving women jobs, and you’re helping another family to make ends meet by using somebody’s services. If you’re paying people a good, decent living wage, you can create meaningful work for other people and create a local economy.”
Some 10% of households employ cleaning services, a much more normalized form of household delegation. Although a “household manager” may conjure up images of Mary Poppins or Nanny McPhee, she’s really just a woman who’s there to help out. Sometimes, she’s a mother herself.
Danni Lerner, who charges $65 an hour for her services as a personal concierge, says she has a young child, and sometimes, she can’t always get the chores done at home. But the rise of household managers has given her an entrepreneurial opportunity.
“Women who hire me can feel much more productive in their own life, in business and family, if they can offload some of this onto someone else,” she said. “I’m a clone of you. We all wish we could be in two places at once, but we can’t.”
The idea of the household manager is particularly appealing to women, who are still more likely than men to be responsible for household tasks such as laundry, cooking, and cleaning, according to a recent Gallup poll. So the relationship between the household manager and the overwhelmed homemaker can be a symbiotic one, where the first brings home extra cash, and the latter has a chance to watch her son’s soccer game instead of cleaning the kitchen at home.
Not every household can afford this dynamic, though; Peterson spends $200 per week on the service. For those who can, however, it provides a refreshing escape from the unattainable demand of having it all.
