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ne of my childhood memories was of an editorial cartoon in a teenage magazine, in which teenagers in a Jakarta home are welcoming back their maids with great joy and thanks. The reason: piles of dirty dishes and clothes inside the house. That was 25 years ago.

Apparently, many middle-class Indonesians are frank about their helplessness in living without domestic helpers during the Idul Fitri week, when so many Indonesians return to their hometowns for the holiday. For many of them, the solutions are anything but easy. First option: ask for a temporary replacement. Second option: join the holiday and leave the city. The third option is the most extreme: stay in a hotel in the same city. Abandon the house because it is sinking.

The easiest option is, of course, to take care of the house yourself. But this option eludes many elites in Jakarta and other big cities for various reasons.

They are too busy. The house is too big. The children are too rowdy. Worst, some might react by saying, '€œDo you think I'€™m a maid?!'€

Domestic workers, housemaids, servants, whatever you call them, were originally slaves. Middle class Romans took foreign slaves, and rich Asians of the past usually had slaves of the same ethnicity. Nowadays, in the West only the very rich employ domestic help.

The film The Help showed how black maids were still treated as sub-humans in the southern United States as recently as the 1960s. Modern American comedies depict Spanish-speaking maids employed by rich white families in present-day California (the alternative is highly-educated British butlers or valets).

In Indonesia, maids have been employed in big and small houses since the colonial era. This is the case throughout Southeast Asia, as Filipinos, Cambodians, Indonesians and Sri Lankans take care of flats in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. In modern Asia, you don'€™t have to be rich to hire a maid.

In English, the word '€œmaid'€ used to mean an unmarried woman, but now it refers to female domestic servants, which are the overwhelming majority of household helpers. No Singaporean or Hong Konger wants to hire a male servant to look after their apartments, and most houses in Indonesia exclusively employ women to cook and clean.

Among the Indonesian elites, however, domestic helpers do more than that.

In addition to a housemaid, many urban Indonesian mothers employ full-time babysitters. In the West, babysitters tend to be female teenagers who work part-time to look after children while their parents are out (another American comedy fodder source). But here, babysitters look after the children for the whole day. Malls and supermarkets are full of mothers shopping, as their maid and babysitter trail along with the children.

Their relationships, however, can defy your expectations. Some mothers act like queens when at the car, and yet inside the supermarket they become completely dependent on the servant. She asks the servant '€” either the babysitter or the maid '€” what brands her children prefer, what'€™s out in the kitchen and what'€™s the name of this or that cleaning product.

Furthermore, the mother hardly communicates with her own children. The babysitter is the mediator. She asks the children what they want, orders them to follow and relays their messages to the mother. Compare them with expat mothers, even the Asian ones, who converse with their children.

I have two domestic helpers, a married couple. They work for about 10 hours a day '€“ washing and ironing, cooking, cleaning the house, repairing things, replacing the LPG canister and water dispenser, acting as couriers and messengers, removing pests and answering the door. But on Sundays, public holidays and evenings, the house has to do without them.

I am a lazy man, but the experience of living overseas has trained me to look after the home myself. And living in the 21st century, it couldn'€™t be easier '€” we have rice cookers, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, face masks and gloves, food delivery service and ready-to-cook seasonings.

I learned how Westerners and East Asians take care of their own houses, and some Westerners have big houses. If I'€™m not sure how to clean or fix something, I search for information online, and there are websites with checklists and step-by-step instructions on how to solve household maintenance problems.

Therefore, I am convinced that Indonesians'€™ complaints about managing their houses have to do with self-limiting culture. We are used to conforming to outdated ideas about social and gender hierarchies '€” that a distinguished woman must not wash the dishes and that a man must not wash anything at all, besides himself and his car.

As Deng Xiaoping famously did not care what color a cat was so long as it could catch mice, your home does not care about who is cleaning it. Cleaning it yourself does not make lightning strike (except if you are gardening during a thunderstorm). Western family men cook and mop, and they are still manly.

Relying on babysitters to take care of your children does not help either. Ditch the smartphone and start spending more time playing and talking with your children. Children can become more problematic and rebellious as they grow up because they believe they are neglected and unloved. If the activity makes your shirt messy, throw it into the washing machine and press start (do not forget to put in the detergent).

Finally, so many white collar workers complain about their evil and clueless bosses who burden them with so much work for such measly pay.

Ironically, at home they do the same things to their employees, the maids. Just because they came from villages and were not as educated as you does not make them less human or less Indonesian than you. They are not your slaves or your ladies-in-waiting. They are your employees.

I understand that life in Indonesia makes having a domestic helper a necessity. We, however, have mistreated our domestic helpers for too long. By acting like little dictators toward them, we have nurtured the age-old slavery/court hierarchical organization that does nothing good. A domestic worker is a worker, an employee.

So, now that your domestic worker has returned back to their workplace '€” your home '€” treat them with courtesy and respect. Treat yourself with respect. Most importantly, treat your home with courtesy and respect.

The writer teaches English and Australian cultural studies at Uni-Bridge, St. Aloysius High School, Bandung.