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t’s the season for family time during the Idul Fitri (Lebaran) festivities, when virtually everyone gets a holiday as businesses and government offices wind down for at least a week.

Millions brave the exodus traffic for family gatherings in their hometowns. Many will also be enjoying the congestion-free capital. And to really relax together many families will head off to hotels with attractive discounts and promotions: “No maids? Just check in!”

For the “no maids” issue is a major part of the Lebaran season when domestic workers pack their bags after working so hard away from their loved ones for the whole year. Even before they leave the prospect of the house without them brings on headaches.

For Muslims, this means the last week of Ramadhan becomes a true test of patience, while fasting and plunging into household chores from preparation of the predawn meal onward. For others it equally means suddenly marshaling family members to get off the couch and away from gadgets and the TV to keep the house in order.

All this is sudden and stressful for the household manager, usually the wife and mother — which is why many might head off to hotels if they do not have to host Lebaran gatherings. The disruption of our comfort zone is always expected to bring some positive change: better appreciation of maids’ endless work, a bit of shared responsibility between spouses and children, instead of taking for granted that the house remains spotless and runs smoothly without lifting a finger.

Activists hope that such awareness will lead to a stronger push to pass the 12-year-old bill on domestic workers’ protection into law.

However, after the annual discomfort things return to largely the same – laziness regarding household chores and our sense of entitlement to dump them on abundant cheap labor; frustration with lazy kids — and the near zero appreciation of unpaid, largely women’s work.

Households are willing to pay at least Rp 100,000 (US$7.62) a day for substitute maids during Lebaran, while monthly wages are usually barely over Rp 1 million. But then the maids return and we toss aside worries over how Indonesia’s young will ever learn basic responsibilities such as cleaning up after themselves.

Today we have more men who are naturals when it comes to chores and taking care of infants, maybe picking up after exemplary parents. Yet the traditional picture seems dominant — with the career woman or housewife near to collapsing during the Lebaran season as she has given up asking for help from her family.

With such a pervasive mindset — that no one needs to do chores except unpaid and lowly paid women — a law on domestic workers is essential to protect them against slavery. What, slavery? Indignant employers will cite their benevolence, ignoring proposed requirements like the minimum wage, as most maids live in their employers’ homes.

But when maids are recognized as formal workers with decent, higher wages than they are paid today, with overtime — only then might we sit up and take over some of the washing.