Too proud to pay - a nation's grubby secret
Sydney Morning Herald February 11 2005
By Adele Horin
The myth of the classless society lives on: a lot of busy Australians refuse to hire a house cleaner even though they could afford to do so - and need one.
"Australians don't want to employ domestic help. It's partly to do with the idea that in Australian society it's not appropriate," said Janeen Baxter, Professor of Sociology at the University of Queensland.
Her study into paid household help reveals that 19 per cent of Australian households hire someone regularly to clean the house or do the gardening.
"It's surprisingly low given the huge increase in married women working, and the growth in cleaning companies," she said.
She reported yesterday on the findings at the Family Matters Conference in Melbourne, hosted by the Australian Institute of Family Studies.
Based on a sample of 2231 people aged 18 to 54 in 1997, it shows that people's attitudes to paying someone to clean up their mess are critical.
"If you can't afford a cleaner in the first place, it doesn't matter what your attitudes are," Professor Baxter said. "But where people had the money - and the need - attitudes play a big role."
Even a person with a high income, a busy career and children would baulk at hiring a cleaner if they believed "you really should be doing it yourself," the study showed.
As well, people who believed that "it's not worth it, you have to clean up beforehand," are unlikely to hire help no matter how rich they may be or chaotic their home life. And those who believed that others could not do as good a job as they did, also desisted.
The study showed the activity most commonly performed by paid help was cleaning (57 per cent), gardening (41 per cent) and washing and ironing (31 per cent).
Other studies show women's time spent on housework has declined significantly over the years and men's involvement has increased only marginally.
This suggested that dual earner families in particular may have turned to paid help to do the work women once did.
At the same time, families ate in restaurants more often, and bought fancy domestic appliances in an apparent effort to cut the domestic workload.
Professor Baxter said women were more likely to mention financial constraints as the reason they did not have a cleaner.
Men were more likely to say that people should do their own domestic work.
"They believe it's work you should do yourself, but they don't mean men should do it," she said.
The study was co-authored by Belinda Hewitt and Mark Western.