Financial Times - Are maids bad for Dubai kids?

But excessive pampering is probably the more immediate risk. As the headmistress of Safa Kindergarten, Sylvia Al Hazmis spots maid-dependence already in toddlers. “The children who are brought up without a maid are more independent,” she says. “This is what we see in the nursery. Children who rely on maids are too lazy.” She thinks parents must establish clear guidelines for their maids and take care about the example they set. “When the father asks the maid to bring a Kleenex box or a glass of water from the kitchen, the children are watching. What do you expect? It’s these small, small, little things,” she says. For Blaise Vas, a 29-year-old IT consultant and standup comedian, the effects of mollycoddling can stretch far into adulthood.”

Dubai - Given its love of superlatives, Dubai is missing an opportunity. Surely, it is high time someone contacted the Guinness Book of Records to check the rules for world’s crappest parents and most bratty kids? But maybe the best shot for another record is in the associated category of overworked and underpaid maids? “When I went to the pool at my building there was a family of five children in the water,” says Ali, a Palestinian executive. “The parents were nowhere to be seen and a young maid had been left in charge of them all.”

Yet, in Dubai, this maid represents an entire category of poorly-paid employees who come here as domestic workers but end up substitute parents. For Paul, a Philippine parent with many friends who work as maids, this is now almost standard. “There’s this tendency to leave everything to the maid - especially the kids,” he says. “That’s the difficult part for the maid. They love the kids. But they do resent it.”

For some maids this can even lead to a difficult emotional dilemma. “You often hear maids say, ‘if not for the kids, I would have left the family long ago’,” says Paul.

However, the other victims of the UAE culture of outsourced parenthood could well be the children. “Of course it’s a negative,” says Dr Riham Ammar of Jebel Ali International Hospital. “Leaving children all day with a maid is damaging. Parents are not aware of the kind of discipline being used. There is even a very small percentage of abuse.”

But excessive pampering is probably the more immediate risk. As the headmistress of Safa Kindergarten, Sylvia Al Hazmis spots maid-dependence already in toddlers.

“The children who are brought up without a maid are more independent,” she says.

“This is what we see in the nursery. Children who rely on maids are too lazy.” She thinks parents must establish clear guidelines for their maids and take care about the example they set.

“When the father asks the maid to bring a Kleenex box or a glass of water from the kitchen, the children are watching. What do you expect? It’s these small, small, little things,” she says. For Blaise Vas, a 29-year-old IT consultant and standup comedian, the effects of mollycoddling can stretch far into adulthood. “I have friends who can’t function unless they have someone there all the time – to make the bed and do the laundry. It makes them unreliable. Dubai kids are the world’s laziest people,” he says. He also sees the problem being made worse by employers who expect their maids to provide constant childcare but treat them without basic consideration. “It makes me really sad to see how maids are treated - they must be so miserable,” he says. “It’s ghastly - the things I’ve seen in shopping malls, people just pushing them around.” Racism and a lack of cultural sophistication make the problem worse. “Some people here do really well but only develop financially not socially,” he says. “Inside they are still village idiots - these are the least appreciative of their maids.” On the other hand, domestic helpers who are treated with respect and appreciated can make a huge contribution to happy, well-adjusted childhoods. Robin, a British lawyer brought up in the West Indies, remembers his mother’s helper as part of the family.

“It was a relationship of genuine affection,” he says. “Certainly my life was enhanced by being exposed to her family and people of different backgrounds.” Sadly, he has witnessed rather different attitudes in Dubai. “I don’t agree with the peanuts maids get paid in Dubai – and from what I’ve seen people abrogate all their responsibilities to them,” he says. In the long run there may be heavy price to pay. Indeed, Dr Raymond Hamden of the Comprehensive Medical Centre jokes that it can also be a financial one.

“Children get raised by housemaids because parents are so focussed on work,” he says. “But in the future the extra money the parents earn may go on a psychologist to treat the children who felt neglected, abandoned or rejected.”