Serious Problems Await Malaysian Society As Maids Take Over Parenting Role

A leading psychologist warns that maids are beginning to replace parents. Children are growing up interacting more with the maid than with their parents as they spend less and less time with their children due to work commitments.

Monash University and Sunway Medical Centres clinical psychologist Paul Jambunathan said many children were learning their values from the maid rather than from their own parents, and "the presence of a maid affects family bonding in a very big way".

Speaking at the launch of the Gain Family Discovery Camp organised by health food company Abbott Malaysia yesterday, he said it is common to see children giving more respect to the maid than their parents.

"In some cases, the maids are the boss of the house and children obey the maid rather than their parents when told to stop doing something.

"Children are not being brought up by the right people any longer. Parents might as well have a shoplot, take their children and dump them there and let other people look after them," he said after the launch.

He said employers should provide day-care centres so parents can still interact with their children during working hours.

"Maids, teachers and drivers have taken away the God-given role of parenting," he said.

He said parents should be the primary educators of their children.

"Parents have to give their children love and attention, the primary diet for emotional development," he said. (NST)

***** It's indeed a frightening predicament we face today. On one side there are the financial considerations and the need to make ends meet while on the other we face the potential disaster of having an entire generation of kids brought up by foreign maids.

Clinical Psychologist Mr Paul Jambunathan is absolutely right when he says that Malaysian parents might as well 'have a shoplot, take their children and dump them there and let other people look after them'. But what viable alternative is there?