Thinking about whether or not to hire a helper? Here's how I landed on my decision.
If you are on the fence about hiring a domestic helper in Singapore, I see you.
Maybe you feel like you need one, but something is holding you back. It could be the cost, the idea of someone new living in your home, or having to adapt your household around someone else's presence.
My husband and I sat in that exact position for months, asking ourselves the same question so many working parents in Singapore ask: should we hire a domestic helper, or can we still manage without one?
Read on to find out how I decided to hire a domestic helper, and hopefully it helps you if you are where I was four years ago.
Where I was at the time
At that point in time, I had just gone back to work two months postpartum, and my son was about six months old. My mum was my primary caregiver in the daytime while I was at work.
We thought that because he was our second child, things would be easier, because we already knew what taking care of a baby would be like. But he was a boy, and honestly, his energy and character were just different from what we expected. He was a lot more active than our first one had been. On top of that, my mum was three years older than she was the first time she took care of a newborn, and she started raising her own concerns that she would not be able to manage once he started crawling and eventually walking.
So we started the conversation early, and it genuinely took us a good few months of going back and forth before we landed anywhere close to a decision.
The tipping point
We eventually landed on yes, and part of that was because we did not want my mum to struggle the way she was worried she would. But if I am honest, the bigger reason was actually us.
On the weekends, when we did not have my mum's help, we were completely wiped out, even though there were two adults at home. We were physically exhausted from five days of intense work, and by the time the weekend rolled around, we had so little left to give.
If all of our energy went into the basics like cooking, cleaning, running errands, and heading out the door, there was barely anything left for actual quality time, whether that was with the kids or with each other as husband and wife. And that was really the moment it clicked for us. We recognised it, we accepted it, and we stopped pretending we could just push through.
My husband has a full time job and I run a business, and neither of us wanted to take a back seat in our careers, so the honest answer was that we needed help. Hiring a helper as a working mum meant I did not have to choose between my business and my family. We had actually tried a part time cleaner every fortnight for close to a year before that, and while it helped, the weekends kept telling us the same story over and over, that we needed someone day to day, not once in a while.
The hesitations, and what I actually worried about
I want to be honest here, because I think this is the part people tend to skip over.
I was not actually too worried about the living arrangement itself, or having one more person in our space because I know that's just the fact of having a live-in domestic helper. That said, we knew we still had to simplify what we owned and rethink how our home was laid out, so that there was actual room, physically and mentally, for someone new to become part of our daily life.
Here were the questions I was actually thinking about:
What kind of questions should we ask during the interview process so that I can find the right one who is able to work well with us and suit our working style?
Is there anything we should look out for during the interview process that could signal any form of red flag?
What measures should we put in place to prevent issues like theft?
What ground rules should we set around the kids, our home, and her role?
How can we make her job easy, so that she can do her job well for us?
How we made the actual decision
Once we said yes in principle, deciding to hire a domestic helper in Singapore meant spending about one to two months researching properly, asking friends what challenges they ran into, which countries they hired from, and what they wished they had known earlier before making their own decision.
From there, we distilled it down to our domestic helper non-negotiables, the two that mattered most to us.
Communication. I needed her to communicate well and have a strong command of English, so that I could feel comfortable with someone living in my home, which meant our search naturally narrowed to helpers from the Philippines or Indonesia.
Similar age and motherhood. She had to have had kids of her own and be of a similar age to us. This came from personal preference more than anything else, and it is not a judgment on anyone who has not had children. I felt that someone who has raised a child before understands what it means to love a child, and would have the capacity to love mine as her own, in a way that felt different from someone who had never had that experience before.
Four years later
It has been four years since we made that decision, and I have never once regretted it.
She has loved my kids as her own, and has helped us so much in our daily lives. My husband and I get to show up fully in our careers, and honestly, we get to be more present as parents too, not despite having help, but because of it.
I have heard plenty of scary stories about helpers stealing money or having inappropriate relationships outside the home, and I am not naive to the fact that these things do happen. But we went in with an open, abundant mindset, treated her well from day one, and trusted that if we did our part right, we would find someone who treated us right in return.
Four years on, that has held true, and I do not say that lightly. With the right mindset and clear boundaries from the get go, I genuinely believe both sides can thrive.
If you are stuck exactly where I was
Here are the signs you need a domestic helper, framed as a few honest questions worth sitting with, one at a time.
Are you genuinely struggling with your day to day?
Not just the occasional rough day, but most days
Weekends leave you and your partner completely drained, even with two adults at home
Your energy goes entirely into cooking, cleaning, and errands, with nothing left for real connection
Any stopgap help you have tried, like a part time cleaner, keeps proving it is not enough
Would your quality of life genuinely improve with the right extra pair of hands?
You can picture real quality time with your kids and your partner coming back
The person currently helping you, a parent, an in law, is aging or struggling, and could use the relief
You and your partner are not willing to scale back your careers to cope
Are you actually willing or able to accommodate one more person into your home and your life?
You are open to adapting your space and your routines for someone new
You are ready to take on responsibility for another person's wellbeing, not just her labour
You have a clear sense of your own non negotiables, rather than assuming any helper will do
If your answers point to yes, I hope my story gives you something solid to weigh your own decision against. It took us months to get there, and that is completely normal. Take the time you need.
Written by Rae, co-founder of Toshi