Here's a nice article from The Atlantic on the history of domestic help. Enjoy.
For centuries, a woman’s social status was clear-cut: either she had a maid or she was one. Servants—often live-ins—who did the bulk of the cooking, laundry, and childcare were an indispensable part of life for virtually everyone who wasn’t a domestic worker him or herself.Live-in maids, though, are now an anachronism—their outfits are more often seen as Halloween costumes or part of sexual roleplays. The fact that servants used to be a fixture of domestic life and are now reserved for the wealthy is one of the key, but little discussed, reasons why contemporary middle-class men and women feel overwhelmed by responsibilities. The receding presence of hired help has been accompanied by tremendous and long overdue boosts in the rights of domestic workers. At the same time, it means that fewer families today can afford the household support that was available to previous generations; paying even a part-time nanny on the books can be a time-consuming and expensive bureaucratic procedure…
Read more: Maids in America: The Decline of Domestic Help – The Atlantic