My nan was a nursery maid. Most people weren't in big houses. They were maids of all work.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My parents were very well-off, but we didn't have a crazy-huge house. We didn't have thousands of workers and staff; it was just my mum doing the majority of the housework. We didn't have nannies. I wasn't brought up in any sort of extravagant way.
As a child, I was raised with my grandmother, alongside all my cousins, and the kitchen was always full.
My mother came from a generation that did not want nannies. She had her first child at 24 and her last - me - at 42.
Nannies love working in our house because they never know who's gonna walk through the door.
Some readers tell me, 'We always treated our maid like she was a member of the family.' You know, that's interesting, but I wonder what your maid's perspective was on that.
I grew up in the kitchen, mostly with my grandfather, my mother and my aunt Raffy.
As children, we looked up to our maids and our nannies, who were playing in some ways the role of our mothers. They were paid to be nice to us, to look after us, teach us things and take time out of their day to be with us. As a child you think of these people as an extension of your mother.
My mum had me brought up by nannies and governesses. I didn't have much to do with my parents until I was 21.
We don't have nannies and all that, we look after our own kids. It's just what you do. If you want a big family that's just what you do, isn't it?
My grandmother was a typical farm-family mother. She would regularly prepare dinner for thirty people, and that meant something was always cooking in the kitchen. All of my grandmother's recipes went back to her grandmother.