
Today a friend of mine in Singapore asked me why here are so many child maids in Morocco, and why they are not going to school. When I first moved to Morocco in 1993, this was one of the issues which really shocked me, and I wondered the same thing.
Today, after living in Morocco for 17 years, I see that there are two sides to every question, and I can now understand why the phenomenon was so wide-spread. However, since 2001, the situation has really changed, and I would like to take this opportunity to correct the world image on this point. HERE is a story about how village girls are now going to school, where formerly this would not have been possible.

In the mid-1990’s there were still a lot of child maids. These days, there are very few, thanks to the present king, who is highly dedicated to improving education in Morocco. He has built new schools all over the country, even in rural areas, and at least 85-90 percent of young girls are now going to school. Child maids are now becoming very rare. (Even adult maids are now getting much harder to find!)

Here is what I have come to understand through my years of living in Morocco. Usually when children HAVE been put out to work as maids (as young as six years old in cases I have known of personally), it has happened not because their families didn’t love them, but because their families were so POOR that they couldn’t even afford to FEED them (and I’m talking a mainstay diet of bread and tea even being too expensive).
Also, it costs the family money for the children to go to school. School fees are free, but the books and paper are not (although the cost of books is HEAVILY subsidized by the state). Also, in the past, when there were not any schools close by, especially in rural areas, it was not safe for girls to walk long distances to school (fear of rape and the like). This was true even on the outskirts of major cities, where girls might have to walk alone through two miles of deserted areas, one way, to get to school. This safety aspect is really changing with the construction of more schools, and now more familes are willing to let their girls attend, now that the pathway to school is shorter and safer.
While child maids DO still exist, there are FAR FEWER of them every year. Regarding the abuse question, yes, it’s true that some of them are still abused. However, this issue is now being addressed regularly on the Moroccan television, in Arabic, with documentaries exposing the abuses. With these documentaries which greatly increase discussion of the issue among the common populace, and the newly increased educational opportunities, both employment of, and abuses of childhood maids are continuing to decline DRAMATICALLY. Among the people I know, 99.99999% of the population now is against employing child maids, and believes that all children should have an opportunity to get an education. An example of an article written by a Moroccan (in English) on this very issue can be seen HERE.
I have also seen many families employing child maids in the past who treated them well. (For a girl of 11-12 years old, a typical day might consist of getting up at 6 AM with the mother of the family to make bread and make breakfast for the family; assisting with cleaning and household chores such as cleaning, dishes, and making beds for up to four hours (with a break around 10 AM for coffee and snack). Lunch is served and eaten with the family around 1 PM. After lunch dishes, then the girl might have several free hours to nap, watch TV, and socialize with the family, followed by a coffee and snack with the family at 6 pm, and dinner with the family at 9-10 PM. Then she would help the mother wash up the dinner dishes.
It’s true that these particular maids of ten-fifteen years ago did not have an opportunity to go to school anyway. This is not a simple question. First, their families could not afford the inexpensive books and materials. Furthermore, many of them cannot survive back home without the small supplementary income that is paid to the family for the child’s services (in addition to her room and board).
Also, the Moroccan schools are quite rigorous, and you are allowed to repeat failed years only two times during your schooling. If you still cannot pass, you are asked to leave school. Many children from rural areas (or city areas) have illiterate parents who never attended school, and no one to help them with their homework or studies. So it is not as simple as saying that, “Now that a child maid has come to the city, the family could put her in school there.” She would already be too far behind to ever be able to do the work at that point (also typical school hours are 8:30 -11:55 AM, and 2:00-6:00PM).
So among kind families (of which there are many), a child maid was able to eat well, learn household duties, and earn a small salary which is generally sent back to her family to help them survive, as well as relieving them of the burden of feeding her. Many of these maids then marry someone from back home at a young age (now meaning about age 18, but formerly meaning about age 15).
However, as the years go by, there are fewer and fewer child maids. I have not known one family in the past five-to-eight years who employed a child maid, although I did know many families fifteen years ago who did. Indeed, even adult maids in general are starting to become too expensive and hard-to-find for many Moroccan families. (Unfortuantely, life here is not yet set up with modern conveniences — for example, upright vaccuums and mops do not even exist here yet, and few people have dishwashers — and if a woman wishes to have both a career and children, a maid is still a near-necessity.)
–Mary Mimouna