Singapore

Amahs: The Nannies for the Wealthy

After the establishment of the British settlement on Singapore, there was a European-style medical system for the British and other Europeans; gradually, through philanthropy and later government spending, there have been hospitals for the Chinese and other Asians. Most of the original European inhabitants employed servants to work in their houses, often a local nanny known as an amah who was responsible for bringing up children. Most of these were Chinese or Malay, but some families preferred amahs from the Eurasian population, descendants of the Portuguese who had lived near Malacca in modern-day Malaysia. As a result, after birth, many European children were handed over to amahs who remained with families throughout their lives, and often looked after two generations from the same family. This allowed European women to pursue their own pastimes—few had careers, but many were involved in unpaid work such as for charities and church groups.

There was often a great bond created between the growing child and his or her amah, which sometimes led to exaggerated fears of young white children being spirited away by their amah. A case that caused a great sensation in Singapore was that of Maria Hertogh in 1950. Her Dutch-Indonesian mother, when interned by the Japanese in Java, had handed the young girl to the keeping of a well-educated local friend, who, not knowing the fate of the parents, brought her up in Malaya (modern-day Malaysia). The discovery after the war that she was still alive caused her parents to launch a custody battle in the Singapore courts to try to get her to the Netherlands. Race riots resulted, and a generation of European residents became fearful of their children being taken by their amah, even though this had not been the case with the Hertoghs.

Many foreign expatriate families in Singapore to this day still employ local nannies, as do wealthy locals. Through history, the stories of the “bond-maids”—Chinese girls from poor families—have been part of many books, such as Janet Lim's autobiographical Sold for Silver (1958), Catherine Lim's The Bond Maid (1997), and Ralph Modder's Souls the Gods Had Forsaken (2003). Currently, most maids—the term amah is still often used—come predominantly from Indonesia, the Philippines, or the Indian subcontinent.

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