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A stroll through the mall, the local park or an elementary school quickly reveals a social reality here. Many children are being attended to by nannies and maids.

The sight of these domestic servants, often decked out in fading pink and white outfits while feeding or carrying a child, is so common that anyone who has been in the country for any time hardly notices it anymore. In fact, the sight of actual parents carrying or feeding their children is more likely to elicit for more stares.

If you are reading this around mealtime, look out your window and count the number of domestic helpers versus actual parents trailing behind some kid with a spoonful of nasi goreng. The scoreboard will, no doubt, tilt heavily in one direction.

With more families having two working parents, leaving the kids in the hands of maids or nannies seems like the only logical solution, save for (or despite) the presence of grandparents.

This type of arrangement is certainly nothing new or novel in Indonesia. With the longstanding prevalence of maids, most of today’s Indonesian adults, at least in bigger cities, were, in all likelihood, also nanny-raised. While nannies were not as ubiquitous a few years ago as they are today, many older Indonesians would not have trouble naming, and even reminiscing about, that one housemaid (mbak or ibu) who bathed and fed them once upon a time.

Sylvia Socilia, a mother of two boys, says her part-time job has required her to employ an array of help at home.

Sylvia, who works at her husband’s company, says having a nanny and a part-time maid, in addition to the full-time maid, helps her get through her day more efficiently. The extra assistance also allows her and her husband to relax after a hard day at work.

“We are normally able to have lunch or dinner together, without having to switch places all the time [with one us watching the children while the other one eats],” she said.

Frida Kusuma, a full-time employee at a palm oil plantation company and the mother of an 18-month-old son, said help was crucial in maintaining the mental well-being of parents.

“It’s far less tiring with a nanny. At least when you are really exhausted, there is someone who can take over,” Frida said. She added that while she lived with her in-laws, they were often reluctant to assist in child-rearing matters.

Leny, a full-time mother of two, just says, “Well, wouldn’t you be exhausted without [a nanny]?”

Having a nanny, she said, helps her tremendously when it comes to taking care of her 10-month-old son.

“You can take care of other things when the baby is with the nanny. And in the end, it helps you avoid stress when taking care of the baby becomes too much, or boring,” she said.

Leny added that child-rearing guidance from an experienced nanny was also a huge plus.

Dessy Handoko, who works at the Indonesian stock exchange with her husband, says the lifestyle of today’s young parents making employing domestic help inevitable.

Dessy and her husband, Irhandy Valentius, have two toddlers and both spend long hours at the office. Irhandy often comes home after 9 p.m. only to continue working late into the night.

“We’re the type of parents who have the nanny take care of everything,” Dessy said. “So anytime we need to leave and go somewhere, we can, because we are highly mobile people.”

Of course, committing the well-being of a child, especially very young ones, to a nanny or a housekeeper is not without its negatives. Stories of child abuse at the hands of helpers are sadly not rare, while it’s practically a given that the parents and the help will have different ideas about how to raise children and what they should be taught.

“You never know what kind of things they will put into your child’s head,” said Frida, who recently fired a nanny after she refused to follow her instructions on how to give medicine to the baby.

Maria Yasmin, a mother of one, said that when left with help, a child’s exposure to questionable language, attitude and influences becomes an issue. Parents can try to limit exposure to unwanted influences by setting strict rules, but Maria said, at the end of the day, “you are never 100 percent sure because your child isn’t in your care.”

Leony Desliawati, an educational psychologist at a consulting company, acknowledged that there can be a need for help because of the fast-paced lifestyles of many of today’s parents. But she said that parents were ultimately in charge of the safety and well-being of their children.

“These days, there is no denying the prevalence of nannies, mostly because of the demands of working parents,” she said. “But problems arise when the help inadvertently becomes a substitute for the parents, or especially if the parents actually expect them to be substitutes, someone that can stand in for them.”

Leony said that children who bonded with these parental substitutes were at risk of having attachment issues and other problems dealing with the changes in their lives.

“If the child grows up identifying more with the help than the actual parents, it can cause real emotional problems,” Leony said.

Many working parents opt to employ individual nannies or different maids for each of their children. Of course, the arrangement means additional expenses.

Irhandy, Dessy’s husband, said that their annual budget last year included two helpers, one for each of their children.

“If you go for dinner at a restaurant, for example, that’s two extra adult mouths to feed that you always have to be aware of,” he said.

To cut their spending, Irhandy now only employs one nanny for his younger child, paying her Rp 1.3 million ($140) a month, while the family’s maid does double duty as a housekeeper and part-time baby sitter for the family’s older child, for which she is paid Rp 600,000 a month.

Although he has worked out the financial side of having caretakers for his children, Irhandy, like many other parents, worry about building a bond with his children.

“I hang out with the kids for about five hours a day on average,” Irhandy said, adding that he tries to make up for lost time during the weekend and early in the morning, before work.

But his youngest still prefers his nanny.

His wife, Dessy, isn’t worried about the children getting to attached to the nanny. “On the other side, if the help is unkind and disliked by the children, that’s not healthy either,” she said.

Sylvia’s younger son slept in a different room from his parents until he was one and a half years old (“So that he wouldn’t wake my husband up all the time”), a habit that the boy had gotten used to until he was forced to grow out of it. The family now sleeps in the same room.

“As long as you still spend quality time with them, they won’t get too attached to their nannies,” she said.

At the end of the day, however, it seems that most help-reliant parents have made peace with their decision, and aren’t about to go back.

When asked to list all of the benefits of having help with his children, Irhandy doesn’t miss a beat.

He said, “You have someone to keep an eye on them, feed them, prepare their milk, bathe them and clean their bathroom messes.”