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How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

• robg 9y ago
  Talking with a Boston cop, he tells me he's married to a nurse. I asked "Who has the most stressful job?". His response: "Her, she actually has to care about the people she works with."
  • fjsolwmv 9y ago
    And that's why we have BLM...
• mobilefriendly 9y ago
  This article is about weak men, men who are too lazy and slothful to shoulder responsibilities like running the household finances. Such men are more like children, doing the minimal amount possible, so lacking in initiative and organization that they are unable to even hire a cleaning service. Saying this is about "understanding" "emotional labor" is wrong because it lets weak, child-like men off the hook too easily for their failings. They are just lazy and ineffectual.
  • g13g32qgqgv 9y ago
    I want to say that I partly agree with you, but partly that I want to enhance what you've said a bit. I think stating it in terms of weakness is something that will help some men understand where they need to bring up their game. I know that I need to bring up my game in this area, and hearing you say it like that is a goad to me to do better. So on that front, I agree with you, and I thank you for stating this in a way that's motivating to me. Where I'm not in total agreement is just the example you picked. I would say that "household finances" has often historically been "men's work," especially when you think about investing and retirement planning. I don't want the author's other examples to get lost here. Cleaning and hair braiding were much closer to the heart of the things that I myself have been too "weak and ineffectual" to accomplish, in your words. When I think about how I could make my wife's life better, these types of things, not the finances, seem like the right place for me to start looking. Obviously, in every couple, there are going to be different things, but I'd guess in most cases this, not finances, is closer to the heart of where things are off.
  • cmiles74 9y ago
    I don't think this is an accurate characterization of the article. It is technically accurate that the male in this article did strike me as lazy in his reluctance to call around when hiring a cleaning service. But I think it's an unfair leap to (1) categorize him as "weak, child-like" and (2) dismiss the article as a whole based on this categorization. The main theme of the article, that managing the household requires a significant amount of work and that this work often goes not only unappreciated but that this lack of appreciation is both acceptable and expected strikes me as much more important. In particular, her husband was aware of the hassle involved in properly hiring a cleaning service and that's why he chose to avoid it. On some level we are all aware of the work that needs to be done but it is easy to forget that it happens. Towards the end of the article, there are examples that I found interesting: when she brushes the daughter's hair, it's no big deal but when her husband does it he expects praise. When the son tidies his room, he expects acknowledgement but the daughter performs the same task as a matter of course. In my own household, my partner and I strive for an even split in these duties. I have made numerous, painfully long calls to our insurance company to sort out bills and I did call around for quotes when we put up a fence around a portion of our yard. Still, it was painful for me to admit, I could see some of myself in the author's partner. In particular: > My husband, despite his good nature and admirable intentions, still responds to criticism in a very patriarchal way. And when the author talks about trying to explain this work and their feeling that it is unacknowledged. > ...he would take it as me saying, “Look at everything I’m doing that you’re not. You’re a bad person for ignoring me and not pulling your weight.” I often find myself getting defensive, often without a clear idea of why I am feeling attacked or unappreciated. I think, often, it boils down to feeling like I'm being accused of something. Lastly, the idea that this reaction was something I may have learned and internalized at an early age is also interesting and worth thinking about. I do think there's a tendency to think that gender roles are a thing of the past, and many ways these roles express themselves is subtle.
    • eradicatethots 9y ago
      Why should you be ashamed of this?
      • 9y ago
  • bryanlarsen 9y ago
    If a husband chooses to do a deep clean instead of calling around to find a cleaning service, it does not seem like laziness and more like a misunderstanding. It's quite likely that the deep cleaning involved more hours of work than calling around would have. The problem is that resolving misunderstandings can require a lot of "emotional labour", and it's often easier to just do things yourself rather than try to resolve the misunderstanding. But it's not solely her responsibility to resolve these misunderstandings, that's on her husband too. If not, your label of weak probably does apply even if lazy doesn't.
  • eradicatethots 9y ago
    I’m struggling to see how he is any of these things. Reading your past comments, I can’t find a single one with a follow up (maybe that means you’re weak and ineffectual)... never the less, this one seems cruel. Should I be surprised to see other commenters actually agree with you? Id be curious of a CEO who you think does these things. Most CEOs are successful people, so calling them “weak, ineffectual, lazy” sounds very hateful, and sad. And yet, this comment has only received support! I don’t think I’ll ever understand you people.
• slamdance 9y ago
  Edit: Personally, i find it a bit ridiculous the fact that people always find ways to blame other people for their own problems - in this case, someone is THINKING too much, and that somehow is someone else's fault? If you want help, ASK FOR HELP. Otherwise, we're being chauvinistic if we even offer. This is what society has devolved to. Does "Emotional Labor" exist? sure. But people need to manage their own mental stress levels. friends and family should help when they can, but they shouldn't be blamed necessarily be blamed for it. I don't want you to clean the dishes. I want you to WANT to clean the dishes.
  • musha68k 9y ago
    > “I don't want you to clean the dishes. I want you to WANT to clean the dishes.” I can relate to where you are coming from here, but I ultimately arrived at: “I want you to care about me wanting to have clean dishes in our shared home.”
  • dang 9y ago
    Could you please not use uppercase for emphasis? That's internet yelling, and violates the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
• jboynyc 9y ago
  This is a very good piece that makes a kind of labor visible that often goes unseen. The article quotes a few sociologists; the concept of "emotional labor" comes from another that isn't cited in the piece, Arlie Russel Hochschild. Hochschild also coined the term "the second shift" to refer to the wildly uneven gendered division of labor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlie_Russell_Hochschild#Work_and_family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlie_Russell_Hochschild#Work_...
• musha68k 9y ago
  I found this comic on the topic also insightful: “You should’ve asked” https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/ https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/
  • darkerside 9y ago
    Tell a man to fish, feed him for a day.
  • evanwise 9y ago
    Honestly, as far as that aspect goes, I found the comic helped me understand it better than the article did. While I think I understand the general concept of emotional labor, the example of the gift wrapping left out seemed kind of petty in that an item being out of place in a closet seems fairly easy for even an attentive person to miss and forget about. What I gatherer from the comic, is that it's more about situations in which one partner assumes that they don't need to do anything unless specifically asked.
  • greedo 9y ago
    I find that comic sexist; many men are house managers. Not all, but to assume that men are passive parents is insulting.
    • scott_s 9y ago
      The comic's author addresses this: https://emmacliten.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/you-shouldve-asked_034.png?w=1312 https://emmacliten.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/you-shouldve-... https://emmacliten.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/you-shouldve-asked_035.png?w=1312 https://emmacliten.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/you-shouldve-... https://emmacliten.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/you-shouldve-asked_036.png?w=1312 https://emmacliten.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/you-shouldve-...
      • KekDemaga 9y ago
        I wonder if a similar comic showing that more women in western countries murder their infant children than men (mostly due to postpartum depression but factually accurate) would be regarded as valid if similar explanations were provided as above.
• didgeoridoo 9y ago
  I'm not sure I buy this. In my experience at least, it all comes down to standards — it sounds like this woman has higher standards for what constitutes a "running household", and gets frustrated when her husband doesn't share those standards. It sounds like he would be content with boxes on the floor, dirty bathrooms, etc. When she asks him to raise the house to her standard, she is asking him to adopt her perspective of what is acceptable and what is not, which is not trivial. He needs to be asked to tidy up because he genuinely does not see a problem with things being messy. Why isn't the solution for the woman to compromise on her expectations, finding a middle ground for cleanliness and organization? Why must the man fully adopt her perspective?
  • Juliate 9y ago
    Why isn't the solution for the man to compromise on his expectations? The question goes both ways. If their mutual goal is living together, that is.
    • didgeoridoo 9y ago
      Compromise does indeed go both ways. I'm not seeing that here though. At no point does the woman say "well, I guess we just don't do that thing in our house." (Obviously when children come into the equation, the man's not knowing the pediatrician's phone number is true learned helplessness and laziness, rather than a difference in standards, because presumably both parties enjoy having a healthy child). I agree that the role of woman-as-manager is encouraged by societal expectations, but when it's this distressing, she needs to let go of some standards rather than piling them on to her emotional plate. You can't marry someone with different standards of cleanliness and expect yours to prevail — the only fair expectation is to land somewhere in the middle.
      • lm_nop 9y ago
        Its not like she's talking about polishing silver or some martha-stewart level domesticity. The standards of living the author describes are pretty basic. Dirty clothes on the floor? What is this, your college dorm!? It is an unlikely option that the man/husband could also raise his standards.
• rhapsodic 9y ago
  Based on its content, I'm surprised this made the #6 spot on the front page of HN, but now it seems to have disappeared altogether. I had to search to find it.
  • musha68k 9y ago
    I would actually say this is on-topic, as per HN FAQ: “If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.” I’ve learned quite a bit through this article. I now even see a possibility that ingrained dynamics like these could have lead to our industry’s well known lack of gender diversity. It’s food for thought for sure, wouldn’t you agree?
    • alexandercrohde 9y ago
      Well I know at least 8 Google-Sexism posts got flagged to hell (every single one that didn't have flags disabled IIRC), so I'm curious why this one isn't.
  • dang 9y ago
    Users flagged it, presumably because HN threads have a track record of not being able to stay civil and substantive when this sort of topic is invoked. There's also the baity title, which looks neutral on the article page because of the whopper it's paired with, but amounts to a Molotov cocktail here. Internet forums—or at least this internet forum—does not do well with gender generalizations in titles. So in accordance with the HN guidelines ("please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait"), we'll s/men/some people/. However, the current thread is fine so far, so we'll try turning off the flags. Edit: in response to a reasonable complaint about my 'some people' edit, I changed the title to the least baity substring of the HTML doc title. That's what I'd have used if I had seen it sooner anyhow; we always prefer to use language from the article itself, down to the word where possible.
    • dredmorbius 9y ago
      Speaking for myself: the article, the original title, the subtitle, and the hero image are all blatant flamebait. There are a few, small, nuggets of truth here. What I mostly see is a dysfunctional relationship, grossly mis-matched expectations, and more than a slight possiblility of some deep-seated psychological issues. Even is you see all of these points without subscribing to any anti-feminist viewpoints (and I don't), it's pretty flagrantly obvious that those will appear in spades in a discussion (and have, and have, mostly, been rightfully flagged). The third-party version of this might make for an interesting case study, and might even have carry-over to various workplace and inter-personal dynamics. As written and presented -- blame applying to the author and Harper's Bazaar -- this is poisoned.
• bryanlarsen 9y ago
  I spent about 5 years trying to convince my wife to let me hire a housekeeping service. I had several in, and none met her standards. I finally found one she loves. Me, I would have been happy with the first one that I had in.
• EarthIsHome 9y ago
  > It is difficult to model an egalitarian household for my children when it is clear that I am the household manager, tasked with delegating any and all household responsibilities, or taking on the full load myself. I can feel my sons and daughter watching our dynamic all the time, gleaning the roles for themselves as they grow older. This part struck a chord with me.
• deweller 9y ago
  Here's some advice for people of all genders: Learn to make decisions immediately and quickly. By laboring over a decision for hours or days, you can unintentionally turn a trivial task into a heavy one. By making decisions quickly you save yourself all the extra emotional and mental labor. Sure you will make mistakes, especially as you are learning to do this. But you will get better at it with practice. It is a skill worth pursuing. I understand there are some decisions that should not be made quickly. Learn to recognize those decisions and create a system for yourself for processing those in a reasonable amount of time. For me, choosing which housecleaning service to hire is not a decision that should be labored over.
  • bryanlarsen 9y ago
    > not a decision that should be labored over. Getting the right service is obviously important to her. But that doesn't mean the decision should be labored over -- the cost of a wrong decision isn't high; if you don't like the one you hired, just try another one.
    • Tobani 9y ago
      Paradoxically, sometimes the only way you can get enough information to make the "right" choice is to make a choice in the first place. If it isn't a one-time choice, the downside is generally minimal.
  • cmiles74 9y ago
    I agree that this is an important skill to cultivate, as well as the ability to sum-up approximate costs accurately and quickly. That said, I do think that when we are looking at adding a regular, recurring cost to our budget we would be well advantaged by doing the requisite research. In the case of a cleaning service, it's possible (perhaps even preferred) that they'll be performing this service when no one is home. In my own experience, I have found a shockingly wide variety of price points when looking for such a service. My own rule of thumb is to get three estimates, hopefully at least one from a company or service that was recommended by someone I know personally.
  • 9y ago
• rhapsodic 9y ago
  Long ago, I heard someone remark, "some women will marry a man, and immediately try to change him into something that he is not and never was. It never works, and they both end up frustrated and miserable." In the ensuing decades, I've watched that scenario play out many times, with both genders in both directions. (But mostly it was the woman trying to change the man.)
• jacknews 9y ago
  "emotional work" ??
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• nkrisc 9y ago
  This is a topic where the more I learned about it the more I opened my eyes to it and saw it happening on my own life. I'm very easy going and there isn't much I get too worked up about. My wife, on the other hand, is a meticulous planner. I could see her getting stressed out making decisions for a vacation. I realized that by not caring, I wasn't helping and offloading the burden to her. Now I truly didn't care if we went to restaurant A or restaurant B, so she always had to make the decision. Since realizing this I've relieved her more from all the decision making, even if I really don't care about the outcome. Why should I do this? Well, because she's my wife and while I may not care which restaurant we go to, I care about her. TL;DR It's real and I decided to do take up more of this emotional labor in life.
  • Waterluvian 9y ago
    That resonates with me. But I struggle a lot. I feel like my wife's irrationality on some subjects forces us to both spend some of our very limited time here feeling anxious and negative. It's frustrating and feels very one sided. Why can't she meet me half way and stop being so anxious on half the events? Well.. because irrationality doesn't work that way; I get that. I think that true zen for me is finding a way to just relax and be okay with emotional inefficiency. Not sure how to do that.
    • ada1981 9y ago
      Conflict in relationship, especially intimate relationships, is rarely about the content. It's typically that the context of the situation brings up an emotion that is taboo / off limits, one that the person has spent a life time avoiding. This avoidance is typically do to previous developmental or shock trauma. You can actually learn to use your conflicts as a psychedelic of sorts to do deep transformational work, if you have the right context, language and tools. From my view, this inability to transform conflict is why most relationships end and why most people in relationships aren't happy (despite relationships being the single greatest predictor of health and life satisfaction.)
      • athenot 9y ago
• imgabe 9y ago
  I think this current trend where we assign responsibility for our emotions to everyone else is highly toxic and ultimately self-defeating. You can learn to control your own emotions or you can walk around waiting for everyone else to make sure you're happy and comfortable. Only one of these strategies is going to have any chance of success.
  • ada1981 9y ago
    I'd offer a third option which is taking responsibility for your pain / emotions, but not trying to "control" them. Instead, welcoming and allowing all of them and creating space to engage and explore them. This can lead to much deeper connection with your self and others, and increased health. When you do this, you will also be more available to help others feel their emotions and to help them take responsibility for feeling them fully. I quibble over the term "control" because I see much of our cultures problems as an avoidance -- either making it others people's job, or turning to drugs / addictions / psychiatry / etc. to avoid feeling.
    • imgabe 9y ago
      You're right, control is the wrong word. It's more "don't let them control you". With practice I find I can feel an emotion, recognize it as an emotional response, then either find some productive action to address what's causing it or if none are available, let it go. Not that I'm always perfect at doing this, but I find it's more helpful than just being annoyed/sad/angry and waiting for some external change in circumstances to make me feel better.
      • ada1981 9y ago
        I've been living my entire adult life after having been diagnosed schizophrenic at 18 (and bipolar at 31). Choosing to live without medication, this practice of feeling emotions fully and letting them teach me whatever they are meant to, has allowed me to transcend that diagnosis. I've found that within hard to experience emotions are often anchient patterns or old traumas waiting to be released - everything from my father cheating on my mom, to my step dad abusing us, to being circumscized, to being terrified by Catholic propaganda. I find that when I surrender to the emotions as sacred teachers (sometime using altered states like Breathwork to get closer / amplify them), that I end up with more clarity, compassion and confidence.
• tejohnso 9y ago
  "If I were to point out random emotional labor duties I carry out—reminding him of his family’s birthdays, carrying in my head the entire school handbook and dietary guidelines for lunches, updating the calendar to include everyone’s schedules, asking his mother to babysit the kids when we go out, keeping track of what food and household items we are running low on, tidying everyone’s strewn about belongings, the unending hell that is laundry—..." That all sounds like household management with some relationship management thrown in. What does it have to do with labouring over emotions? It sounds like this person needs a partner who shares more household responsibilities and has an organization and cleanliness habit that is more in line with their own. EDIT: I just did a quick search of this term "emotional labor" and this comes up from wikipedia: "Emotional labor is the process of managing feelings and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job. More specifically, workers are expected to regulate their emotions during interactions with customers, co-workers and superiors." That seems a lot more reasonable definition for emotional labour. Actual emotion management. The author of the featured article seems to want to attach this term to just about every kind of task that occurs in a household.
  • izacus 9y ago
    Are you really nitpicking use of rather accepted term?
    • rootlocus 9y ago
      I don't think it's nitpicking if the entire thesis of the article is based around a concept that has nothing to do with the article.
    • RUG3Y 9y ago
      Term is used incorrectly to lambast half of the human species. It's not nitpicking to expect someone to use words correctly.
  • nonbel 9y ago
    I agree, at least the first two paragraphs did not sound like emotional labor. Edit: That is a shame because it does sound like an interesting concept.
• kentt 9y ago
  This sounds a lot more like the story of an unhappy marriage and poor communication, than about emotional labour. The narrative of a bumbling but hard working ox of a husband and a whip smart, but overworked wife is tired and unhelpful to both parties.
• saint_fiasco 9y ago
  I understand the husband was naive for expecting that it would be easy to find an inexpensive and convenient house cleaning service. He wanted "something he could one-click order on Amazon", and housecleaning services are not like that. But why is that the case? Why can't there be an Uber* for housecleaning? Even better, why can't they pay an actual maid to clean the house all the time? Every hour she is cleaning the house (or researching to hire a one-time cleaning service) is an hour she could be working, so unless her labor is less valuable than a maid's, she would actually be saving money by not cleaning the house herself. I understand that in the US this sort of thing is not that simple because in developed nations labor costs are so high (in the third world more families have maids than washing machines and dishwashers), but even so, there is still inequality. Her labor should be more expensive than a maid's labor. Why can't they take advantage of that, reap benefits of trade? *ETA: I now believe "Uber for housecleaning" is a terrible idea. The correct thing would be "Upwork for housecleaning". Something more focused on long-term professional relationships.
  • Kluny 9y ago
    They've already accepted that as true. The point is that even with an "uber of housecleaning", you're still inviting a stranger into your house to be around your children, and you still have to make it work with your schedule. That's the work. The human aspect won't go away union as housekeeping robot is invented.
    • saint_fiasco 9y ago
      The human aspect is precisely what they should be leveraging, but it looks like they choose not to. Hiring the right maid can be annoying, but you only need to do it once. But instead of hiring an actual person and forming a long-lasting relationship, they chose to hire a faceless housecleaning company for a one-time job. They will have to pay huge transactional costs (with associated emotional labor) all over again next time their bathroom gets dirty.
  • fjsolwmv 9y ago
    Amazon is literally advertising housecleaning services all over their website right now.
• MrFantastic 9y ago
  This reminds me of my ex. I would make the bed because she never did it. She would complain that I didn't make the top sheet tight enough. My response was if you want the sheets tighter, make the bed yourself. It's childish to expect someone else to care about something as much as you do. Did the author make her expectations clear or was she expecting her husband to read her mind? It sounds like she was expecting her husband to care about the same things she did.
  • xor1 9y ago
    The author sounds like someone with an undiagnosed personality disorder. Normalizing behavior like this is ridiculous.
    • krapsna 9y ago
      I was married to a woman who (after marriage) was diagnosed with a personality disorder. Reading this article was like a look back into my marriage. I was always being told about everything I did that failed to meet her standards, or failed to do at all, and how it was because I didn't care about her enough to do it the way she wanted it done. Then, when I'd try to do things in anticipation of her ever changing priorities, or to offload things from her plate I'd be read the riot act. Clearly it wasn't because I was trying to be considerate and meet her ever changing standards. I was obviously because I was criticizing her in some kind of chauvinistic way, or undermining her position in the household. I'm very happy to be out of that situation, and I completely agree that normalizing this type of behavior is ridiculous.
      • xor1 9y ago
        That's awful, and I'm sorry to hear it. Every time I see stuff like this show up on FB or HN or Reddit, I find it personally distressing, because it's enabling for people with Cluster B traits. They feel justified and empowered in continuing to emotionally abuse their friends and partners. Meanwhile, the victims of abuse are led to believe that they're the ones who are in the wrong. it's also enabling for misogynists who are more than happy to claim that this is normal behavior for an entire gender (it's not). This submission has already been flagged, which is nice, but I can't help but feel that it's being flagged for the wrong reasons. Funnily enough, I bet the flags are coming from people with all sorts of conflicting political views. For those of you in a relationship with someone similar to the author of the article, it doesn't have to be like this. There are plenty of women out there (the vast majority) who won't expect you to read their minds, who won't gaslight you, who will let you disagree with them without fear of extreme consequences, and who will take your needs and struggles into account, instead of just making everything about themselves.
• RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
  >That’s the point,” I said, now in tears, “I don’t want to have to ask.” >Walking that fine line to keep the peace and not upset your partner is something women are taught to accept as their duty from an early age. >My husband is a good man, and a good feminist ally. >However, it’s not as easy as telling him that. My husband, despite his good nature and admirable intentions, still responds to criticism in a very patriarchal way. >Yet I find myself worrying about how the mental load bore almost exclusively by women translates into a deep gender inequality that is hard to shake on the personal level. >It is difficult to model an egalitarian household for my children when it is clear that I am the household manager, tasked with delegating any and all household responsibilities, or taking on the full load myself. This sounds like a very dysfunctional marriage. I have been observing what I consider are good marriages that have stood the test of time. Marriages where they have been married 30, 40, 50 years and are still crazy about each other. Here are some things that I have found. 1. Good communication. Never expect the other partner to read your mind. 2. Compromise. If what I want hurts or causes pain to the other person, it is not worth it. 3. Loyalty. My spouse is more important to me than any ideology or person. 4. Individual love. My spouse is their own person. They are not some avatar of a family, ethnicity, or gender. 5. Selflessness. I choose to do what it takes to make my spouse happy without expecting anything in return. These thing should be done by both husband and wife. The author, goes against everyone of them. She expects the husband to read her mind. The whole article feels like some primal cry for appreciation and notice. She criticizes her husband publicly in an article that will be read by millions. She views her husband and son as avatars for men. Her first loyalty seems to be to feminism, and not to her family. Many times I have seen dysfunctional marriages where the husband justifies his selfishness by using societal gender roles or religion - "The Bible says I am the head of this house". That is wrong. In this article, the author justifies her selfishness using feminism. That is also wrong.
  • rootlocus 9y ago
    > 1. Good communication. Never expect the other partner to read your mind. I've also discovered this. Placing communication on first place is vital for the health of a relation. Even with minor things like the other person asking "what's wrong?", it's much better to reply truthfully with "I got into an argument with a stranger online and I can't believe what a fing * he was" or "I'm just tired for exerting myself too much at work". Too often people reply with "nothing" or "I'm fine" which only serves to confuse the other person ("Is he upset because I was late?", "have I gain weight", etc.). All these things add up and eventually people forget why they entered the relation in the first place.
• mmjaa 9y ago
  This is a highly charged, and - frankly sexist - article about how people have expectations that are unfulfilled because they simply don't communicate with each other. There isn't a single example of this "emotional labor" in the article, where a consideration is given to "the man" about how much labor it takes, emotionally, to keep up with someone who has high expectations for their environment, but does not communicate those expectations in a way that forms consensus - instead, opting to 'shame the man' for not having the same standards. However, in spite of the blatant sexism, the true value of this article is that, when people fail to properly communicate, much much un-necessary work develops, and this gets in the way of having a great life. Yup. Perhaps we as a society should stop forwarding the ideal that "people should just know what expectations they have to meet", and rather promote the idea that "its always good to work things out about who does what and how clean things have to be, before you get married, or you know .. move in with each other"... The fact that the author hasn't cottoned on to this, frankly, belies a serious immaturity on her part.
  • chadlavi 9y ago
    dude. just... no. for fuck's sake.
    • gadders 9y ago
      I'm not sure if I agree with you but your comment did make me laugh.
    • saint_fiasco 9y ago
      You are kind of exemplifying the attitude that the parent comment complains about. You have standards that are not being met, but instead of communicating clearly you just try to shame the other person. I understand communicating such simple things is not as simple as the thing would make it seem. In fact, the point of the article was that such work is unappreciated. But just because it's not appreciated it doesn't mean it's not important. You should still do it.
      • chadlavi 9y ago
• chrismealy 9y ago
  I saw the headline on HN and knew right away someone had rewritten it. Too obvious guys.
• jerkstate 9y ago
  I come here for the interesting tech news, not gender politics.
  • arkona 9y ago
    This. I see this kind of non-tech related "culture wars" prone article creeping into hn. Can we keep on reddit or some other non-tech forum where it belongs?
    • thanatropism 9y ago
      I think the articles on philosophy and even crit theory are ok when they have an intellectual bent. Otherwise there's little sense in admitting Seth Godin but excluding Michel Foucault, both fine bald men. I feel (and it's not just me) that there's a powerful, useful core to "continental theory" -- see Shimon Naveh, Elie Ayache, etc. Techies should be more well-rounded. I agree that articles that apply philosophy and theory to politics are off-topic. We should be discussing (in addition to HN's core matter of startups) capital I ideas, not petty stuff.
  • dredmorbius 9y ago
    Well-considered, well-written, thoughtful, and constructive gender politics can be exceptionally useful. It concerns the viewpoints and interactions of much of the human race, generally with the rest. This piece, however, is none of those.
• bjornlouser 9y ago
  "What I wanted was for him to ask friends on Facebook for a recommendation, call four or five more services, do the emotional labor I would have done if the job had fallen to me... I knew exactly how exhausting it was going to be. That’s why I asked my husband to do it as a gift." It's ironic that the author complains about her husband's low emotional intelligence yet she doesn't seem to understand that other people may have a different approach to a given problem.
• goda90 9y ago
  This article focuses on one kind of labor needed for a family to operate, but doesn't really talk about the others, such as the kind that bring in money. Equal share of labor is very important, but I don't think it's wise to expect a 50/50 split on every individual kind of labor. Theres been a lot of push back in society against the dynamic where one spouse goes to a paying job, and the other takes care of household matters, but how is that not an equal split of family labor? If both spouses work paying jobs, then it makes sense to start dividing household matters more. That being said, I think parent-child interaction is something that needs to always be a 50/50 split, because it's good for the child.
• ada1981 9y ago
  This sounds like someone with an anxious attachment style that is terrified of expressing her needs and who has grown resentful of a lifetime of suppressing her feelings for the approval of others. Notice how she resents that her husband wants appreciation for the things he does, and yet she doesn't feel appreciated? This is a dynamic they co-created and one they could work on together. Healing the underlying stuff that is driving this resent would lead to a happier more connected experience for her (and in the process, I imagine he would become more of what she wants). It's not her fault, he appears to not know what really drives conflict, so no matter how much he does, it will never be enough -- until he makes an effort to learn how to make his woman feel seen and understood and safe with all of her emotions. Most people lack these skills as they never had them modeled.
• bcoughlan 9y ago
  I simplify can't imagine bearing the emotional burden of having to call someone to "deep clean" my bathroom. These are the woe-is-me thoughts of the top tier of society. Anyways this is a classic example of expecting someone to be able to read your mind simply because they love you. One person is uptight about micromanaging their environment, the other more laid back. You talk about that and find an equilibrium. I would be very hurt as her husband to find she had communicated that to the world without communicating it to him.
• brighteyes 9y ago
  This article is flamebait. The title is "Women Aren't Nags", below a big middle finger to the reader, so it's not like it tries to hide it. And much of the article is saying that men are emotionally immature or worse. For example, she asks her husband to get the house clean for mother's day. He assumes she meant what she asked for, and does a deep clean of the bathrooms himself. But > What I wanted was for him to ask friends on Facebook for a recommendation, call four or five more services, do the emotional labor I would have done if the job had fallen to me. But for a single cleaning, just doing it himself was more direct and effective, so what he did isn't unreasonable. But it didn't go through the specific process she didn't mention but was really what she secretly wanted. So there has been a failure of communication here. Other examples also show similar problems with understanding and communication: > It was obvious that the box was in the way, that it needed to be put back. It would have been easy for him to just reach up and put it away, but instead he had stepped around it, willfully ignoring it for two days. One person's "willful ignorance" may be another's blind spot. Some people just don't notice some types of mess. An extreme form of this is sometimes called "clutter blindness" (itself a minor form of hoarding), but it exists in moderate forms too, leading to disagreements like this one. Neither the author nor her husband is in the wrong here, but they both need to do more to understand the other. And about "emotional labor": > If I were to point out random emotional labor duties I carry out—reminding him of his family’s birthdays [etc.] Some people care more about those things than others. Unless he asked her to do that for him, it would probably be fine if she didn't - after all, what would happen if they weren't married? I'd recommend she stop doing it - not as "see how you get along without me!" to spite him, but as an honest experiment that both she and her husband might learn from. It's possible she'd see how his life works just fine without those reminders, or that he'd see how those things are important and start to do them himself.
  • cellularmitosis 9y ago
    > What I wanted was for him to ask friends on Facebook for a recommendation, call four or five more services, do the emotional labor I would have done if the job had fallen to me. This one really jumped out at me, because even if I had stuck to the letter of her request (hiring a service rather than doing it myself), I would have fallen far, far short of her expectation. Calling four or five services? Embarrassing myself by spamming my friends on social media for a maid-service recommendation? You have got to be kidding me. How about just hiring one at random, try them out for a few months, and then decide if you like their service? Or maybe spend 30 seconds on Yelp?
• gyardley 9y ago
  Judging by the remarks on this thread, not many of you are interested - but those of you who are may find this compiled PDF of a Metafilter thread valuable: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0UUYL6kaNeBTDBRbkJkeUtabEk/view?pref=2&pli=1 https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0UUYL6kaNeBTDBRbkJkeUtabEk... I can say without hesitation that learning more about emotional labor (and reading that PDF in particular) has helped me be a better husband and father.
  • musha68k 9y ago
    It’s interesting to me, thanks for sharing!
• seattle_spring 9y ago
  I love working 10+ hours a day to pay for 100% of me and my fiancé's expenses, coming home, cooking dinner, and cleaning up everything while she studies for med school; going to bed early so I can do some shopping before work; and then being told I'm a useless man by some nobody with a shitty marriage on a website that's supposed to be about technology.
  • dleslie 9y ago
    > on a website that's supposed to be about technology This is what irks me most. I come to Hacker News for the tech, and yet... This is here? What is this article doing on HN?
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • ZenoArrow 9y ago
      > "What is this article doing on HN?" https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Ideological or political battle or talking points. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." This article is in line with "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity".
  • d3ad1ysp0rk 9y ago
    This article never specified you, or your relationship. It used their relationship to discuss a topic that can often happen. You are feeling attacked, and I'm sure you have good reasons in your personal life to be upset, but your reaction is unreasonable here.
    • seattle_spring 9y ago
• j45 9y ago
  This is an interesting article on expectations of thoughtfulness, that are valid. In addition to emotional labour, a person who is out-giving is dedicating a fixed amount of their limited attention to keep things in mind that could go elsewhere. Using the example of the article, if two people living together on their own were to live on their own, they would likely be more thoughtful and aware. Co-habiting has an strange effect, you start doing things you didn't do before, and stop doing things you used to. Some of it is based around preferences and habits - and some feel if you think something should happen badly enough (if someone always leaves the lights on), maybe you should do it. Emotional intelligence, thoughtfulness, and pro-actively thinking of needs instead of being asked to do things is something anyone values when they are relied upon in an ongoing manner.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• izacus 9y ago
  There was an extended discussion on topic of emotional labour on Metafilter as well - http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emotional-Labor http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emo... It's intersting due to start contrast in HN and MeFi communities and what commenters have to say about it.
• EarthIsHome 9y ago
  I'd encourage everyone here to show this to their wives, moms, or any woman and get their feedback.
  • xor1 9y ago
    My gf thinks it's ridiculous and agrees that the author comes off as someone in need of therapy.
• acty1 9y ago
  "...That’s why I asked my husband to do it as a gift." What kind of "gift" is "asked" for and when not received it is aired in public and shame the man for not living up to the expectations she "didn't feel the need to communicate". This is frankly disgusting and speaks volumes about the author's solipsism and inconsideration of her husbands story. One sided and exceptionally ignorant. Under the guise of "Equality". I am a man and enjoy this "emotional labor" managing my house and investment properties. I also make a great income as a software consultant and enjoy calling suppliers and service professionals and is pretty easy. Pick up the phone, talk to people, schedule appointments. This speaks more to her choice of mate and her communication abilities and the kind of contempt she has for her husband. For the whole world to see. He would be wise to re-evaluate her commitment and his commitment to the relationship. This a kind of emotional blackmail and will serve to control him in the future since he knows that she will air their dirty laundry to be on the internet forever.
• psyc 9y ago
  I dislike this term, and I'm dismayed by its recent leakage into the mainstream. I have yet to see an explanation for what it means, that is distinguishable from "being a person." The people who use the term usually seem exceptionally entitled and self-centered. The assumption that women do more of whatever it's supposed to entail is sexist, and I see little evidence for it. It seems like an academic-sounding way to say that women are better people, plus they don't get rewarded for being better people, so life is unfair to women and men need to do something about this.
  • RUG3Y 9y ago
    It's a fancy way of making yourself appear to be a victim, conveniently with zero external evidence to support that claim.
  • rad88 9y ago
    It's a good term that is being appropriated. Emotional labor described some aspects of jobs such as customer service, nurse, etc., where the work actually requires feeling certain emotions so that your client can feel empathized with. What the author is talking about is simply domestic labor.
• megamindbrian 9y ago
  They lost me. Why would you want a "house cleaning" service for other people to come in and spread around your filth.
• arkona 9y ago
  > It was obvious that the box was in the way, that it needed to be put back. It would have been easy for him to just reach up and put it away, but instead he had stepped around it, willfully ignoring it for two days. It was up to me to tell him that he should put away something he got out in the first place. > “That’s the point,” I said, now in tears, “I don’t want to have to ask.” This kind of irrational thinking ended a relationship for me. > why don't you care about me? Why aren't you able to anticipate exactly how I want you to behave at every moment? > because I'm not in your head, you damn stupid b
  • mercutio2 9y ago
    Are you really arguing that most adults don’t realize that taking down a box which has a specific home then not putting it away for a few days is mildly annoying and irresponsible? That someone would magnify mild irritation into a source of tears does sound like a communication break down, but... this was a pretty good example of a reasonable expectation from any housemate. Having to be the nagging asshole is, in fact, work.
    • arkona 9y ago
      It is a symptom of much deeper irrational thinking patterns. The whole point of the article is the woman complaining that her husband misunderstood how she wanted him to handle the cleaning of the bathroom. She did not tell him specifically what she wanted, instead she expected that he reads her mind and figure it out. This is not how human communication works or should work. Also breaking out in tears over such an innocuous thing is textbook emotional manipulation.
  • sctb 9y ago
    Please try to be more civil and thoughtful when you comment here and leave out parts that clearly violate the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
• thanatropism 9y ago
  I feel as if the article pays nominal lip service to third-wave feminist by quoting critiques of gender essentialism but otherwise puts people in two buckets anyway. Sure, she's only talking about her story, but it's not because it's extraordinary; rather, the implied rant is that 'tis the same for all.
• thedonkeycometh 9y ago
  Dude sounds like an ass
• OmeCommentLeft 9y ago
  Oh goodie, another opportunity to: - prove my virtue by coming to the rescue of the modern vestal virgin - prove my evilness by not demonizing men - put my job at risk for speaking because someone who knows a Silicon Valley community manager who will forward them my information because of my failure to comply to their ideological norms This author is a joke, HN is a joke, feminism means nothing more than "bow down to female supremacy or we will use digital intimidation to enforce your compliance" Has it ever dawned on you that perhaps the resistance to feminism has nothing to do with females and everything to do with its marriage to Silicon Valley panipticons who regularly abuse their information advantages and are immune to regulation?
• ChuckMcM 9y ago
  It is interesting to read the comments here and compare them to my own experience. I've been married for more than a couple of decades and recognized both the author's complaint and the responses of the people in the article. I have also participated with my wife in very similar discussions. Three things that I now believe, having lived through this, are that my wife and I see value and obligation differently (and pretty much always have), the "emotional" part is important because there are other emotions at play below the surface, and that the roles and issues your own parents had in this space will color the perceptions of you and your spouse. I can thoroughly recommend that you clip or save this article into your archive of things and re-read it every few years for the next couple of decades and reflect back on the disagreements you and your spouse have had :-)
  • ynniv 9y ago
    Yes, the comments here assume that life outside of working for a paycheck is “preference”. I expect most commenters are unmarried, don’t have children, and think that money by itself solves problems. It seems like I was there not so long ago...
  • deweller 9y ago
    Recognizing and addressing the real emotions at play in marital situations like this one has been a life-long pursuit for me in my adult life.
• saltyseadog 9y ago
  This is just shit feminists made up when the wage gap started to get repeatedly debunked
• interfixus 9y ago
  So, in the end ... a nag. Taking upon herself all kinds of unasked for shit, and then whingeing about having to do it. Lady, you do not need to endlessly brush and braid your daughters hair - in fact, it's shitty parenting not letting the girl take care of that herself. Hire the goddamn bathroom cleaner. Or don't. And get on with life. I'm all with the husband: If that box on the floor really bothers you so terribly, then put it away, or ask someone to do it. Don't moan and write ridiculous magazine articles about it.
• hasbroslasher 9y ago
  Describing cleaning as emotional labour is weird to me. I'm fully on board with the "many women do lots of emotional labour that goes unnoticed" logic but to me cleaning is labour and that's that. It's a job, and it should be talked about as hard labour, not some mysterious emotional nebula that men avoid because of gendered conditioning. I think the danger here is that by conflating emotional labour and cleaning, we obfuscate the true depth of what emotional labour is. Emotional labour what goes into having a mentally ill spouse, a child dying of cancer, a colleague or friend fighting through divorce or depression, the strain of a job that expects a positive mood when you're all wore out inside. Cleaning is fixed by labour. Having a husband who doesn't clean, gets defensive, can't communicate, can't remember his fucking kids birthdays, etc. is fixed by emotional labour (or divorce). To me that sounds like the author married a person who's not accountable, doesn't share her standards about how labour should be divided, harbors gendered conceptions of how a household should be run, doesn't share her standards of cleanliness, doesn't share her standards for communication skills, etc. So my response, in a nutshell, is that while this woman is right to push back against gendered standards of who does household work, it has nothing to do with emotional labor, per se. It has everything to do with the fact that she apparently picked a husband who is really hard to live with, or at least hard enough to live with that she's forced to write a tangential thinkpiece about it
  • Strom 9y ago
    Well said. It was real clear to me when in the middle of the article there is the following line: “That’s the point,” I said, now in tears, “I don’t want to have to ask.” Either she has communication problems and is unwilling to have even one talk about her tidiness standards, or she has already tried that and he just ignores it.
  • nostoc 9y ago
    Cleaning is not emotional labour, and the article doesn't claim so. Being in charge of cleaning is the emotional labour.
    • saint_fiasco 9y ago
      That sounds like normal labour to me. Just a more administrative/managerial type instead of the hard physical type. If my boss asked me to call some cleaning companies and arrange a schedule so they come clean the office, all on my "free" time, I'd expect extra payment because that is extra labour.
• juancn 9y ago
  This is housekeeper neurosis. She cares a lot about the house, he doesn't hence conflict, plus the fact that she essentially want's her husband to be able to read her mind. They should consider doing some psychotherapy. The article has a few interesting points about gender, but she stretches them almost to the breaking point. The call for budgets I get that as emotional labor goes, but the "he should know better and read my mind and satisfy all my emotional desires as my idealized husband would" crap I don't buy. That's just plain old neurosis and an underhanded slap on the wrist for her husband.
  • mercer 9y ago
    What appealed to me about this article was precisely the fact that it stuck close to experience and whenever it went 'broader' provided caveats. Your comment somehow strikes me as the opposite of all those qualities.
• metaphorm 9y ago
  this is the demogaphics page from the Harper's Bazaar media kit http://www.harpersbazaarmediakit.com/hotdata/publishers/harpersba2643014/advertiser/2649380/296499/BAZAAR_2015_MediaKit_MRI.pdf http://www.harpersbazaarmediakit.com/hotdata/publishers/harp... they push heavily that their target audience is affluent, college-educated women. they therefore want to run content that appeals to this demographic. the editors of this magazine believe that that demographic finds articles like this one appealing. these are the primary advertisers purchasing spots in Harper's Bazaar http://www.harpersbazaarmediakit.com/hotdata/publishers/harpersba2643014/advertiser/2648742/296491/BAZAAR%20Media%20Kit_2017_Prestige.pdf http://www.harpersbazaarmediakit.com/hotdata/publishers/harp... http://www.harpersbazaarmediakit.com/hotdata/publishers/harpersba2643014/advertiser/2648742/296488/BAZAAR%20Media%20Kit_2017_Fashion%20Retail.pdf http://www.harpersbazaarmediakit.com/hotdata/publishers/harp... http://www.harpersbazaarmediakit.com/hotdata/publishers/harpersba2643014/advertiser/2648742/264709/BAZAAR%20Media%20Kit_2017_Beauty%20Fragrance.pdf http://www.harpersbazaarmediakit.com/hotdata/publishers/harp... http://www.harpersbazaarmediakit.com/hotdata/publishers/harpersba2643014/advertiser/2648742/264712/BAZAAR%20Media%20Kit_2017_Jewelry%20Watch.pdf http://www.harpersbazaarmediakit.com/hotdata/publishers/harp... the products that Harper's Bazaar advertisers want to sell to their audience of affluent, college educated women is primarily very expensive luxury/prestige brand names in the high fashion industry. -------- these are a few other recent articles written by the author, Gemma Hartley http://www.ravishly.com/depression-dirty-secret http://www.ravishly.com/depression-dirty-secret http://www.ravishly.com/im-not-mother-when-i-travel-alone?platform=hootsuite http://www.ravishly.com/im-not-mother-when-i-travel-alone?pl... http://www.ravishly.com/why-i-wont-make-my-daughter-play-nice?platform=hootsuite http://www.ravishly.com/why-i-wont-make-my-daughter-play-nic... http://amendo.com/8-essential-podcasts-will-help-master-life/#.WZSduibUUWU.twitter http://amendo.com/8-essential-podcasts-will-help-master-life... -------- finally, here are several other recent articles on this topic. they are similar in tone and content. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/08/women-gender-roles-sexism-emotional-labor-feminism https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/08/women-gender-r... http://jezebel.com/is-it-even-worthwhile-to-teach-men-to-value-emotional-l-1742222786 http://jezebel.com/is-it-even-worthwhile-to-teach-men-to-val... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/psyched-in-san-francisco/why-women-are-tired-the-p_b_9619732.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/psyched-in-san-francisco/why-w...
• eridius 9y ago
  Why was the title editorialized? This HN title isn't the real one. It's not even the subtitle! It's an editorialized version of the subtitle. And that's not ok.
• alexandercrohde 9y ago
  If the goal of this article is to validate frustrated wives, maybe it has succeeded. But if conversely, it was aiming at making a compelling case to men I don't think it has. I for one feel stereotyped and vilified (and I also feel at risk of being criticized for even admitting my own feelings). What I'd recommend the author do is- 1. Reflect on her feelings. What does she really want, what is it really about / a symbol for (cleaning/initiative = caring?) ? Also understand any accumulated frustrations that may be coloring things. 2. Try to understand her husband's feelings, as well as any of his accumulated frustrations. 3. Ask him and make sure you understand his feelings. To do this, you need to be able to listen without judging what he has to say, even if it's hurtful. Once he feels understood, you'll be half-way there. 4. Talk to him about your feelings (does he not notice, not care, or something else). If he's uncomfortable talking about this, that's another thing you can't ignore and steamroll over, but should investigate gently. Hopefully he can understand your feelings without judging either. 5. All 4 steps above depend crucially on sincerity, good-fath, a sense of humor, and tact. As an aside, I'd never consider publishing a criticism of my relationship online (nor would I use an anecdote as the basis for a gender-criticism), unless I had talked it over with my partner first and they read the whole thing. Of course everybody is free to share their experience, but wouldn't people naturally be hesitant to date somebody who uses intimate challenges as career-fuel?
  • goptimize 9y ago
    "my freelance work had picked up considerably" - she might simply be ready to move on
  • ZenoArrow 9y ago
    > "I for one feel stereotyped and vilified (and I also feel at risk of being criticized for even admitting my own feelings)." If I can ask you a question without you feeling criticised... why do you think you've taken this article personally? It's interesting to me as I don't see anything remotely controversial in the article. It becomes an article for a news site not because it's a novel occurrence, but because it's commonplace and frequently overlooked. Even if it's not an issue in your relationship, can you accept that it happens in other relationships?
• fictionfuture 9y ago
  This type of feminism and denying gender roles exist is just making people unhappy.
• manmal 9y ago
  I think the correct term (instead of emotional labor) would be „ownership“. It’s the very thing my mother has complained of (well, the lack of it actually) about my father. He didn’t care about most things because he gets easily stressed about owning or being responsible for tasks, so he only initiates and rallies for tasks that he likes doing. Luckily they divorced some years ago. Alas, I have adapted some of my father‘s behavior, but as I‘m truly growing up, it’s getting better. Ownership is empowering, and it must not be connected with guilt. For me (and probably my father), ownership always led to perfectionism and guilt when something did not work out; but screw guilt, and nobody‘s perfect. BTW in German, the terms ownership and responsibility are somewhat conflated into „Verantwortung“, which is easily interpreted as being held accountable. I‘m sure there are a lot of reasons that can lead to passivity or the lack of ownership in a relationship. IMO it‘s one of the most toxic things that can exist. It can ruin precious years of your life, and turn family life into hell. Take ownership if you don’t already.
• rayiner 9y ago
  In the 1950s, society inflicted these expectations on women about how they should maintain their families. Homes should be immaculate, children should be participating in all sorts of activities, etc. Now, we’re embracing the idea that men should carry their share of the domestic labor, but haven’t quite rejected old ideals about what a home should be run like. So we’re in a weird transition state where we’re trying to get men to do work that nobody really needs or wants to do.
• deleted 9y ago
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• pfarnsworth 9y ago
  This article is terrible. She sounds extremely self-centered. Does she think about the "emotional labor" that her husband goes through? She only appears to care about the hysterics that she creates from her own insecurities, and then wants her husband to share in those. Does she spend the time to document the emotional labor that he has to go through every day? Nope.
• Animats 9y ago
  Interesting thought. I have a friend who has a job like that. She's the executive assistant to a startup CEO. He comes up with grand, vague ideas, and she turns them into a list of 14 things that need to be done and gets them done.
• jancsika 9y ago
  > Disappointed by my unwavering desire, the day before Mother's Day he called a single service, decided they were too expensive, and vowed to clean the bathrooms himself. and then... > However, it’s not as easy as telling him that. My husband, despite his good nature and admirable intentions, still responds to criticism in a very patriarchal way. Forcing him to see emotional labor for the work it is feels like a personal attack on his character. If I were to point out random emotional labor duties I carry out—reminding him of his family’s birthdays, carrying in my head the entire school handbook and dietary guidelines for lunches, updating the calendar to include everyone’s schedules, asking his mother to babysit the kids when we go out, keeping track of what food and household items we are running low on, tidying everyone’s strewn about belongings, the unending hell that is laundry—he would take it as me saying, “Look at everything I’m doing that you’re not. You’re a bad person for ignoring me and not pulling your weight.” When I was a kid, I remember getting frustrated one day when after I decided-- for whatever reason-- that I wanted to "trade licks" with my older, bigger brother. (I.e., I could hit his arm as hard as I could with the understanding he would then be able to do the same to me.) I distinctly remember both my brother and father-- who were watching this-- both smiling and taking about 30 seconds to carefully (and repeatedly) explain to me exactly what would happen to my arm if I entered into this contract (plus the lack of retribution for the suffering described). Needless to say I decided not to go through with it. That's all to say-- there is some obvious miscommunication going on here. The author wanted a gift of "cleaning plus", and the husband tells her that a "cleaning basic" quote was too expensive. That is the moment to carefully explain the "plus" part, and how the true cost is at least equal to the cost of "cleaning basic" plus hiring a life-coach for the full duration of the gift to explicitly enumerate each "cleaning plus" task as it happens. Plus-- since these are adults-- the contingency that if the husband is still so oblivious that he's convinced he can just wing his way through "cleaning plus," to refuse that gift and instead accept something off of Amazon.
• Glyptodon 9y ago
  Tinges of things like this (along with an Italian matriarch) always made me assume women were just naturally in charge of households growing up. Though in my household my Dad never really did the things the article mentions (it was more so me and my brother who did), so much as it was that he was often working long hours and couldn't have done a lot of the "activities management" type stuff if he'd tried. But when he was home it was "Who left this sock in the hallway? Who didn't do dishes?"(prepare to die, he'd have murder in his eye). And he often spent his weekends doing home projects (new sink, new floor, new tile, etc.).
• rconti 9y ago
  This article confuses and conflates 3 things. 1. Chaos muppet theory. In this article, the wife is the order muppet, and the husband is the chaos muppet. Is this gendered? I don't know. My sister and I are both order muppets and our spouses are chaos muppets. That means in my household, the man (me) takes on what the author calls 'emotional labor' but is more like 'management labor'. There are a large number of household things I take on because I feel like I must. This is not about my wife, it's about my own neuroses and desire for order. And it's not about division of labor, because we have a very ad-hoc system of who makes dinner, does the dishes, etc etc. That kind of stuff is more about who is busier and who has more free time. If I have to study for a test I try my best not to feel bad about just walking out after eating dinner and leaving the dishes, and just as often I start cleaning up while she reads an interesting article. I'm sure if you asked my wife and I separately, we would both say we take care of 60% of the work and the other does 40% :) 2. Responsibility for emotions. Is this gendered? The author makes a good argument for the expectations society has put on women to not be a burden or a nag, to manage emotions and expectations, and so on. I'm sure some men take this on more than their female partners, but I find it very plausible or likely that the author is correct that it's more frequently women doing this work. It's not the same about who is more emotional; it's entirely possible the man could be much more of an emotional person yet not take on the responsibility of managing others emotions (in fact, that might be what's happening in the article if the woman feels she needs to tip-toe around his feeling so much). 3. Actual household work. Flat out work. Child care, cooking, cleaning, picking up the dry cleaning, whatever. I'm sure many tomes have been written about the gendered roles and expectations and how these have changed over time and the work that remains to be done if one's desire is to equally partition these tasks. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/life/low_concept/2012/06/what_kind_of_muppet_are_you_chaos_or_order_.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/low_concept/2012/06/what_...
• Klockan 9y ago
  Women don't believe that men does any emotional labor since we don't cry when we hold back our frustration. I mean, this is a stay at home mom spending around 10 hours a week on her passion to write earning very little money (according to her blog) and she still dares to literally cry about her husband not doing most of the household chores?
• mutatedspleen 9y ago
  Wow. This article just comes off as pure whining. He cleaned your damn bathrooms. Problem solved. Don't be ungrateful.
• Noos 9y ago
  It's not emotional labor. It's that she tends to worry and obsess over routine decisions, and he can't be cared to put in effort on things that aren't important to him directly. Even if he changed, she would still nag and belittle his choices because she still worries and obsesses; even if she changed, he would half-ass and still be lazy. They both have to change, and they don't need to make it into this grand narrative of emotional labor. She should not expect him to ask five friends on facebook to find a cleaning service. He should realize that it is important to her to have one and just get one instead of complaining to her about it. Both failed, and it had little to do with any grand feminist narrative.
• zarkov99 9y ago
  What bullshit. Gender equality is basically becoming code for "man really should act more like women". Well fuck that.
• 11thEarlOfMar 9y ago
  It's so bad for me... I read the whole article and I cannot figure out what 'emotional labor' is. The scenes described play out constantly in my home. There are these major gaffs in both directions: For me, I cannot infer how to set the table from what's on the stove, and my wife is therefore convinced that I have a learning disability. For her, she is incapable of using the Maps app on her smart phone to help me when our destination changes after departing the house. And I am therefore convinced she has a learning disability. Let's accept that things are structurally different upstairs and therefore inputs are not processed the same way and therefore the actual problem is not in the wiring, but in our expectations.
• RickJWagner 9y ago
  This might be part of it. A bigger part is the political opportunism that practically guarantees that about half the population will oppose the other half, effectively neutralizing progress. An example: If you ask anyone (of any political affiliation) if they favor more beneficial time off for birth-related activities, you will probably get a positive response. But if you accuse someone of being sexist because they vote the 'wrong' way, then you're demonizing half the country and putting them on the other side of the playing field. The same thing happens with racism. When the word is exploited for political purposes, it dilutes the effectiveness of the term and artificially sets people opposite each other. It's high time we define certain standards for what should be political and what should be universally agreed upon. Gender equality and racial equality should be in the latter category.
• losteverything 9y ago
  When you have been married decades, for me, this article has "historical" relevance. As in our past. I would not say it's a gender thing though Everything became clear to us once "we were at the head of the table." when both sets of parents died. Our greater understanding of each other gained clarity when we were parentless.
• tcfunk 9y ago
  Anecdote related to the part about ignoring the box: My wife pointed out to me recently that I don't put away things if she leaves them in strange spots (out-of-place scissors, maybe). After some discussion, we both came to the conclusion that this is a side-effect of growing up with my mother. In my childhood home, if you put something away in the wrong place, that was far worse that not having touched it at all. So I grew up conditioned to ignore mess that I didn't know how to fix.
• tylorr 9y ago
  A while ago I came across this great annotated archive of a Metafilter thread about emotional labor. Provides a lot of examples to make it easier to grasp the idea. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0UUYL6kaNeBTDBRbkJkeUtabEk/view?pref=2&pli=1 https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0UUYL6kaNeBTDBRbkJkeUtabEk...
• ExploitsforFun 9y ago
  As a thought exercise I wonder what would people's advice be if the author was in a same sex relationship and the pair was having disagreements over cleaning and relational priorities. I am guessing most of the advice would be about how to communicate better with your partner. Now that maybe slightly easier with a same sex partner but I think the point is still a valid one. Peal back some of the feminist rhetoric and you have a couple who need to work on their communication skills.
• abandonliberty 9y ago
  I'm a male, but I have this traditionally female role in my relationship. While the author's relationship may or may not be disfunctional, this is a real thing. An equitable relationship balances out this contribution. The error here is confusing equality for sameness. We should celebrate and capitalize on our different strengths, preferences, and (since I'm heterosexual) genders. We are not - and shouldn't be - the same. But we can equally contribute to our relationships in a way that befits ourselves.
• knappa 9y ago
  I think that I'll probably clean a bit before I forward this one to my wife.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]