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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
by 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 agoWell 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 agoCleaning is not emotional labour, and the article doesn't claim so. Being in charge of cleaning is the emotional labour.
- saint_fiasco 9y agoThat 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.
- nkrisc 9y agoIt's emotional because one partner is expected to care about it while the other may remain indifferent. Sometimes your partner needs you to care so they can take a break from doing so. Now deep down you don't have to really care; there are things I do for my wife not because I care whether it gets done, but because I care for her and if she wants me to care, then damnit I'm going to care.
- saint_fiasco 9y agoBut caring about cleanliness wasn't labor for the author. It came naturally to her. If anything, it was the husband that was expected to apply emotional labour to make himself care. Which I now see was the point. Women are traditionally expected to care about their partner's preferences even if they don't really understand or care themselves, while men are expected to be practical, cold and uncaring. Thus gender roles contribute to an imbalance in the distribution of emotional labour.
- ZenoArrow 9y ago> "It came naturally to her." Did it though? A lot of life admin isn't satisfying or enjoyable, it's just a drudge. Are you suggesting that relentless, menial work with no end in sight comes naturally to anyone? I'm single, and I've found ways to keep life admin to a minimum, but when you're running a household there's tons of small jobs that add up. It becomes hard to switch off. I've seen it happen multiple times.
- saint_fiasco 9y ago
- BarkingChicken 9y agoI think you might be missing the point. The gift that she wanted was the house cleaning service. She had already been planning/considering hiring someone anyway. The gift was that she would not have to do the work to find, vet, make the calls, research, arrange payment, schedule, etc. for this task. The gift was supposed to be him taking over that work. > The gift, for me, was not so much in the cleaning itself but the fact that for once I would not be in charge of the household office work. I would not have to make the calls, get multiple quotes, research and vet each service, arrange payment and schedule the appointment. The real gift I wanted was to be relieved of the emotional labor of a single task that had been nagging at the back of my mind. The clean house would simply be a bonus. also > I had wanted to hire out deep cleaning for a while, especially since my freelance work had picked up considerably. The reason I hadn’t done it yet was part guilt over not doing my housework, and an even larger part of not wanting to deal with the work of hiring a service. I knew exactly how exhausting it was going to be. That’s why I asked my husband to do it as a gift.
- hasbroslasher 9y agoMy response, then, is "Oh poor you! You have to call the proletarian house cleaners, rub shoulders with the 'help'! How difficult it must be." Leftist cynicism aside: I'm talking more about the "socks on the floor, chair in the way, keeping the house in order mentally" side of things
- CaptSpify 9y agoIt's not about "talking to the proletarians". It's about the emotional work involved with talking to a bunch of people, organizing those discussions, comparing the results, etc. As a generally introverted person, just thinking about discussing the details with 3 or more people makes me feel exhausted. And that doesn't even count the planning, review, time off of work, etc.
- Spivak 9y agoNomenclature question, why are we calling the work involved securing a vendor emotional labor? In any office this would just be called labor.
- troupe 9y agoWe were looking for a new washer and dryer. Our friends moved and offered us their old units. I was amazed at how much stress this removed--not because of the monetary savings, but because it removed our need to make a decision about what to buy. I think that was the point of the article. The decision-making process is emotionally expensive and that is what she wanted as a gift.
- saint_fiasco 9y agoDan Arielly calls this "the pain of paying". Supposedly the secret to good gift-giving is that you should get something that the other person wants but finds painful to acquire. For example, some people feel guilty for buying luxury items when they "should" be saving or spending on their children, so luxury goods or gift cards make good presents for them. Some people have problem choosing among similar alternatives so gift cards are terrible for them. In this case, it looks like they both find cleaning services painful, the wife because there are many alternatives and it's emotionally draining to choose and the husband because it's expensive and he feels like a sucker paying for it when he can clean the bathroom himself. It was mostly bad luck and misunderstandings.
- troupe 9y agoThat is a very insightful approach to gift giving.
- utexaspunk 9y agoMaybe I'm weird, but I don't find figuring out which product to buy a painful or emotionally draining experience. I rather enjoy researching different models and features, comparing and contrasting. How hard is that?
- troupe 9y agoIt is significantly easier when making decisions by yourself. With the washer/dryer example, there was a lot more going into it including how long we may end up staying at that house, etc. There wasn't anything that really stood out as being the "correct" choice, so not needing to decide was very welcome.