A Few Words About Emotional Labor
It’s all about noticing
In the past year, I’ve read several articles by women confessing that they do more housework and childcare than their husbands do. Research backs this up. Women might make the doctors’ appointments, update the grocery list, and ensure that the home is clean. We call this unacknowledged work, which keeps our lives running smoothly, “emotional labor.”
I first read about emotional labor in Gemma Hartley’s article “Women Aren’t Nags — We’re Just Fed Up.” She now has a book out, Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward. French artist Emma also illustrated a beautiful story about this concept in “You Should’ve Asked.”
Tesia Blake wrote two great stories about this: “Men Don’t Need Six Month Reminders” and “It’s like We’re Not Even Speaking the Same Language.”
Certainly, not everyone is in a male-female partnership. Yet the people writing these articles are almost always women writing about a male partner. What gives?
Most of those articles have comment sections, where men can lament that they are just different from women. And we absolutely treat men and women differently — if we choose to. But strict gender roles aren’t good for men or women.
