
How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality - musha68k
http://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a12063822/emotional-labor-gender-equality/
======
nkrisc
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
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
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
YES!

That's exactly how I view conflicts. It's the surfacing of something much
deeper that is normally completely hidden, either suppressed or managed at the
cost of Emotional Reserve.

When something flares up, I try to not let it go to waste and start digging.
Instead, it's an opportunity. Either my wife or me (usually both) will then
gain some insight about ourselves. We can then apologize for the content wich
caused it and then move to the context.

We've been doing this since we were engaged and this has allowed us to grow a
lot in terms of emotional stability, and build some strong reserves. Of course
the flip side is that with deeper reserves, it can take a lot longer for
conflicts to surface, so we now look at frustrations as the opportunities to
introspect.

~~~
ada1981
Are you in NYC by chance? I'd love to invite you and your partner to join us
for a Psychedlic Love Workshop aka The Love Dojo (as our guest).

My partner and I curate a group of couples doing this work (and singles
looking to find a relationship with this context), and practice some really
cutting edge tools.

For example, we've pioneered a version of breathwork to be used in times of
conflict with your partner that can transform long standing conflict patterns.

~~~
athenot
No, in ATL. But I've led groups in similar ways, though more from a Catholic
contemplative angle.

Keep it up though, that's awesome!

~~~
ada1981
Mathew 7:5 alludes to the power of relationship as a mirror / path. I'd love
if more people practiced this on a deep level.

The somatic approach is an excellent addition to this work, if you have a
chance to try it out, you won't be disappointed.

------
tejohnso
"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.

~~~
BarkingChicken
I think that one of the things I'm continuously disappointed in is that
comments like this tend to get more exposure and agreement than the concept
that the author is trying to bring to light. I get so excited to see
discussion about these concepts, but then the idea gets ignored because the
author isn't using exactly the right words. It really makes me feel even more
isolated and unheard.

Yes, communication is a very important part of discussing concepts, but its a
bit like being interrupted by a grammar nazi while you're trying to indicate
that you're drowning.

For what its worth, I agree with you. I don't like the term emotional labor
for this type of situation. But that's the term that's commonly applied to it
and correcting what its called isn't fixing the issue. And I don't think that
boiling it down to "Sorry, you should have thought of this before you married
the guy." is helping anyone.

~~~
alexandercrohde
Well delivery can be just as important as the message. It sounds like she
alienated male-audiences by implying it's a problem with a whole gender
instead of implying it's a gender-neutral trait.

After all, how does she know who does the cleaning, planning, keeping track of
birthdays in my relationship?

And I don't think it's fair to dismiss her gender-targeting delivery as a
trivial detail such as grammar, she's clearly a professional writer and it's
hard to imagine it's accidental.

I wonder if she's playing on her audience's pent-up emotions and intentionally
stirring controversy to get more-internet attention? (not quite trolling, but
a gentler form)

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "Well delivery can be just as important as the message."

Only if the delivery is offensive, otherwise the message is more important.

To give an example, I'm a native English speaker, and when I speak with some
non-native English speakers they can make some quirky decisions on how they
deliver their message. However, if I've understood the underlying message,
I'll look past it, and address what they meant.

To bring it back to the topic at hand, meta discussions like the one we're
having now often start out as a form of deflection. Regardless of the term
'emotional work' (I prefer 'hidden work', you may have a different
preference), do you agree that the underlying message of the article is
broadly correct? It's not so much about who takes on the 'hidden work', but
rather it's about the toll it takes.

~~~
Sacho
No, because I don't know what the underlying message is - you didn't spell it
out, neither did parent, or anyone in this chain.

If you unentangle the first example the author gives, she wants to give a task
to the man, without explaining how to do it, and then complains that they
don't do it properly. But it's not even just that, it's her wrapping this task
into a "Mother's Day gift", i.e. forcing the man to do emotional labor to
figure out what the woman really wants and how exactly to do it. This is a
counter-example to her overall argument, both in her literal words(about
emotional labor), and (I'm guessing here) in the underlying meaning of "men
should do more of the hidden work"(how do you expect them to do the "hidden
work" if you never explain to them that you're doing it, you want to share the
responsibility, etc?).

If there's a deeper underlying message that I'm missing here, please, I'm
interested in knowing about it. But every time I read an article like this,
all I can think of is "dysfunctional relationship" and "unreasonable
expectations".

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "If you unentangle the first example the author gives, she wants to give a
> task to the man, without explaining how to do it, and then complains that
> they don't do it properly."

This is where you're wrong. The wife makes it very clear to the husband how
she wants the job done. This is clear because the husband reluctantly
acquiesces to her request before deciding to go with a different approach.
Once you accept that the wife's instructions were clear, the rest of your
argument falls down.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>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.

~~~
BearGoesChirp
>My husband is a good man, and a good feminist ally.

I'm not sure I needed to read anymore than that. It is a sexist view, by
someone who I would suspect would argue they aren't sexist. Based purely on my
personal experiences, I've found people who hold such a view tend to have a
very fundamental incompatibility in world view from myself.

~~~
dang
Please don't take HN threads in ideologically inflammatory directions? That's
flamebait if not trolling, and the HN guidelines ask you not to.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
BearGoesChirp
I'll edit it to remove any references to the latter group I mentioned since
they aren't a topic for the article.

------
didgeoridoo
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?

~~~
Mz
I was a homemaker for a couple of decades. So, I spent a great deal more time
physically at home than my husband and the house was where most of my work
occurred. When my husband left his dirty clothes on the floor, I could either
live with the clutter and step over it or pick up after him. Either choice was
still an imposition on me that lowered my quality of life.

Furthermore, since doing laundry was one of my responsibilities, him not
putting his clothes in the hamper just made my job harder. And, no, it wasn't
really acceptable to just not wash his clothes because they weren't in the
hamper. We were financially dependent on his job. He had to be presentable.
Plus, leaving dirty clothes laying around is a hygiene issue and I have health
problems.

It would be a little bit like if I went to his office and dumped my laundry on
his desk and he would either have to deal with that or work around it -- all
day, every single day. We were married about 16 years before he grasped that
and stopped leaving his dirty clothes on the floor.

When you are in a partnership, the actions of your partner are going to impact
you. If they aren't considerate, they will impact you negatively. That is
simply reality. Acting like it is not is crazy talk.

~~~
didgeoridoo
I think it comes down to communication. If my wife said "put your clothes in
the hamper because I want you to, and that's where they belong", I might fail
to put them there. If she said "put your clothes in the hamper because leaving
them on the floor makes my life a lot harder, and also I might get sick", I
would never fail to put them there.

By framing the issue as something I care about (my wife's health and
happiness) and not something I don't care about (whether or not clothes are on
the floor), effective communication saves the day.

I think the issue with the article is that it demonizes this very
communication as a form of unfair, sexist "emotional labor", and therefore (at
least to my mind) makes it less likely to occur.

EDIT: I'm not trying to imply that your personal situation went one way or the
other, or that it was a failing on your part to communicate effectively. I'm
just citing my own personal anecdote, because that's all I have.

~~~
Mz
And the author of the article states that communication is not happening
effectively in her marriage in part due to gender norms influencing mental
models and expectations. And I am telling you that effective communication in
my marriage on that one detail took 16 years to finally achieve.

Most of the comments here are pretty dismissive and attacking of the article
and its author, while acting like she is just an unreasonable bitch. Most
participants here are male. The author is female.

Women tend to just not get listened to. Getting heard is a huge uphill battle.
The effort involved in trying to find some means to get there gets us accused
of being nags, etc.

That is, in fact, the entire point of the article.

~~~
ashark
I find altering environment to be much (like, _much_ ) more effective than
altering behavior. Clothes chronically on the floor somewhere[1]? That spot
needs a hamper. Toddlers' toys all over the place and spouse vetoes throwing
out like 80% of that junk? Bins, in child-locked cabinets. Time spent cleaning
massive toy messes immediately down by well over half, for a one-time cost of
a few dollars, time spent policing how much crap the kids are spreading around
the room (a hopeless task anyway) dropped to nearly zero. Notice you're (both)
not managing to get the kids' clothes sorted and to their dressers/closets?
Kid- and clothing-type-labeled pull-out bins (god I love bins) on shelves _in
the laundry room_ , basically eliminating any actual _need_ to cart the
clothes from room to room (it just makes for more work later) and putting the
output location closer to the input. Problem reduced from "OMG this is really
becoming a problem" to "it's not perfect, but WOW is this better". Etc., etc.

Altering behavior's rarely worked for me. My own, sometimes, my spouse's...
well, pretty much never. So if it's the _effect_ you want gone, it's often
possible to make it go away really fast and with little fuss (often praise!)
through a change in your environment. I'm sure lots of people of both sexes
put this into practice, but I can say with certainty that it just never, ever
occurs to some, and they'll put up with and complain about the issue
indefinitely if someone else doesn't spend a few bucks and a few minutes
making it permanently disappear.

[1] just taking your example, not implying that the solution was appropriate
in your case or that it wasn't attempted and failed—to be clear, this approach
definitely can't solve _every_ problem.

~~~
Mz
I'm a big fan of that approach. I recommend it often. But, at the end of the
day, if your spouse is simply monstrously inconsiderate, you going out of your
way to find environmental solutions is just more work on you to minimize
problems that will never really go away without taking the bull by the horns
and confronting your spouse about their bad habits. (Or, you know, divorce.
That is the other way to stop getting crapped on by a consistently
inconsiderate spouse.)

------
brighteyes
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
> 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?

------
deweller
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
> 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
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.

------
acty1
"...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.

------
hasbroslasher
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

~~~
BarkingChicken
I 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
My 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
It'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
Nomenclature question, why are we calling the work involved securing a vendor
emotional labor? In any office this would just be called labor.

~~~
Mz
Basically, the term _emotional labor_ gets used a lot to mean "women's work"
and especially to refer to the largely invisible parts of what women are
expected to do.

I don't like that usage, but I usually don't bother to nitpick it. I do
understand why this is kind of a hot topic and why the term _emotional labor_
gets applied to it.

I don't have a better solution. It seems like there simply isn't a good way to
talk about these issues.

(FWIW: I'm a woman.)

~~~
emodendroket
It does seem kind of confusing. The first time I encountered the term
"emotional labor" it referred to aspects of customer service work (like
responding politely to abusive customers, being performatively cheerful, etc)
and it was intuitive to me what it meant. Using the term to mean unpaid,
typically female labor seems less intuitive.

~~~
Mz
Emotional labor is a real thing and a large part of what women are expected to
do is rooted in catering to the feelings of other people. But, yeah, it gets
used kind of sloppily. Just about anything women want to complain about gets
lumped in with it and the writing frequently fails to make it crystal clear
how x, y and z actually relate to or are rooted in the expectation that women
cater to everyone's feelings.

------
seattle_spring
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
> 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?

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "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".

------
imgabe
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
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
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
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.

------
alexandercrohde
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?

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "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?

~~~
alexandercrohde
If you don't see the subheadding as remotely controversial, I have to wonder
if your agenda is advancement of women or advancement of equality. If this
piece didn't want to be sexist it could have removed gender entirely from the
piece.

Why do you think it didn't do that?

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "If this piece didn't want to be sexist it could have removed gender
> entirely from the piece."

Reference to a cultural phenomenon backed up with statistical evidence is not
inherently sexist. If you don't think the issues described are statistically
more likely to be experienced by women, even though there's strong evidence to
the contrary, what message do you think that sends out?

~~~
alexandercrohde
What statistical evidence? I think a wide-ranging study on this topic would be
interesting.

However, I also don't know what the point would be of breaking it down by
gender (any more than you'd break it down by race).

Wouldn't you be better served to have instead spent that time figuring out how
to fix the problem (how do you explain it effectively) rather than whom to
blame?

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "What statistical evidence? I think a wide-ranging study on this topic would
> be interesting."

Here's one study, there are others available online too...

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170926105448.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170926105448.htm)

~~~
alexandercrohde
Dude, I can't anymore. I thought this had nothing to do with chores but only
"emotionally draining" things.

I don't know if I buy the premise there's a difference in which sex is drained
more, I don't think you can extend an argument to a whole gender based on a %
difference in averages, I don't know if it matters who is drained more, I
don't know if the cause is cultural, I don't know the answer is blog posts
rather than spouses just telling each other how they feel, I don't buy that
this is a pressing problem worthy of my focus (as compared to say,
pesticides).

I guess I don't know why I engaged with this article anymore, lol. But no
worries, you tried to explain it and that sincerity counts for something.

------
MrFantastic
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
The author sounds like someone with an undiagnosed personality disorder.
Normalizing behavior like this is ridiculous.

~~~
krapsna
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
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.

------
ChuckMcM
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
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...

------
musha68k
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/)

~~~
rootlocus
Two things I don't understand.

First, are the women depicted in this comic stay at home moms? If so then yes,
I would expect them to take care of the house. Regardless of gender. If they
both have jobs, then the workload should be shared. It's not about gender.
It's about distributing the work. If he goes to work 8 hours a day, she can
work 8 hours a day. Staying at home and not doing anything is nothing short of
disrespectful.

Second, the "mental load" of having to remember all those things isn't a
herculean task. A calendar, a TODO list, a shopping list on the fridge are
simple solutions which greatly reduce the load.

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "First, are the women depicted in this comic stay at home moms?"

Did you even read the comic? In the first line...

"Back when I was in my first job, a colleague invited me over for dinner."

What do you think that tells you about their working background? Do they sound
like stay at home mums?

~~~
rootlocus
> Did you even read the comic?

I confess to skimming the introduction, thank you for the clarification.

> What do you think that tells you about their working background? Do they
> sound like stay at home mums?

This is just flogging a dead horse. They aren't stay at home moms and I
wholeheartedly agree the burdens should be shared equally, as I wrote in my
original comment.

------
kentt
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.

------
mmjaa
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.

~~~
gyardley
In my experience communication happens again and again and again over a period
of years until the woman gives up in exasperation and just seethes silently.
It's hard to get someone to engage in emotional labor (or as I like to call
it, 'giving a fuck') when they simply don't give a fuck, no matter how much
you communicate.

Since not caring enough to do the basic gruntwork associated with a decent
relationship is almost always a male problem in our society, I'm also
gobsmacked that you'd call it sexist. It's about as sexist as calling gun
violence or any other widely gendered thing a male problem - there's
exceptions out there, but it's not worth being pedantic about.

~~~
didgeoridoo
I think you're arbitrarily privileging "giving a fuck" over "not giving a
fuck". Try this:

Alice wants Task X to be done. Bob does not care whether Task X is done.

Let us stipulate that, if Task X is not done, nobody will be materially,
objectively harmed.

Alice says: because I want Task X, you will do Task X. Alice does not ask
Bob's opinion on Task X, but rather assumes that Task X is inherently
necessary, and therefore Bob's opinion is not worth considering. In fact,
Alice is annoyed that Bob hasn't taken the initiative to recognize the
inherent necessity of Task X, and complete it on his own without being asked.

Bob does not believe Task X to be inherently necessary.

Option 1: Bob may complete Task X because it makes Alice happy. That's nice of
Bob. Unfortunately, Alice is seething that she had to ask Bob in the first
place. That's kind of mean of Alice.

Option 2: Bob fails to accomplish Task X, because it isn't his personal
priority. That's kind of thoughtless of Bob, but Bob is a human and sometimes
we let low-priority items drop off our radar. Alice will do Task X herself,
furious that Bob did not do it.

Option 3: Bob fails to accomplish Task X, because it isn't his personal
priority. Alice lets go of Task X, leaving it undone, because it's just Task
X, and her relationship with Bob matters more to her than Task X. That's nice
of Alice.

In a "fair" scenario, Option 3 should be on the table at least half the time.
But it never is. Why can Alice not let go of Task X? Why MUST it be done? Why
is Alice's perspective on the necessity of Task X to be privileged over that
of Bob?

~~~
gyardley
It’s usually because not doing the task has very real negative consequences
and due to the sexist nature of modern society the consequences fall most
heavily on Alice, not on Bob. Don’t buy the nephews birthday cards? The
relatives think badly of Alice, not Bob. Take your son out in mismatched or
slightly too small clothes? People pass judgement on Alice, not Bob.

When Bob doesn’t think something is necessary and Alice does, Bob needs to
step back and think about why she does, because there’s generally a good
reason. Going immediately to game theory isn’t helpful when you’ve got
imperfect information due to your own lack of introspection.

~~~
klipt
> Take your son out in mismatched or slightly too small clothes? People pass
> judgement on Alice, not Bob.

Or they'll just laugh it off with "I see daddy dressed you today". Meanwhile
if Bob dresses his son impeccably, Alice will get all the credit.

If Bob keeps house instead of working overtime, Alice will get all the
housekeeping credit _and_ Bob will be judged for not being an effective
breadwinner.

It's almost like societal gender roles can screw over both sexes.

------
ada1981
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.

------
bjornlouser
"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.

------
gyardley
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...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0UUYL6kaNeBTDBRbkJkeUtabEk/view?pref=2&pli=1)

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
It’s interesting to me, thanks for sharing!

------
rayiner
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.

------
izacus
There was an extended discussion on topic of emotional labour on Metafilter as
well - [http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-
Emo...](http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emotional-
Labor)

It's intersting due to start contrast in HN and MeFi communities and what
commenters have to say about it.

------
ExploitsforFun
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.

------
EarthIsHome
> 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.

------
11thEarlOfMar
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.

------
manmal
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.

------
psyc
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.

~~~
rad88
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.

------
juancn
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
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.

------
jboynyc
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_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlie_Russell_Hochschild#Work_and_family)

------
bcoughlan
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.

------
robg
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."

------
Noos
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.

------
pfarnsworth
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.

------
tcfunk
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.

------
saint_fiasco
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
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
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.

------
zarkov99
What bullshit. Gender equality is basically becoming code for "man really
should act more like women". Well fuck that.

------
jerkstate
I come here for the interesting tech news, not gender politics.

~~~
arkona
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
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.

------
goda90
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.

------
bryanlarsen
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.

------
rconti
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_...](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/low_concept/2012/06/what_kind_of_muppet_are_you_chaos_or_order_.html)

------
tylorr
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...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0UUYL6kaNeBTDBRbkJkeUtabEk/view?pref=2&pli=1)

------
thanatropism
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.

------
j45
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.

------
Animats
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.

------
Glyptodon
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.).

------
abandonliberty
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.

------
jancsika
> 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.

------
Klockan
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?

------
losteverything
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.

------
EarthIsHome
I'd encourage everyone here to show this to their wives, moms, or any woman
and get their feedback.

~~~
xor1
My gf thinks it's ridiculous and agrees that the author comes off as someone
in need of therapy.

------
RickJWagner
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.

------
eridius
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.

------
knappa
I think that I'll probably clean a bit before I forward this one to my wife.

------
metaphorm
this is the demogaphics page from the Harper's Bazaar media kit

[http://www.harpersbazaarmediakit.com/hotdata/publishers/harp...](http://www.harpersbazaarmediakit.com/hotdata/publishers/harpersba2643014/advertiser/2649380/296499/BAZAAR_2015_MediaKit_MRI.pdf)

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/harp...](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)

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?pl...](http://www.ravishly.com/im-not-mother-when-i-travel-
alone?platform=hootsuite)

[http://www.ravishly.com/why-i-wont-make-my-daughter-play-
nic...](http://www.ravishly.com/why-i-wont-make-my-daughter-play-
nice?platform=hootsuite)

[http://amendo.com/8-essential-podcasts-will-help-master-
life...](http://amendo.com/8-essential-podcasts-will-help-master-
life/#.WZSduibUUWU.twitter)

\--------

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-r...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/08/women-gender-roles-
sexism-emotional-labor-feminism)

[http://jezebel.com/is-it-even-worthwhile-to-teach-men-to-
val...](http://jezebel.com/is-it-even-worthwhile-to-teach-men-to-value-
emotional-l-1742222786)

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/psyched-in-san-
francisco/why-w...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/psyched-in-san-
francisco/why-women-are-tired-the-p_b_9619732.html)

------
rhapsodic
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.

~~~
dang
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
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.

------
chrismealy
I saw the headline on HN and knew right away someone had rewritten it. Too
obvious guys.

------
rhapsodic
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.)

------
arkona
> 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 __ _

~~~
sctb
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)

------
fictionfuture
This type of feminism and denying gender roles exist is just making people
unhappy.

------
slamdance
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.

~~~
dang
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).

