Can I give a polite viewpoint that two people often have the bar set elsewhere when it comes to these sorts of things. The bar isn’t higher or lower. It’s in a completely different place. It’s unfair to claim ‘men don’t do as much to reach the bar we have over here’ since we have completely different bars in different locations.
Eg. Based on experience many people tend not to send Christmas cards. They can’t understand the purpose. That’s not inherently terrible. It’s just a different viewpoint. On the other hand there’s people that couldn’t understand not sending cards.
When people form a couple there’s many things like this where one part of the couple has the bar set in a completely different location. Which I think is ok. It’s ok for one half of the couple to not do as much card writing. The workload of a relationship should be split evenly overall but if one places waaaay more importance on a particular aspect than the other it’s ok for that one to bear more of the load in that case.
>When people form a couple there’s many things like this where one part of the couple has the bar set in a completely different location. Which I think is ok. It’s ok for one half of the couple to not do as much card writing. The workload of a relationship should be split evenly overall but if one places waaaay more importance on a particular aspect than the other it’s ok for that one to bear more of the load in that case.
Yes, but there still needs to be a recognition of where the bars are and the work needed to reach them. If not, it can easily become a problem when one person doesn't value that work at all and therefore doesn't see that work being done as being part of the even split. If one partner doesn't care about the Christmas cards, they should still recognize that the other partner's work on sending out the Christmas cards is in fact work that needs to be done. That is part of what the article is about, recognizing that this emotional labor/kin work is "not dispensable" despite there being a notion it is due to historic and systemic issues.
A common issue with this in my view is that in many cases the incentives are all wrong. A man might care a lot about a traditional thanksgiving meal but by consciously or unconsciously presenting a lower bar he can offload responsibility. He might not care about the cards, but he does like getting invited hunting with his BIL which only happens through the maintenance of those relationships. Avoiding acknowledging that those two things are connected allows for pushing off responsibility while reaping the benefits.
There are obviously ways to balance this (she does the cards, I organize the July 4th BBQ) but it definitely requires honesty with each other and ourselves to make that work and avoid falling back on (often gendered) patterns.
> I’ll say it again: kin work definitely does not need to be carried out by any particular gender. It is just work
The author addresses that and it fits into her desire to move away from 'emotional labor', as 'emotional' is seen as a feminine domain. 'kin work' can also be expectations to manage all home, car, and lawn maintenance tasks. Someone being able to walk in, say 'the sprinkler's broken', and walk off again is a prime example of kin work.
I don't really see how this relates to what the OP said. They are just saying different members of the relationship might have different standards, not so much that they have complementary standards that cancel out in some way. I think it's a different point than the "it's not just feminine stuff" point.
This is true to an extent, but I think there are two important things to caution against.
One is that it is super easy for a lazy person to say "you just care about this more than me" when in fact they care about it a lot and will complain if it doesn't happen. This is extremely common, particularly among men, even if I assume in good faith you are not one of these people.
The other is that when you enter into a relationship with someone it is just not possible to completely ignore the things they like and are emotionally invested in. If you marry someone who is a super-christmas-enjoyer then guess what, you are a super-christmas-enjoyer now too (or, to be fair, you are now both somewhere in the middle). Ignoring that you have very different expectations will just cause friction. (so if you really really don't want to care, you are going to have to consciously discuss this and agree to it, and even then I don't actually believe it will work)
I came here to say precisely the same thing. It's all down to personality. For example, in a relationship between a person high in orderliness and a person low in orderliness, the resultant complaint usually is "I do all the cleaning up around here!" But the complaint could easily run in the other direction: "If your need for orderliness wasn't so high, we wouldn't have to do so much cleaning up around here!"
The same thing is often the case in a relationship where people set the bar around "maintenance of social ties" very differently. The typical couple (in my totally subjective field of experience) is one where the husband is like: "Hey honey, how about we just order pizza for all of our guests for the Thanksgiving party we're hosting this year?" and the wife is like: "Over my dead body!"
Interestingly, those roles are reversed in my own marriage: We recently got married at the courthouse with a vague plan to throw a wedding party at some unspecified future date. It's increasingly looking like my wife just can't be bothered. Meanwhile, I love to cook, and when my wife suggests using stock cubes when we cook for guests, I throw her out of the kitchen and finish the job myself.
> The workload of a relationship should be split evenly overall but if one places waaaay more importance on a particular aspect than the other it’s ok for that one to bear more of the load in that case.
A different take-- imagine the love your spouse would feel if-- even a single year out of your entire life-- you were enthusiastically engaged in a task she almost certainly already knows you have no interest in. A task, btw, she almost certainly sees as being somewhat of a burden-- no human ever finds it 100% fun to do tasks like writing a bunch of cards.
I mean, you've publicly declared how little you value that task. So it would be clear you're helping because you know that your spouse values that task, and because you know she would consequently value and enjoy doing it even more with the person she loves.
Either that, or you end up pentesting your own position here, she ends up not wanting the help, and you prove yourself right. Everybody wins!
If anyone ends up trying this out and proving me right, please track me down and pay me $10,000 as a small token of gratitude for the priceless joy I will have added to your life and marriage.
>women and men dont naturally divide themselves across these activities across groups
You've presented nothing to support this assertion.
>emotional labor is in fact imposed on women as are many other things. Implying they're not is misogynistic.
I'm not sure how you got the impression that the OP supports "emotional labor" being "imposed on women". It specifically qualifies that such imposition is only acceptable when one party cares more than the other.
How much if the "kin work" is self imposed torture ?
I have seen multiple instances where the stress degraded everyone's experience, and/or simply wasn't appreciated or valued by the intended recipients because they would have been just as satisfied by making their own sandwich. And sometimes, I've seen people dread the experience because of the required hours at the dinner table when they would rather be doing something less stifling.
That is, I wonder how much of this can work is actually an example of the Abilene paradox
Everyone on my dad's side of the family gathered for xmas each year - maybe 20 of us. Full house. And everybody felt obliged to buy personal presents for everyone else.
Finally someone stood up and said "Instead of everyone stressing about buying twenty cheap gifts, how about a secret santa where everyone gets one nice gift".
Made the holidays less stressful for everyone. It just hadn't occurred to us - we bought into the obligate gift ritual without thinking.
The people organising the Christmas events etc do so because they really value that. The people who don't put effort into that kind of thing.. those are the ones who don't really care about it as much.
People have different interests and values, and it's not a strict gender role thing either. It's just revealed preference.
A very precise word or phrase may over time get broadened in usage to the point of incoherence. I have seen "gaslighting" broadened to include "having a contrary opinion" and "emotional labor" broadened to include "writing items on the grocery list."
We're all part of the ongoing negotiation of what words mean. If you want them to have significance, become a lawyer or a pedant. One of those fights the good fight to keep language as a valuable and viable communication medium in the face of those who embellish and misunderstand. A noble calling: be more pedant.
Maintaining your social life indeed takes real work and effort.
Somehow, though, I suspect that insinuating I need extra rest after giving my emotional labor to "plan a night out with the guys" wouldn't go over so well with my wife. I think there is further nuance to be had here.
Once such nuance is that maintaining familial relationships is a shared responsibility whereas planning a night out with the guys is not. That said, I don't know your wife but I bet if you said "Bob is getting divorced and needed support but it was brutal so I just I need some alone time", she'd probably be receptive to that.
I think the nuance is between you and your wife and it is truly a pity if you feel you can't tell her that you need a rest. The other nuance is the continuing pressure on men to show no weakness. I keep hoping for some change here but I feel the pressure only increases and is to some degree self-reinforcing. If you aren't willing to admit weakness even to your life partner than what chance is there that other men will.
> I think the nuance is between you and your wife and it is truly a pity if you feel you can't tell her that you need a rest
Realistically, male weakness is repugnant to a lot of women. It is a huge gamble for anyone to show any whatsoever, as it is often construed as laziness. Feminism does a great job of understanding and articulating women's problems, but hasn't got much to say about how heterosexual women can often perpetuate some of the worst elements of masculinity.
There's 'a lot of women' and then there's the poster's life partner. If he can't express his feelings to her than he's got bigger problems than 'kin work.
Feminism has its ups and downs but its not going to be able to fix every gender related problem everywhere. Change begins at home.
Luckly, that's not what the author was suggesting. Now, if you were tasked with planning a dinner party, getting groceries, and cooking for a group of family friends, then asking for a break afterwards would be reasonable.
> Somehow, though, I suspect that insinuating I need extra rest after giving my emotional labor to "plan a night out with the guys" wouldn't go over so well with my wife.
In my culture, events with the guys seems much easier to plan.
The guys will have a great time even if I only feed them takeaway pizza and beer. Barbecue hasn't been assembled? They'll assemble it, light it, do the cooking, and do most of the clean-up too. If we go out for food, we can walk into pretty much any restaurant, we all have money and we'll all eat anything. Staying the night? The guys will show up with camp beds and sleeping bags if they need to. For the first event I had a backup barbecue prepared, in case the halal guy and the vegetarian guy wanted to keep their stuff separate - turns out no worries, just do our stuff first.
And everyone has a great time! This counts as absolutely crushing it, in terms of planning events with the guys, in my society.
On the other hand, big family events? There'll be a giant spread of home cooked food. Vegetarian options, vegan options, gluten-free options. Special food for the fussy nephew who'll only eat baked beans. Some people will show up with four different cakes. Some people will have baked practice cakes in advance to test out the new recipe before the big day.
> Somehow, though, I suspect that insinuating I need extra rest after giving my emotional labor to "plan a night out with the guys" wouldn't go over so well with my wife.
discussions about emotional labor/kinwork always talk quite a bit about the gender imbalance in where this labor traditionally comes from.
but as a dude living with a chronically depressed spouse, i just want to take a second to tell let the men who end up taking on this burden that they're not alone.
I can understand that I'm not alone. It's reasonable to think so.
I cannot find support anywhere, though. Which makes me feel isolated. I have nobody to share my struggles with. No place to vent. No space to process it.
Only thing that has helped is therapy. After so many years I'm craving a group, though.
Makes me wonder how different this would be in a pre-mechanized world. I can see a lot of comments (presumably from other men) that "everyone has their own preferences" for the types of kinwork to sink effort into.
Imagining a pre-mechanized world, I could imagine so much more "kinwork" that would fall into "traditionally male" roles. Like, helping your family and close friends with stuff like... cleaning the gutters, or putting up a fence, or painting a deck def feels like "kinwork" to me.
> I don’t need to point out that kin work is hard: we all know it is. But sometimes we forget that it also has a purpose beyond servicing the endless merry-go-round of heightened expectations. Kinwork is to humans what foraging for food or building a shelter is. Humans have always known we cannot survive alone, and that to protect ourselves, we need to persuade others to care about us....These ties can have powerful feelings attached, but ultimately, they are about our collective survival....The necessity of cultivating kin networks becomes even more obvious when children are born.
Although there's a lot going on in this article, the above passage is particularly interesting. When two people form romantic connections and commitments they rarely, if ever, share the same standards-of-care/needs/expectations for how their relationship will proceed. This includes how any rituals surrounding holidays, kids, and extended family should proceed.
Sometimes one partner expects/wants/needs a big gathering for Thanksgiving where the other doesn't want to celebrate it at all. Sometimes one partner strongly desires to have a "family photo" for end of year holidays to share with family or friends where the other partner does not. These may include expectation differences for physical intimacy, emotional support, etc.
Without explicit communication, understanding, and agreement (where necessary), relationships and people suffer.
Back to the above quote: reasonable people can disagree as to what's required to cultivate "kin relationships" and the degree to which those relationships are important. If there's disagreement or unhappiness with a status quo, then that needs to be communicated. If one party feels communication is difficult/unproductive/etc. then that issue should be dealt with first.
A bit nitpicky, but I've noticed the same thing, especially in humanities and social science people who ought to know the difference better.
Her point on dropping the ball is interesting, too: I'm a chronic ball dropper for christmas stuff, and mostly manage it by maintaining sane relationships the rest of the time. It would really be quite nice if other people took the same approach, not least because it is increasingly well understood how much people (women) despise this kind of work. Who wants to sit down to an elaborate christmas dinner planned and prepped by someone who clearly doesn't want to do it? A better festive time could be negotiated fairly easily between everyone if the pretence of obligation was dropped. Then maybe the other stuff ends up feeling easier.
All of this digital ink spilled when the simple answer is: just stop doing it. Clearly other people don't value your kin work/emotional labor/<insert next neologism>, so either 1) stop doing it, or 2) accept that it won't be valued and carry on. Eventually someone else may pick up the slack if they realize the did, in fact, value it. But can we please just stop with the martyrdom? I'm reminded of the serenity prayer:
"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
I find unwaged labour to be a better term, since it does not imply in the same way that it is socially necessary and opens the discoursive, utopian possibility of a society without work.
This is another reason why, if you're a man, it's incredibly important for you to work hard enough and establish a lifestyle where your wife has the option to stay at home and/or avoid full-time professional work if she so chooses.
It takes an incredible amount of work to run a household. It's not fair to ask her to do two jobs. And that's ESPECIALLY true after you begin having children.
There first thing you (as the man) must do is get off the hedonic treadmill of consumerism that will drive the desire for two incomes.
Or, ya know, you could both chip in in the household work.
That said, I'm not really against the thrust of your post, despite its undercurrent of sexism (I know plenty of relationships where the woman is the breadwinner and the man a househusband). In general, this "division of labor" is a thing that actually tends to work out better when you can focus on one thing at a time.
As a not-perfect analogy, I know divorced couples with kids that actually feel their shared custody arrangement is much better than when they were together (note these couples still like and care for each other, they just don't want to be married). I.e. when it's their turn to have their kids, they're totally focused on their kids, it can be stressful if they're working but they block out all their time to either work or be with their kids. Then, when it's their spouse's turn, they can do whatever the F they want, be completely relaxed, etc.
You're spot on noticing the fundamental problem, but perhaps describing the dynamic in terms of a solution that people are understandably allergic to. There were ways to have managed the societal change of women entering the workforce and having fulfilling careers without having to end up at the current oversubscribed catastrophe we have now. But instead, the surplus was gobbled up by the financial treadmill and made it so that two full time incomes is just the new normal while the system-illegible work mostly gets neglected.
This is another reason why, if you're a woman, it's incredibly important for you to work hard enough and establish a lifestyle where your husband has the option to stay at home and/or avoid full-time professional work if he so chooses.
It takes an incredible amount of work to run a household. It's not fair to ask him to do two jobs. And that's ESPECIALLY true after you begin having children.
The first thing you (as the woman) must do is get off the hedonistic treadmill of consumerism that drives the desire to have two incomes.
Now image all the things that their partner does in the relationship, things they perhaps would rather not, but do so anyway. And do it without spewing a bitter screed onto the internet about it.
It's a little sad that the author identifies the source of the problem as capitalism but effectively adopts the capitalist, individualistic and economic framework talking about it's effects.
Everything in life is no longer just living or valuable in itself but has to be seen and talked about as part of an economy. It's like Cypher in the Matrix writing about the relative benefits of changing his dinner from steak to something cheaper.
Nothing now is useful if it cannot be evaluated in terms of money or capital. Even the term "emotional labour" the author seeks to replace is within this frame.
> The benefits to keeping up this ‘emotional tone road show’ as Hochschild calls it, was obvious to their profit-seeking corporate employers. But the costs to the employees themselves were more hidden. Their emotional labour, according to Hochschild, was leaving employees dangerously alienated from their own feelings and perilously at risk of burn out. In the early 1980s, Hochschild estimated that a third of jobs made ‘substantial demands for emotional labour’; today she thinks that figure is more like half. Perhaps the most notorious example recently is the ‘enforced happiness’ at coffee chain Pret A Manger, which requires its servers to have rapport with one another, and enthusiasm for their (low-paid) jobs.
I don't get this. What's the alternative? A customer service job where you can be rude? There are cultural norms which we all have to obey in a workplace. The classic example is don't talk about politics or religion. Others include don't be rude, don't heat up smelly food in the microwave, keep a clean workspace, don't yell or put people down, don't make unwarranted advances to coworkers, etc. Just control your emotions regardless of where you're working.
I admit that the extra work around house maintenance usually born by women (e.g. birthdays, keeping stock of things, etc) is difficult and goes unappreciated. But I don't think extending that to "I must control my emotions in the workplace" is right.
> What's the alternative? A customer service job where you can be rude?
A customer service job where you can be merely polite and professional without also having to be artificially cheerful and enthusiastic. Or, if you must put on a show, at least be paid appropriately for the extra work you're doing.
Well, being polite and professional where one is sad or angry is still emotional labor (but it is probably a reasonable expectation from employees, as 'dealing with sad/angry co-workers' is also emotional labor).
It's not "extending" anything, that's the original definition of emotional labor. It's been extended to refer to around-the-house maintenance
> What's the alternative? A customer service job where you can be rude?
There is a lot of room between "faked niceness" and "rudeness". Nothing bad would happen if employees were allowed to behave neutrally towards customers.
>What's the alternative? A customer service job where you can be rude? There are cultural norms which we all have to obey in a workplace.
Yes, it is a cultural norm. It varies from culture to culture.
There are lots of countries / cultures where "neutral" customer service - say, at a restaurant - is perfectly fine. Others have a baseline expectation for "friendly" service. To the latter, the former might come across as rude...
When visiting the US, I time and time again started telling service staff about how my day was, because they seemed so sincerely happy to meet me and interested in how I was doing.
I've had jobs where I was called stupid to my face, repeatedly, and the expectation would be for me to enthusiastically nod, smile, and say "I can see why you'd feel that way, but..." then launch into my sales pitch for an extended warranty on a $70 printer or whatever.
By the end of each day, I was completely fucking drained, and the fact that I was sending out dozens of job applications every day for years to get out of that role was not lost on me.
You set up a false equivalence to judge others more harshly than yourself. All your examples about "controlling emotions in the workplace" are things to avoid doing. The article is talking about actions that must be performed.
> I don't get this. What's the alternative? A customer service job where you can be rude? There are cultural norms which we all have to obey in a workplace.
Different jobs require very different degrees of emotional labour.
I have to be civil and professional with a boss and colleagues who'll be civil and professional with me. That's true of almost all jobs.
But think of when you're cancelling your cable TV, and you have to wait on the phone for a long time then go through two different departments who'll try to convince you not to cancel. The workers get bonuses if they convince you not to cancel, and get fired if they don't convince enough people. Can you imagine how much of that job would involve getting yelled at by people, who are frustrated they've been on the phone for 45 minutes and they just want to cancel their damn cable?
> don't get this. What's the alternative? A customer service job where you can be rude?
Create a good work environment, pay enough, and offer enough benefits that your employees are actually happy rather than having to admonish them into faking it. This has the added benefit of creating demand that allows the company to be more selective.
All of your examples are much less effort than putting on a fake persona for eight hours a day. Most of us would be pretty drained after an eight hour, cameras on Teams meeting with our boss' boss and that's pretty much what customer service is.
Hochschild's point in The Managed Heart was that many jobs place outsized demands on workers' emotional lives, beyond workplace names of politeness designed to reduce conflict. There is a massive difference between being asked not to be rude to your coworkers, which is a basic norm of politeness in our society, and having people pleasing become inextricably linked with one's ability to earn a living.
The first time I stood in line for a hoagie, I was intimidated by the 15 options on the menu. Five minutes in line couldn't help me, and the counter person said "well stand aside and let the guy behind you order then".
I can empathize that someone from a place where everyone is politely addressed as "Sir" or "Ma'am" might find interactions jarring if they don't begin with a "hello, how are you doing today?"
she placed my accent correctly, asking if I was taking the train to New York "like all the other young kids with backpacks". I bellyached about the humidity in July and she let out a deep laugh. she wrapped the sandwich in halves since it would be easier to carry when I already had so much.
I still think about that interaction. I think that the Northeast has a charm to it developed by centuries of their communities existing in such tight quarters (albeit ones with a history of bitter sentiments and actions against Black people like Boston, South Philly, etc.). I wish strangers talked to each other more, because maybe that takes the edge off of directness.
Eg. Based on experience many people tend not to send Christmas cards. They can’t understand the purpose. That’s not inherently terrible. It’s just a different viewpoint. On the other hand there’s people that couldn’t understand not sending cards.
When people form a couple there’s many things like this where one part of the couple has the bar set in a completely different location. Which I think is ok. It’s ok for one half of the couple to not do as much card writing. The workload of a relationship should be split evenly overall but if one places waaaay more importance on a particular aspect than the other it’s ok for that one to bear more of the load in that case.