Emotional Labor - a good read for men AND women

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't like the compensation aspect of the conversation because it frames the dialogue as "what's in it for me" or sets up a "tit for tat" approach to marriage and parenting---both of which are unhealthy.

My two cents: aim for an egalatarian marriage, but don't keep score. Don't be lazy; if something needs to be done, then do it. Be a kind partner. Lastly, don't expect or demand praise from your partner (I shouldn't have to thank my husband for doing the laundry).

This isn't rocket science.

+1

I guess this only comes up when the honor system is abused.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone give me specific examples of emotional labor? The only thing I can think of is supporting a relative who is going through difficult times for whatever reason. Postcards, elaborate dinners, laundry and shopping sound like physical tasks. I guess there's the planning component, but how emotional is a to-do list, really?

Most emotional labor will manifest in some kind of physical component, but I think the key distinction is whether the labor in question is designed to address a social/emotional need or a base physical need.

Examples:
-Knowing that your child is having a hard time with X social dynamic at school, and actively working to address it
-Helping a child to deal with the emotional fall out from a medical condition
-Remembering milestone events and contacting people at those times to make them feel loved and connected. Important for 'fun' events but especially for the anniversary of difficult times (deaths, etc.)
-Showing up to support someone going through a rough time, whatever the cause

And to be honest, if you broaden your 'only thing' to include friends as well as family it's actually a big, big thing. A family member is ill and I will be going there soon to provide support - this is one type of emotional labor. So is answering the phone and being there for my Mom as she processes her emotions about this illness as well as the recent deaths of some of her friends. So is showing up at your friends house with a bottle of wine and 2 hours to help them pack during a move. Or keeping a friends child overnight so they can get a much needed break. Or cutting out from work to meet a friend for coffee who just got dumped. Or dropping off a bottle of Advil so your friend doesn't have to take her sick kids to the store. Or arranging the Food Train so the new parents don't have to worry about meals for 2 weeks. Listening to your spouse comment about how much they would like X and then surprising them with it, even if X is a $1 pack of gum. Etc. Etc.

Emotional labor is the mental work of storing enough information about these people to know these efforts are needed - investing your time and energy in building the relationship. It is providing the social glue that creates community.

Those are great examples and so on target. For the men who see those things as a "to do" lust - THAT us where his problem is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not the PP to whom you respond, but in game theory, the model is more generally applicable in terms of "cooperating" or "defecting". In this way the prisoner's dilemma is more generally applicable to a wide range of situations beyond the plea deal dilemma described in the original prisoner's dilemma. If you think about it, parenting is a bit like a prisoner's dilemma in terms of decisions to cooperate or defect.........

I understand, but I think if you view the choice of possible responses to either cooperating or defecting (versus sitting on your hands or just doing the level that suits you) then you are giving into a false dilemma. In this case it implies you either "cooperate" (do what your spouse wants) or "sabotage" (undermine what they want)...and even that is, at best, a tortured fit of the model to the circumstances. Nevermind that the reward structures are completely wrong as well. There are plenty of alternative options here: clean, but maybe not as much as your spouse wants. Be willing to accompany spouse (and children) to church, but don't take the responsibility for getting the kids ready; you could agree that, despite being an atheist yourself, you're willing to compromise and allow the children to attend Church..see, very quickly the artificial constraints fall away.

There are certainly situations where there are mutually exclusive choices to be made about parenting, but how much to act as go-between for the ILs and DH isn't one of them; neither is how much tidying/cleaning you do. None of these "emotional labor" examples are mutually exclusive choices.

No gaming model is perfect. But, consider a new game invented after Prisoner's Dilemma. The new game is called, "Feed the Baby". Parent A and Parent B have a baby that must be fed regularly. Feeding the baby takes 1 parental unit of labor. Parent A and Parent B can cooperate to feed the baby and it would cost each parent 1/2 a unit of parental labor. Parent A or B can refuse to feed the baby, in which case the other parent might decide to feed the baby anyway or the other parent might not decide to feed the baby. If one parent decides to defects/refuses to feed the baby, and the other parent cooperates/feeds the baby, it costs the feeding parent 1 unit of parental labor and it costs the defecting parent nothing in terms of labor. If both parents decide to refuse/defect, then the baby doesn't get fed and the both parents suffer the worst outcome -- baby dies of hunger.

In Game theory, this is game is called "chicken". The reward structures of Chicken match the reward structures of babies, which amount to "whoever caves in first, or can tolerate the least, loses".

Anonymous wrote:Now, in a rational world, each parent looks to minimize their input -- so each parent is more motivated to choose to refuse/defect because it costs them the least amount of labor and the baby dies, even though both parents could have chosen to cooperate for a slightly higher cost per parent in terms of labor and a much better outcome (no dead baby).

In the real world, not all parents are sociopaths, also known as "Rational Econs" (yes, in the skewed sample of "fiscal conservatives", aka libertarians, everyone is 100% selfish and sociopathic, but that's not reality), also known as assholes.

In an ideal world, which the real world approaches much more closely than Libertarian Wall St, the parents do not look to minimize their input into their own child, and step up to the responsibility as adults. If your partner/spouse is unduly selfish (greedy sociopathic asshole), then I'm sorry about that - you should've sussed it out better before starting a business partnership with them.

I am the proud owner of a 7 month old baby, and I am very very familiar with the many variants of "Chicken" - aka, change the diaper, bathe the baby, feed the baby, get up in the middle of the night with the baby. These are all variants on chicken.

I also agree that if you cave in to an asshole, it will reinforce their assholery, and they will know and exploit your "weakness". The lesson is to never cave into an asshole.

And again, I go back to: your marriage and parenting are not a game. You do not have to crash into the other person and starve/kill the baby in order to stand your ground. You can take a number of other options:

- get up in the middle of the night, get the baby, [b]wake up the asshole and hand them the baby and a diaper
- get up in the middle of the night, get the baby, wake up the asshole and hand them a bottle.

Often they are - like all those people who had teenage infatuations with the writing of Ayn Rand - simply immature and ignorant and not really all that greedy or lacking empathy, and after they are shown bluntly (as teenagers often need, a little reality or shock therapy, see "woken up in the middle of the night"), they come around and realize what they are subjecting their partner to and what their responsibilities are. In short: they grow up. If not, there is always another option:
[/b]
- divorce the asshole

A member of my extended family is doing this for exactly this reason right now.

Anyway, you get the idea...about why relationships are not games or game theory.

Hilarious that you don't see that your suggestions basically confirm what game theory predicts and what this thread is saying about emotional labor. You are advising me not to kill the baby by refusing to do any work but rather to take on the emotional labor of getting up in the middle of the of the night and teach/force the father to do his fair share of the labor and behave as an adult. This still sums up to a square where Parent A is doing more than the fair share of labor vis-a-vis Parent B. This is what game theory predicts -- collaboration brings the best team outcome, but the upfront cost to each participants drives one or both of them to fail to cooperate thus leading to a worse outcome in terms of the overall joint outcome.

Of course, you are right that another option is divorce, but I would put that outcome in the "kill the baby" square. I think the whole point of the prisoner's dilemma is that from a rational perspective in terms of the overall game, you maximize the best team outcome when both parties cooperate. But from an individual outcome perspective, the most rational choice is to be the first to refuse to cooperate. IRL, the social incentives for this choice are skewed heavily into pushing the male parent to be a non-cooperator.

I also think it's interesting on this thread how many women want to blame the victim. There are variations on the following: 1) you picked wrong. I think this response is a kind of self-delusion: "that woman picked wrong, I picked right, therefore this will never happen to me." subsets of "you picked wrong" are "you should have seen this" and "people don't change; the partner was like this before the child. so partner's failure to cooperate was predictable Personally, I'm not sure either of these are correct assumptions, and 2) you are just not strong/independent. If only you were stronger, you could force your partner to cooperate or your partner would cooperate in the face of his fear of you. I think this strand of response really discounts the physical and emotional labor costs that fall disproportionately on the cooperating parent to force the non-cooperating parent to cooperate. I also think it's another kind of self-delusion -- that woman is weak, I am not so I will never be in that position. This assumption also flies in the face of what I see around me and what I know to be my own experience -- that plenty of smart, financially independent women choose not to continue a relationship where they are stuck in as the cooperating partner in a cooperate/defect dyad, they choose divorce instead.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I feel like there is a lot of denial in this thread by women who think this could never happen to them (and by men who don't think emotional labor is a thing they should be concerned with).

But I also have to say I'm so glad there are lots of women in this thread saying this issue just is not a problem in their marriage, that emotional labor is equitable, or that their husband performs the lion's share of the emotional labor. While I wish these women would be more cognizant of the problem and trap that some women get stuck in, I'm so glad that marriages seem to be becoming more equitable than they were for, say, my parents. Maybe my daughter has a chance of having a better experience with this.

I'm teaching my daughter already about emotional labor in that I'm teaching her about how to be thoughtful about somebody else. If I had a son, I'd teach him the same thing. But I'm also going to teach her strength and independence and feeling empowered to say no when someone asks you for something you don't have time or enough spoons to handle. Nobody really ever taught me anything about emotional labor except ingraining me in how to perform it, and that's probably why I do so much of it now.

The hardest part of this for me in my marriage is that I perform some emotional labor because I think it's important but my husband doesn't think it is. So I'm doing some stuff that he thinks has no or low value but I think has high value, and we just disagree. On the other hand, my husband really has changed during the course of our marriage, or maybe he has always been good at this and I just appreciate it more, in finding things that would improve my life and giving them to me. He does notice little things that I like and tries to give me them -- he's actually much better at this than I am -- and it's really sweet. And he performs a great deal of emotional labor with our child now. So even though I was always the one who took care of the baby in the middle of the night etc. and otherwise wish like my husband and I could be on the same page with emotional labor, it's not as simple as a one way street in our household, and that's complicated, but really a good thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The hardest part of this for me in my marriage is that I [strike]perform some emotional labor[/strike] something because I think it's important but my husband doesn't think it is. So I'm doing some stuff that he thinks has no or low value but I think has high value, and we just disagree.

Fixed it for you, and, what exactly is wrong with this? How is this "special" or different from changing the oil in the car?

Anonymous wrote:So even though I was always the one who took care of the baby in the middle of the night etc. and otherwise wish like my husband and I could be on the same page with emotional labor, it's not as simple as a one way street in our household, and that's complicated, but really a good thing.

I still can't quite figure out what "emotional labor" is...because it seems to me that taking care of the baby in the middle of the night is physical labor.

[Anonymous]

The "emotional labor" part of taking care of a baby in the middle of the night is feeling responsible for that baby at that time, enough that you wake up and and think "my baby is crying--what do they need and what should I do?" rather than tuning it out, and feeling it's someone else's responsibility. You'd be surprised how many men simply don't feel that basic level of mental responsibility. I think women are biologically wired to feel it more intensely, but that doesn't mean we can't be evolved enough and mature enough as couples to share the work.

[Anonymous]

I need to read this and have my husband read this.

Just a couple days ago he chose to get mad at me, for joking with my good friend about how he leaves early a few days a week to go to Starbucks in the morning before work. Meanwhile I'm running around crazy getting a toddler ready for Pre-school, an infant up and fed, and myself ready for work. And whatever else the household needs between 7am and 8am.

What I wouldn't give to just leave it all and disappear earlier to work or the coffee shop...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The hardest part of this for me in my marriage is that I [strike]perform some emotional labor[/strike] something because I think it's important but my husband doesn't think it is. So I'm doing some stuff that he thinks has no or low value but I think has high value, and we just disagree.

Fixed it for you, and, what exactly is wrong with this? How is this "special" or different from changing the oil in the car?

Not PP but this isn't special per se and is mostly different from changing the oil in that it is a different category of labor. However the BIG difference between changing the oil and emotional labor is that *nobody questions the importance of changing the oil.* We are all aware that oil needs to be changed in the car to make it run smoothly and so if your spouse handles that task for you you (hopefully) say thank you and are appreciative. What many women are saying is that a lot of emotional labor is exactly like changing the oil in a relationship to keep it strong and running well, but that their spouses don't seem to understand relationships enough to even see that this work needs doing, much less appreciate that their spouse benefited their marriage in doing it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So even though I was always the one who took care of the baby in the middle of the night etc. and otherwise wish like my husband and I could be on the same page with emotional labor, it's not as simple as a one way street in our household, and that's complicated, but really a good thing.

I still can't quite figure out what "emotional labor" is...because it seems to me that taking care of the baby in the middle of the night is physical labor.

I think you are right that there are different types of labor getting discussed in this thread, and that it has broadened beyond emotional labor into other types of labor that are traditionally performed by women, in this instance childcare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The "emotional labor" part of taking care of a baby in the middle of the night is feeling responsible for that baby at that time, enough that you wake up and and think "my baby is crying--what do they need and what should I do?" rather than tuning it out, and feeling it's someone else's responsibility. You'd be surprised how many men simply don't feel that basic level of mental responsibility. I think women are biologically wired to feel it more intensely, but that doesn't mean we can't be evolved enough and mature enough as couples to share the work.

They don't feel it OR they are too lazy and prefer to sit back and let you do it.

Either way, not very flattering. Hope they don't learn a childcare or safety lesson the hard way. My husband slept with ear plugs so I would have to wake up, and then wake him up. Self-centered. The ear plugs stopped after an argument.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I do things every day to show my husband I care about him: cleaning out his coffee mug in the morning to save him the time, picking up things on my way home from a full days work to make a dinner I'll know he'll enjoy, making sure his closet is stocked with what he needs both clothing and any toiletries, plugging in the PlayStation control he left unplugged so it's fully charged when he sits down to play at night, setting the DVR to record the game for him cause he probably forgot it and will be upset if he misses it.... noticing that his suit jacket has a missing button so adding it to the pile to take to the drycleaners... remembering he mentioned he was running low on stamps so I get some when I'm in the check out line at the grocery... oh, and he's been drinking that particular juice drink a lot lately, he's probably run out, I'll grab a few of them to stock the fridge for him...

Emotional labor: It's noticing things, it's paying attention, and it's thinking about the other person and doing things for them to make their life easier because you love them.

What would be nice is having him do something like that for me sometime. I'm not asking for him to thank me, I'm asking him to THINK about me. For more than 2 seconds. "She's had a really tough week at work, and I got home before her so I'll jsut go ahead and get those dishes started so she doesn't walk in adn see a messy kitchen first thing" or "I'll get dinner ordered in and put a bottle of wine in the fridge to cool for her, and let her pick whatever movie we watch together tonight."

It isn't hard. But it does take effort. You have to think about other people. And care about them. And care about their feelings.

And when someone says "I'm overwhelmed, this is too much, I can't handle it anymore" don't reply with a "well then just stop doing it, problem solved!" because that just says you don't give a damn at all.
Man or woman - just pay attention to the person if you love them, and show them once in awhile. Saying "i love you" would mean a whole lot more if there were some actions to back up those words.

Great post. In some religions (Judaism, Catholic), both spouses have that very same mindset. There are dirty dishes in the sink, the baby is crying, the trash can is overflowing -- they EACH want to take care of it asap, as a way of showing love and respect. Everything gets done, in a timely manner. None of this Me Me Me, or I I I. Have some pride and do it yourself, Lead by example and if your spouse is a loving and respectful person, so will s/he. Double bonus, your children will see this positive example day after day - instead of the other example where one person makes excuses, procrastinates, makes a mess and the other person does it all or asks and asks and asks the other to contribute to the household.

Be more than a paycheck, be there, be present.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sheesh, PP. What the other PP said was:

I want my daughter to recognize when she's doing it and make conscious decisions about why she's doing it and whether and in what way she is getting compensation. I want my son to grow up both being able to contribute emotional labor to a relationship and to not expect his mate to give it without some kind of compensation or mutuality.

You seem to be saying that PP should ignore the topic of emotional labor altogether and not teach it at all, and rather focus on teaching independence and smarts. But I think it's better to teach both kids about emotional labor so they're prepared for what they will face. Why not teach them everything?

Nobody taught you about emotional labor, as you say, and frankly you don't seem to have much empathy for people who are performing it for others without getting back in kind. This is, I think, a good reason for PP to be teaching both her kids about emotional labor and unfair burdens. It's better to know than not to know, better to be prepared and therefore better able to pick the right spouse than be surprised about things after you're married. Lots of women in this thread and the MetaFilter thread were saying that they were NOT prepared for how the burdens of emotional labor would fall after their marriage and particularly after their kids. You may have picked your spouse very wisely, or you may also have gotten lucky.

After seeing my husband turn into a total self-centered slob who hides at the office all the time, I would be more than happy if my daughters never got married, never had children, and just lived a fulfilling life on their own.

I cannot imagine how difficult it is for a parent to see their adult child's marriage suffering. See the spouse not caring about things or "forgetting" things left and right? See their verbal communication skills at rock bottom. See the spouse prioritize him/herself over the spouse, children, and house time and time again.

It must be so sad and painful to watch your child go through all that for years and years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We both have fulltime jobs - I've always worked - the difference is that his job is stressful so he needs to unwind when he gets home which prevents him from doing anything around the house other than sitting in front of the tv with a drink. The thing is - my job is equally if not more stressful at times (i'm a director at an agency so clients and deadlines) and I don't get to do that. When he was unemployed for 9 months and I was the sole breadwinner he was too depressed to do anything around the house because searching for a job was stressful. No mention how maybe things were stressful for me too.

When he wanted to go back to school we went into major debt with the hopefully return being a financial stable career. When I wanted to go back to school for the same reason we didn't suddenly couldn't find the funds, and this time it didn't make sense for us to go into debt in order to further *my* career.

He went back to school while working full time meaning he was gone from the house from 9 am until 9pm - he only saw the kids on the weekend because we were gone in the morning before he woke up, and they were asleep when he got home. So 100% my responsibility. After a year of this he quit his job to just go to school (still only at night) but there was no change in his contribution with the kids or around the house. Years later I was up for a promotion but it would require me to work different hours - which meant he'd have to be responsible for the kids in the evening until I got home. I had to turn down the promotion because he wouldn't pick up the kids from their after school program at 6 every night.

wow. yuck. awful pattern and precedent here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I need to read this and have my husband read this.

Just a couple days ago he chose to get mad at me, for joking with my good friend about how he leaves early a few days a week to go to Starbucks in the morning before work. Meanwhile I'm running around crazy getting a toddler ready for Pre-school, an infant up and fed, and myself ready for work. And whatever else the household needs between 7am and 8am.

What I wouldn't give to just leave it all and disappear earlier to work or the coffee shop...

wow, why do you let him do that? do you work too? i would insist on getting equal free time.

[Anonymous]

I don't get it. Why did the author allow for all those one sided friendships with male friends? Why do DCUMers let their husbands be shitty coparents?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I need to read this and have my husband read this.

Just a couple days ago he chose to get mad at me, for joking with my good friend about how he leaves early a few days a week to go to Starbucks in the morning before work. Meanwhile I'm running around crazy getting a toddler ready for Pre-school, an infant up and fed, and myself ready for work. And whatever else the household needs between 7am and 8am.

What I wouldn't give to just leave it all and disappear earlier to work or the coffee shop...

wow, why do you let him do that? do you work too? i would insist on getting equal free time.

Also you actually can just leave for Starbucks.