Reply to Emotional Labor - a good read for men AND women

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm not the PP to whom you respond, but in game theory, [b]the model is more generally applicable in terms of "cooperating" or "defecting"[/b].  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.........[/quote]

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 [i]false[/i] 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.  [/quote]

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. [/quote]

In Game theory, this is game is called [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_%28game%29#Chicken]"chicken"[/url].  The reward structures of Chicken match the reward structures of babies, which amount to "whoever caves in first, or can tolerate the least, loses".

[quote=Anonymous]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).[/quote]

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.

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

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 [b]to take on the emotional labor[/b] 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.  [/quote]

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