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DiscussionEmotional labor as a term for household labor and kinkeeping
It makes me sad that the term emotional labor is being used to replace concepts like household labor, caregiving, childcare, kinkeeping and other forms of unpaid labor that women do. Iām wondering when did this shift. Because now we donāt have a term for emotional labor which is displaying and managing emotions in occupations (paid work). It also doesnāt make sense because 99% or more of the tasks described as emotional labor have little or nothing to do with emotions. I think itās insidious to describe womenās highly rational, executive functioning thoughts like āDo we have enough toilet paper to get from Christmas Eve to New Yearās Day with an additional 5 people in the houseā as emotional. Not everything women do is emotional or primarily about emotions.
Reproductive Labor: The work of maintaining, repairing, and replacing things, including people. E.g. Childcare, education, laundry, nursing, cooking, repairing, etc
Emotional Labor: Maintaining a false appearance of an emotion for the sake of others e.g. appearing happy and friendly in rerail, or calm and collected in nursing. This needs its own term because it is genuinely hard, draining work to pretend an emotional or mental state you arent in for an extended period.
Mental labor: the work of planning, organising and remembering. Often intertwined with reproductive labor. E.g. what foods the kids will eat, what food is about to go bad, when the car needs to be serviced.
All of these are predominantly 'womens work' and therefore often intertwined.
The terms shift because people dont understand them and are linguistically lazy. We need to push for the correct terms to be used. Without language to describe our experience it is nearly impossible to change it.
Emotional labour also involves managing the emotions of others, which is extremely draining work.
Once my ex and I split I stopped doing a lot of this stuff.
For instance, when my youngest was eleven I stopped doing their laundry. It wasn't a planned thing; I was busy and kept procrastinating over the laundry until they got fed up and did it themselves.
Women must just refuse to do it. Pretend you've never heard of the unspoken contract that says it's all your responsibility. So his mum doesn't get a Mother's Day gift, or his suitcase isn't packed for that business trip, so what? Yes, a lot of stuff won't get done which we'd prefer to see get done and people will flat on their faces for a while, but then they'll learn.
They will never stop expecting it until we first refuse to do it. The more we do it, the more we train them to expect it.
I agree, but the problem is women are often damned if they do and damned if they donāt. This is particularly true for women who arenāt Western.
I remember a Christmas at an auntieās house several years back and my (female) cousin was running around ragged helping her mum on the day. (It was her parents house.) Her young son complained of being hungry, and his dad (her now ex) was doing nothing excepting drinking, talking and relaxing.
Guess who got publicly chastised for not seeing to their sonās needs?
It always bugs me when I see the useful term "emotional labour" being misused to refer to all gendered inequities in the home or in a relationship.
Emotional labour means exactly what it says. It's the labour of managing emotions, specifically the emotions of others. The term is used to recognise the fact that this is taxing and exhausting work in light of the fact that it all gets dumped on women.
This doesn't mean any and all things in the home or in a relationship that are dumped on women (because it's work) and unrecognised as work (because it's dumped on women) can be described as "emotional labour". It's important that the term doesn't get watered down into an umbrella term for any sexism in the home/in a relationship just because people can't think of terms for the other forms of sexism.
We already have a term for sexist household labour inequality: the second shift. Housework is not emotional labour, and the fact that it's a feminist issue doesn't make it emotional labour.
The other thing I most frequently see "emotional labour" misused to refer to is household management and relationship administrative work, eg. remembering everything on the calendar, organising and managing routine tasks, organising events, remembering specific details about everything and everyone and employing that knowledge to manage tasks ("We can't bring that because your uncle is allergic."). We do need a term that directly refers to the form of sexism where this type of work all gets dumped on women and its toll on our time and energy goes unrecognised. But it is not "emotional labour".
I was about to add an identical comment, but yours nails it perfectly. Second shift is all the logistical planning and physical labor. So emotional labor is really then the Third Shift of also being expected to be everyone's therapist, impulse control manager, and negative emotions dumping ground. In addition to whatever their first Shift occupation is.
I have found that quite often the women branded as Difficult Women, at home and in the workplace, are those who refuse to do the Emotional Labor part of their jobs.... "I have TSP reports to do, Bob. I am not your fucking mother or counselor."
Yes this is exactly what I mean. Most of the tasks that get listed out as emotional labor do not involve emotions as a primary component. Theyāre just work that needs to get done because human beings have physical needs regardless of how anyone feels. Women who hate their husbands cook, and often the cooking doesnāt make the husbands happy either, but they still have to eat. There are mothers who hate their kids, those kids still have to get to school with clothes on. The kids might hate the clothes and hate their moms for dressing them that way, but they still have to wear clothes to protect their skin. I think it is SO WEIRD that I have to break this out and separate emotions from the tasks. Thereās some unquestioned sexism that tasks women do that are necessary for human life are considered by nature connected to emotions because women are doing them. Of course having your basic needs met will most likely improve your mood but even if it doesnāt, it still has to get done.
When an electrician follows code to wire a building, heās considering the needs of others. We donāt think of that as āemotional laborā or even care work. Itās professionalism, itās safety. Itās necessary for life. Peoplesā feelings are only distantly involved.
When an electrician follows code to wire a building, heās considering the needs of others. We donāt think of that as āemotional laborā
You're right. It isn't emotional labor. But an electrician is getting paid to do it, and that electrician opted into a career where they're expected to be knowledgeable and meet certain industry standards of safety.
So really, what people are now often describing as emotional labor is really unpaid/invisible labor that often falls on women and a lot of this labor is hoisted on women without their opting in. They're just expected to do it by default.
Excellent comment, completely agree. Itās important to distinguish different concepts from each other so we have clear, easily explained positions when we are trying to make sense of things
I've started referring to it as "household logistics." It's not just the cooking, cleaning, etc.. It's real "business" tasks like keeping inventory, arranging the entire schedule, keeping everyone on task, making sure everything is needed to follow the schedule. It's packing everything daily for the whole household, keeping in mind each member's schedule. Then moving both items and people to the locations they need to be.
It's risk management and knowing how to mitigate those risks, both from personal experience and constant research to keep on top of new trending risks. Then learning how to mitigate those.
Managing a household is a skill and should be allowed and taken seriously on a resume. Most men have no clue as to what it takes to run a house and take care of the family as well. It is a full-time job.
Economics come from the greek word Ekonomia (I am not sure how its written) but it literally means "administration of the household", Oikos (home) and Nomos (rules). It used to be recognized as labour! But modern "economy" doesn't even recognize it.
This also often included managing the money of the household. I know in many cultures the men were the earners, but the general idea was that they would hand that money over to the wife, as she was the one managing the household and the family's economy. It wasn't his money, it was the family's.
I've heard the terms "home engineer" or "household engineer" used to describe this labor and I quite like it. It's work that requires attention to detail, requires demanding organizational, budgeting, and time-management skills, and it's work that requires monetary compensation when it's done outside of the personal family unit (which is why women almost entirely are assigned the responsibility of doing this labor - men don't like doing work for free).
I dont think thats a good term, but then a lot of the terms "engineer" gets applied to now are very silly.
It literally means a person who works with an engine. It later got expanded to the sorts of people involved in the design of engines, and then of similar technology i.e.software engineer is sort of appropriate as a computer is kind of a calcation engine.
'Home engineer' sounds silly the same way as calling a chef a 'food professor' would. To me it sounds like someone who has so little respect for the actual job they are describing that they have to lie so it sounds important.
Manager is the term that covers the tasks you listed. Household manager.
I don't think emotional labour is limited to paid work, though. It often falls on women to do for free in their spare time. Being extra pleasant and jokey with a receptionist because a cranky husband just snapped at her and you don't want your reservation canceled, or pretending you find something your kid does interesting to encourage them to learn more. Keeping peace with in-laws by smiling through their intrusiveness, pretending you aren't scared of spiders so your kids don't become afraid of them, too, not rolling your eyes at something really silly a pre-teen kid is crying about, commiserating with an angry boyfriend to calm him down, even though he was at fault. In fact, anything women constantly do to de-escalate men, automatically, every day. Or to nurture kids, if they're around. And swallowing crap from service providers just to get through the freaking day. I agree that the term 'emotional labour' is being absolutely misused, but I think that it is another unpaid job foisted.off on women.
I always found the term emotional labour (when used correctly) used to describe emotional labour in relationships more often than the workplace.
Relevant article that shares your frustration.
Iām wondering if the language shift is partly due to peopleās increasing desire to feel included and validated, combined with morally grey journalists and influencers who prioritize clicks over quality. Terms with established definitions are restructured to include and appeal to a wider audience, eventually causing them to become diluted buzzwords; āemotional laborā goes from describing the management of emotions in the workplace which affects many women, to describing any task thatās mentally taxing which affects most women.
Yes this article is what I mean. I donāt believe in āmaternal gatekeepingā but thatās not the main point and I agree with the rest of it.
These articles have resonated because many people, most of them women, sense that thereās a pattern of inequality playing out over and over again in their lives and the lives of their friends that goes something like this: A woman feels sheās keeping her household, friend group, or workplace functioning on an even keel, senses that sheās not being recognized, appreciated, or compensated for it, and, when she tries to explain that feeling, her frustration mounts at the inability of others to understand her. This is a common story hiding multitudesālayers upon layers of labor, emotion, exhaustion, and injustice.
Thereās no shortage of gender research to support and validate these feelings. Theyāre real and they matter. Itās a good example of the kind of consistent inequality and exploitation of womenās labor, bodies, and feelings that feminist thinkers since the 1960s have been dissecting. However, they didnāt term these injustices emotional labor; their catchall term was much more accurate: patriarchy. Itās a term that, unfortunately, still perfectly fits the bill.
Not every sexist social interaction or situation complicated by gendered expectations is emotional labor. And women reflexively using āemotional laborā to refer to virtually everything we do is damaging to womenās reputation. We spend all this time trying to show we are not any more emotional than men, then go backwards describing everything we do as emotional or emotionally motivated.
I posted this because this is the time of year when emotional labor is expended greatly and to hopefully encourage some new year's resolutions. Emotional labor is involved when considering toilet paper bc it means thinking of the needs of others, which we supposedly do out of 'love'. I disagree with the narrow definition of emotional work as taking place within the public sphere bc it renders invisible the connection between public and private, production and reproduction of labor and limits it to paid work. At the end of the day, emotional work as defined by sociologists is paid labor even though it is propped on the labor established in the private sphere which is unpaid--'the work of love'. This is why I am more inclined towards the Italian radical feminists writing on the topic, and their nearly successful campaign for wages for housework. There were a lot of radical feminist movements. I think radfem today could benefit from drawing on other parts of the movement beyond the US and UK.
The Italian feminists unpacked 'the work of love' in their analysis of The Work of Love, which "poses, at the center of its analysis, the relationship which exists between physical (and specifically sexual) violence against women, and the role of women in performing housework, to which they remain primarily assigned in the global capitalist division of labor (and which seeks to define all of their existence)", which gave rise to the wages for housework movement.
Selma James was a leader of this movement and her "publication The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community (co-authored with Mariarosa Dalla Costa) launched the "domestic labour debate" by spelling out how housework and other caring work women do outside of the market produces the whole working class, thus the market economy, based on those workers, is built on women's unwaged work. The delve into the ideological foundations of why women even think about the amount of tp for a household when others do not. And they tie that to much larger issues.
Pretty much every job considers the needs of others and involves emotions of some kind, but emotional labor is a specific type of labor activity and using the term to mean household labor (because a woman might feel some type of way about her husband or kids) means there is now no word for a waitress being forced to have a bubbly personality to keep her livelihood. Buying groceries for your family (because humans are organisms that need to eat no matter how they feel) and being compelled to smile when youāre not happy at work are two very different types of activity that have almost no relationship to each other. And the way women are using it as a synonym for complex logistical / managerial thinking (not feeling) is frankly sexist. Making sure products are delivered on time for Christmas is āconsidering the needs of othersā but no one would describe what managers at UPS and FedEx are doing as emotional labor. Itās being called emotional because womenās thoughts are framed as emotional even when theyāre highly analytical, rational and practical. The term emotional labor being removed from its original context and used so broadly to apply to everything women do is linguistically reifying womenās character as emotional.
The collection of experiences in the doc posted, titled "emotional work," could be called something else and the testimonies would still carry weight. Maybe this post was separate and not a response to that; If so, my apologies for weighing in. It is a useful collection of material about an intangible division of what the Italian radical feminists (and Selma James, an American radfem) call 'reproductive labor' or caretaking. I like reproductive labor (which includes complex logistical / managerial thinking), bc its about how interpersonal dynamics make it possible to go out in the world and do the emotional work of paid labor (this would be a socialist feminist take). However, the article was not about housework really at all but rather relationship work or, as one of the men in the doc states, "comfort and care", not tasks, per se.
"The work of love" is the way Italian feminists rejected the notion of woman's work in the home as simply empirical (or executive) tasks, but also includes care-taking on other less tangible levels that make life livable (communication or nurturance). Maybe retain "emotional work" for the workplace and its specifics, and "affective labor" or simply "compelled caretaking" for the domestic sphere, but there is a relationship between the two that is obviously gendered.
PS I agree that there needs to be a term to talk about the emotional "work" asked of women esp to keep their job--though these are almost always trying to replicate the ideal of the woman in the home. On the other hand, the UPS driver is not considering the needs of others --anyone who has watched all those fedex delivery nightmares of thrown or abused packages can tell you that. They are doing the labor required for their paycheck and avoiding getting fired. I have worked in food service most of my life and its not been about feeding others or caring for them at all; its about earning my paycheck and paying my rent. I have worked for over 40 years and not one job was I considering the needs of others; I was following the job protocol so I could pay rent and keep my job, even when it demanded I act as if I cared about the customer or client. The complex /managerial thinking of the housewife is what the Italian feminists call 'the work of love' bc women are compelled to do this work without pay (or even thanks). It was once considered this--that being a housewife was "home economics" and entire books were written to educate the woman to be an analytical, rational manager, but with the rise of the ideology of romance (circa turn of the century), this was supposed to be disavowed. The film Craig's Wife, directed by lesbian Dorothy Arzner is an excellent example of the historical shift. This historical shift (from managing the home to selfless act of 'love') is well-documented in the excellent book, American Domesticity: From How-to Manual to Hollywood Melodrama by Dr. Kathleen McHugh.
I do think there's a distinction to be made here, with respect to the concept of 'emotional labour'. I don't work in the hospitality industry, or retail, or other jobs where women in particular are required to make sure people (particularly men) have an emotionally positive experience, however they behave or whatever they want, in order to keep their jobs/get tips. But I do find that I have to put in a kind of 'emotional labour' that my male colleagues don't - I have to consider and reconsider how I will contradict or correct a male colleague, look over my phrasing of emails to make sure I'm not unintentionally 'triggering' a man, watch my gestures, expression and tone of voice in interacting with clients and colleagues in a way that men clearly (from observing their behavior) don't have to do - because if I make a slipup my livelihood is in danger, while male colleagues literally having tantrums and physically threatening people has been brushed away with 'well he was having a bad day'. This takes up a lot of 'bandwidth' that could otherwise be used for more work-relevant tasks.
I have worked for over 40 years and not one job was I considering the needs of others; I was following the job protocol
Iām sure there are some jobs out there that donāt involve the needs of others, I canāt think of one right now. Scientist maybe? Most jobs are providing goods and services to others which requires considering their needs or desires. The job protocols you (or I, or anyone) follow were written by someone who had to consider the needs of others (the clients, customers, patients, end users). They are written specifically to ensure the customersā needs are met by the frontline worker. So even if we donāt feel like we are considering their needs, or even if we donāt want to, the nature of the job means we do.
Managers arrange work so that frontline workers donāt have to do much thinking in order to serve the customers to a satisfactory level. Women are the managers of family life.
Thatās why I didnāt say UPS drivers* I said UPS managers who are the ones who have to consider the needs of the customers (both the buyers and sellers of products shipped) when it comes to the Christmas holidays. Amazon needs 100 gazillion packages delivered by tomorrow morning, they are not going to hand over money to UPS without having their needs satisfied. People (usually men) are getting paid real money for the tasks society tells us are worthless when women do them for no pay in their homes. The reward for the UPS manager is money, but that doesnāt mean the task isnāt primarily considering the needs of the customer / client.
Iāve also worked in food service and considering the needs of the customers was my job. My job wasnāt collecting a paycheck. The pay was my compensation for giving a shit that a customer was hungry or thirsty and serving them food and drink (and being nice about it as a secondary emotional task).
*Also I donāt think the way delivery drivers arenāt always careful with packages is evidence they donāt consider the needs of others. Having done similar work, people in those fields will do things like throw packages because itās faster and speed is one of the needs of others they are being paid to consider. If enough customers get pissed off that their packages were mishandled, they will report it to a manager who will then revise the job standards again to suit the needs of the customers.
I agree with you. My profession is 100% about considering the needs of others, pretty much explicitly; but most of it is computer-based desk work that requires no emotional labor, which makes the moments that do (talking to the public) really stand out.
I think calling consideration of others āemotionalā when women do it but not when men do it* is weird. The idea that it is emotional labor because itās believed to be motivated by an emotion (love) is a weird framing. Everyone is motivated to work by an emotion (fear, shame, ambition, loneliness, whatever) because emotions motivate most action.
* And plenty of men have to be considerate and even suck-up to people as part of their job, weāre social animals and thatās life, itās just not put in the āemotional laborā category because I think like BC is saying, emotional labor has been redefined as womenās unpaid household labor.
I would like to disagree with some of the definitions here & offer this one.
Emotional labour is really that: from 'give us a smile love' to what I always thought I had to do which I'm sure many of you can relate to, which is being responsible for how other people feel.
From party guests to colleagues to children and partners. I am/was the one that has to be cheery & happy & funny, to make everyone feel good. Someone to confide in, ask for advice and dump on. Smooth over hurt feelings not get 'emotional' myself, meaning the so-called negative emotions like anger, sadness & anxiety.
That other stuff is unpaid & therefore "unimportant" work which we are just expected to use our own precious time and energy to do.
Both of these categories represent an unfair burden on women, but the first is way more insidious if it is unrecognised by those around us. I'm trying very hard to allow the other grown adults in my life take care of themselves emotionally, though there are times when I do support but expected to be supported in return.
What do you think?
Yes. Exactly this. Plus how men dump their emotions on us. Anger sadness etc.
I used to feel important and needed and kind when some man would confide in me
Then I noticed there was no reciprocation
āKindā has become a dirty word to me
I think the term labor is being applied too broadly. Not everything a person does is labor. If a man on the bus tells me to smile and I do it, thatās not labor. Itās not involved in the economy, not as productive labor (producing goods and services) or reproductive labor (reproducing workers). Itās a social interaction, itās sexist, my personal safety might be involved, and it involves emotions, but itās not emotional labor because itās not labor. The context of people earning their livelihoods and connection to the economy is lost when we use emotional labor to mean every type of sexist social interaction.
I do agree that there is a lot of actual emotional labor involved in reproductive labor, but just like in productive labor, much of it is secondary to unemotional tasks. The things you listed in the second paragraph are emotional labor because they primarily concern emotions. Being the family therapist is emotional labor (or it can be) but being the family āmanagerā doing complex logistical tasks, planning, communicating with outside entities, procuring and deploying resources (food, water, supplies, money, transportation, clothing, etc) is not emotional.
I see two problems one is defining tasks that are not emotional as emotional because they relate to women and womenās thoughts and motivation to act are automatically considered emotional. And the other is defining every social interaction as labor.
Reading Caliban and the Witch by Sylvia Frederici. She explains it all. It is academic and slightly tough going but Imma stick with it.
Also great BBC podcast: The Witch. Some New Age - erm - stuff but good historical treatment of our increasing oppression under religion and capitalism, when our labour became unrewarded, unappreciated & unpaid, so not counted.
This is a really good point. Thanks for making me think about it.
Exactly this!!
When random men go maudlin on me over their mean exwife/ex girlfriend/current partner it annoys me to no end
Household labor seems more to the point than emotional labor. And women doing all the household labor, while men get to slack off, really puts that thought into your mind, the sexist gender roles at play. I think emotional labor is referring to the emotional stress of having to do all the household labor on top of all the other things women have to do.
Emotional labour is having to manage other people's emotions for them. Like an unpaid therapist.
It took me a while to understand what "kinkeeping" referred to and how it connected to emotional labour. I get it now. Thanks. That's all.
Mental labor?
I know my husband does more than pretty much every man I know (and without being asked), but I'm still responsible for the majority of the mental labor around holidays, etc. Sigh
I think the problem is that this kind of women's highly rational family keeping used to be called something similar to: "being a woman", so it can seem a little uncomfortable to talk about it.
A poem by Wendy Cope, encompassing a core truth;-)
A lot of men love Christmas: the gathering of the clan,
But still it's mostly women who have to think and plan.
So much to organise, to shop for and remember -
Hard work that occupies the best part of December.
I don't enjoy it, but I do the best I can.
How to have a happy Christmas? Be a man.*
I just had a conversation with a friendās mom about this specifically. How not only the million holiday specific tasks are suddenly āwomenās workā, but the mental and emotional load as well. Inviting the clan is part of the mental load but itās on women to keep the peace, take the drinks away, change the subject, keep the topics safe, ākeep everyone happyā, and have the āAhem, can you help me in the kitchen?ā talks as they arise. The unpaid emotional labor, specifically, is heaped on at Christmas.
This x1000.