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.<p>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.<p>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.
How much if the "kin work" is self imposed torture ?<p>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.<p>That is, I wonder how much of this can work is actually an example of the Abilene paradox<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox</a>
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.<p>People have different interests and values, and it's not a strict gender role thing either. It's just revealed preference.
> People often call this work of arranging gatherings, preparing seasonal meals and giving gifts ‘emotional labour’.<p>I have never heard anyone use the term emotional labour in that way.
Maintaining your social life indeed takes real work and effort.<p>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.
discussions about emotional labor/kinwork always talk quite a bit about the gender imbalance in where this labor traditionally comes from.<p>but as a dude living with a chronically depressed spouse, i just want to take a second to tell let the <i>men</i> who end up taking on this burden that they're not alone.
I didn't understand the connection between 'doing dishes' and 'buying gifts/remembering birthdays'.<p>I 100% do the dishes. I am terrible at remembering birthdays.<p>Mixing the two did a disservice and I genuinely can't understand the point.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Without explicit communication, understanding, and agreement (where necessary), relationships and people suffer.<p>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.<p>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 <i>did</i>, in fact, value it. But can we please just stop with the martyrdom? I'm reminded of the serenity prayer:<p>"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,<p>Courage to change the things I can,<p>and Wisdom to know the difference."
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>It's not "just work", it's life.
> 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.<p>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.<p>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.