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How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

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Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#21

Post by TFortunato »

didgeoridoo wrote: post #7

I'm not sure I buy this. In my experience at least, it all comes down to standards — it sounds like this woman has higher standards for what constitutes a "running household", and gets frustrated when her husband doesn't share those standards. It sounds like he would be content with boxes on the floor, dirty bathrooms, etc. When she asks him to raise the house to her standard, she is asking him to adopt her perspecti…

I think you are missing the forest for the trees a bit here by focusing just on cleaning standards. As the author said, part of the emotional labor is the management of the household but also the management of relationships within the house.

This isn't about forcing a man "to fully adopt her perspective." This is about the idea that women are more often expected to be the ones to suggest a compromise, or to be the ones which have to point out these rifts in the relationship. More generally, to do the actual work of being in a relationship and keeping it healthy.

To flip around what you just said a bit: Why doesn't the husband notice that his wife is always picking up after him, or that she is not recieving acknowledgement of the work she has done, work that he feels should be acknowledged when he does it? Why must the woman be the one to notice there is a problem, to articulate it and to come up with a solution, as if the problem is her problem to solve and not a problem with the relationship, which consists of two people who are supposed to be partners?

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#22

Post by musha68k »

rhapsodic wrote: post #9

Based on its content, I'm surprised this made the #6 spot on the front page of HN, but now it seems to have disappeared altogether. I had to search to find it.

I would actually say this is on-topic, as per HN FAQ:

“If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.”

I’ve learned quite a bit through this article. I now even see a possibility that ingrained dynamics like these could have lead to our industry’s well known lack of gender diversity.

It’s food for thought for sure, wouldn’t you agree?

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#23

Post by bryanlarsen »

mobilefriendly wrote: post #3

This article is about weak men, men who are too lazy and slothful to shoulder responsibilities like running the household finances. Such men are more like children, doing the minimal amount possible, so lacking in initiative and organization that they are unable to even hire a cleaning service. Saying this is about "understanding" "emotional labor" is wrong because it lets weak, child-like men off the hook too easily…

If a husband chooses to do a deep clean instead of calling around to find a cleaning service, it does not seem like laziness and more like a misunderstanding. It's quite likely that the deep cleaning involved more hours of work than calling around would have.

The problem is that resolving misunderstandings can require a lot of "emotional labour", and it's often easier to just do things yourself rather than try to resolve the misunderstanding.

But it's not solely her responsibility to resolve these misunderstandings, that's on her husband too. If not, your label of weak probably does apply even if lazy doesn't.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#24

Post by dang »

rhapsodic wrote: post #9

Based on its content, I'm surprised this made the #6 spot on the front page of HN, but now it seems to have disappeared altogether. I had to search to find it.

Users flagged it, presumably because HN threads have a track record of not being able to stay civil and substantive when this sort of topic is invoked.

There's also the baity title, which looks neutral on the article page because of the whopper it's paired with, but amounts to a Molotov cocktail here. Internet forums—or at least this internet forum—does not do well with gender generalizations in titles. So in accordance with the HN guidelines ("please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait"), we'll s/men/some people/.

However, the current thread is fine so far, so we'll try turning off the flags.

Edit: in response to a reasonable complaint about my 'some people' edit, I changed the title to the least baity substring of the HTML doc title. That's what I'd have used if I had seen it sooner anyhow; we always prefer to use language from the article itself, down to the word where possible.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#26

Post by dang »

slamdance wrote: post #4

Edit: Personally, i find it a bit ridiculous the fact that people always find ways to blame other people for their own problems - in this case, someone is THINKING too much, and that somehow is someone else's fault? If you want help, ASK FOR HELP. Otherwise, we're being chauvinistic if we even offer. This is what society has devolved to. Does "Emotional Labor" exist? sure. But people need to manage their own mental s…

Could you please not use uppercase for emphasis? That's internet yelling, and violates the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#27

Post by dozzie »

TFortunato wrote: post #21
didgeoridoo wrote: post #7

I'm not sure I buy this. In my experience at least, it all comes down to standards — it sounds like this woman has higher standards for what constitutes a "running household", and gets frustrated when her husband doesn't share those standards. It sounds like he would be content with boxes on the floor, dirty bathrooms, etc. When she asks him to raise the house to her standard, she is asking him to adopt her perspecti…

I think you are missing the forest for the trees a bit here by focusing just on cleaning standards. As the author said, part of the emotional labor is the management of the household but also the management of relationships within the house. This isn't about forcing a man "to fully adopt her perspective." This is about the idea that women are more often expected to be the ones to suggest a compromise, or to be the on…

I think you didn't understand parent's point. It's not women that are expected to put effort, it's the party that's not satisfied with current state that is expected to put effort.

> Why doesn't the husband notice that his wife is always picking up after him, or that she is not recieving acknowledgement of the work she has done, work that he feels should be acknowledged when he does it?

Blind spots of attention. When she does it, the (unconscious) reaction would be "I didn't need it, I'd be fine either way". When he does it, the (unconscious) reaction would be "I didn't need it, so I wouldn't do it, but I did anyway".

> Why must the woman be the one to notice there is a problem,

It's not that woman must notice a problem, it's that woman did notice it.

> [...] to [do all the work with problem], as if the problem is her problem to solve and not a problem with the relationship, which consists of two people who are supposed to be partners?

Again, it's the attention and its blind spots. The problem didn't get noticed and acknowledged as such in the mind of man.

If you want me to do something, it's you who normally should put effort, not me, because I don't care if you will have it done or not. This is how interaction between two people works. It's silly to expect me to look around for the ways to please you out of the blue. Why would you suddenly expect this mechanics to work differetnly in a relationship?

--

[Clarification]: The description above is about how things work between people, not a praise of man's passiveness. If a couple wants to change how this mechanics, they need to put continuous effort in working against it, and this means they need to notice it and decide to do so.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#29

Post by nkrisc »

This is a topic where the more I learned about it the more I opened my eyes to it and saw it happening on my own life.

I'm very easy going and there isn't much I get too worked up about. My wife, on the other hand, is a meticulous planner. I could see her getting stressed out making decisions for a vacation. I realized that by not caring, I wasn't helping and offloading the burden to her. Now I truly didn't care if we went to restaurant A or restaurant B, so she always had to make the decision. Since realizing this I've relieved her more from all the decision making, even if I really don't care about the outcome. Why should I do this? Well, because she's my wife and while I may not care which restaurant we go to, I care about her.

TL;DR It's real and I decided to do take up more of this emotional labor in life.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#30

Post by Tobani »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #17
deweller wrote: post #14

Here's some advice for people of all genders: Learn to make decisions immediately and quickly. By laboring over a decision for hours or days, you can unintentionally turn a trivial task into a heavy one. By making decisions quickly you save yourself all the extra emotional and mental labor. Sure you will make mistakes, especially as you are learning to do this. But you will get better at it with practice. It is a ski…

> not a decision that should be labored over. Getting the right service is obviously important to her. But that doesn't mean the decision should be labored over -- the cost of a wrong decision isn't high; if you don't like the one you hired, just try another one.

Paradoxically, sometimes the only way you can get enough information to make the "right" choice is to make a choice in the first place. If it isn't a one-time choice, the downside is generally minimal.
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