Emotional labor is the unpaid job men still don’t understand.
“Children learn their communication patterns and gender roles (kids can recognize ‘proper’ gender behavior by age three) from a variety of people and institutions, but their parents are the ones that they, in theory, interact with the most,” notes Dr. Ramsey. So if we want to change the expectations of emotional labor for the next generation, it has to start at home. “For parents, this means making sure that one spouse does not do more of that type of labor than the other. Speaking in terms of how emotional labor is currently divided, girls will hopefully learn not to expect to have to do that labor and boys will hopefully learn not to expect females to do that labor for them. Children watching parents share that emotional labor will be more likely to be children who expect that labor to be shared in their own lives.”
I know it’s not going to be easy for either of us to tackle the splitting of emotional labor, nor do I ever expect it to be completely equitable. (I’ll admit that I probably enjoy certain types of emotional labor far more than my husband, like planning our meals and vacations.) I’m also more skilled at emotional labor on the whole because I’ve had my entire life to practice it. But if we’re lucky, he’s got a whole lot of life left to hone his emotional labor skills, and to change the course of our children’s future. Our sons can still learn to carry their own weight. Our daughter can learn to not carry others’. {read}