It's not 'emotional labour', it's kin work

>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.

Yes, but there still needs to be a recognition of where the bars are and the work needed to reach them. If not, it can easily become a problem when one person doesn't value that work at all and therefore doesn't see that work being done as being part of the even split. If one partner doesn't care about the Christmas cards, they should still recognize that the other partner's work on sending out the Christmas cards is in fact work that needs to be done. That is part of what the article is about, recognizing that this emotional labor/kin work is "not dispensable" despite there being a notion it is due to historic and systemic issues.

A common issue with this in my view is that in many cases the incentives are all wrong. A man might care a lot about a traditional thanksgiving meal but by consciously or unconsciously presenting a lower bar he can offload responsibility. He might not care about the cards, but he does like getting invited hunting with his BIL which only happens through the maintenance of those relationships. Avoiding acknowledging that those two things are connected allows for pushing off responsibility while reaping the benefits.

There are obviously ways to balance this (she does the cards, I organize the July 4th BBQ) but it definitely requires honesty with each other and ourselves to make that work and avoid falling back on (often gendered) patterns.

> I’ll say it again: kin work definitely does not need to be carried out by any particular gender. It is just work

The author addresses that and it fits into her desire to move away from 'emotional labor', as 'emotional' is seen as a feminine domain. 'kin work' can also be expectations to manage all home, car, and lawn maintenance tasks. Someone being able to walk in, say 'the sprinkler's broken', and walk off again is a prime example of kin work.

> 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.

A different take-- imagine the love your spouse would feel if-- even a single year out of your entire life-- you were enthusiastically engaged in a task she almost certainly already knows you have no interest in. A task, btw, she almost certainly sees as being somewhat of a burden-- no human ever finds it 100% fun to do tasks like writing a bunch of cards.

I mean, you've publicly declared how little you value that task. So it would be clear you're helping because you know that your spouse values that task, and because you know she would consequently value and enjoy doing it even more with the person she loves.

Either that, or you end up pentesting your own position here, she ends up not wanting the help, and you prove yourself right. Everybody wins!

If anyone ends up trying this out and proving me right, please track me down and pay me $10,000 as a small token of gratitude for the priceless joy I will have added to your life and marriage.

Yep. I imagine that in the culture described, the women care a lot more about Christmas being organised just so than the men do.

I came here to say precisely the same thing. It's all down to personality. For example, in a relationship between a person high in orderliness and a person low in orderliness, the resultant complaint usually is "I do all the cleaning up around here!" But the complaint could easily run in the other direction: "If your need for orderliness wasn't so high, we wouldn't have to do so much cleaning up around here!"

The same thing is often the case in a relationship where people set the bar around "maintenance of social ties" very differently. The typical couple (in my totally subjective field of experience) is one where the husband is like: "Hey honey, how about we just order pizza for all of our guests for the Thanksgiving party we're hosting this year?" and the wife is like: "Over my dead body!"

Interestingly, those roles are reversed in my own marriage: We recently got married at the courthouse with a vague plan to throw a wedding party at some unspecified future date. It's increasingly looking like my wife just can't be bothered. Meanwhile, I love to cook, and when my wife suggests using stock cubes when we cook for guests, I throw her out of the kitchen and finish the job myself.

It's apples and oranges. Subjective Theory of Value is the only reliable economic model here.

This is true to an extent, but I think there are two important things to caution against.

One is that it is super easy for a lazy person to say "you just care about this more than me" when in fact they care about it a lot and will complain if it doesn't happen. This is extremely common, particularly among men, even if I assume in good faith you are not one of these people.

The other is that when you enter into a relationship with someone it is just not possible to completely ignore the things they like and are emotionally invested in. If you marry someone who is a super-christmas-enjoyer then guess what, you are a super-christmas-enjoyer now too (or, to be fair, you are now both somewhere in the middle). Ignoring that you have very different expectations will just cause friction. (so if you really really don't want to care, you are going to have to consciously discuss this and agree to it, and even then I don't actually believe it will work)

I can understand that I'm not alone. It's reasonable to think so.

I cannot find support anywhere, though. Which makes me feel isolated. I have nobody to share my struggles with. No place to vent. No space to process it.

Only thing that has helped is therapy. After so many years I'm craving a group, though.

Once such nuance is that maintaining familial relationships is a shared responsibility whereas planning a night out with the guys is not. That said, I don't know your wife but I bet if you said "Bob is getting divorced and needed support but it was brutal so I just I need some alone time", she'd probably be receptive to that.

I think the nuance is between you and your wife and it is truly a pity if you feel you can't tell her that you need a rest. The other nuance is the continuing pressure on men to show no weakness. I keep hoping for some change here but I feel the pressure only increases and is to some degree self-reinforcing. If you aren't willing to admit weakness even to your life partner than what chance is there that other men will.

Luckly, that's not what the author was suggesting. Now, if you were tasked with planning a dinner party, getting groceries, and cooking for a group of family friends, then asking for a break afterwards would be reasonable.

> 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.

In my culture, events with the guys seems much easier to plan.

The guys will have a great time even if I only feed them takeaway pizza and beer. Barbecue hasn't been assembled? They'll assemble it, light it, do the cooking, and do most of the clean-up too. If we go out for food, we can walk into pretty much any restaurant, we all have money and we'll all eat anything. Staying the night? The guys will show up with camp beds and sleeping bags if they need to. For the first event I had a backup barbecue prepared, in case the halal guy and the vegetarian guy wanted to keep their stuff separate - turns out no worries, just do our stuff first.

And everyone has a great time! This counts as absolutely crushing it, in terms of planning events with the guys, in my society.

On the other hand, big family events? There'll be a giant spread of home cooked food. Vegetarian options, vegan options, gluten-free options. Special food for the fussy nephew who'll only eat baked beans. Some people will show up with four different cakes. Some people will have baked practice cakes in advance to test out the new recipe before the big day.

> 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.

Why not? That's perfectly reasonable thing to do.

I mean, the article is saying that planning a night out isn't "emotional labor", so you agree.

They are saying it's kinwork

A very precise word or phrase may over time get broadened in usage to the point of incoherence. I have seen "gaslighting" broadened to include "having a contrary opinion" and "emotional labor" broadened to include "writing items on the grocery list."

we've banned gifts for adults and we just go out to eat anymore.

We don't need the junk and we are sick of stressing out about buying gifts.

> What's the alternative? A customer service job where you can be rude?

A customer service job where you can be merely polite and professional without also having to be artificially cheerful and enthusiastic. Or, if you must put on a show, at least be paid appropriately for the extra work you're doing.

It's not "extending" anything, that's the original definition of emotional labor. It's been extended to refer to around-the-house maintenance

> What's the alternative? A customer service job where you can be rude?

There is a lot of room between "faked niceness" and "rudeness". Nothing bad would happen if employees were allowed to behave neutrally towards customers.

>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.

Yes, it is a cultural norm. It varies from culture to culture.

There are lots of countries / cultures where "neutral" customer service - say, at a restaurant - is perfectly fine. Others have a baseline expectation for "friendly" service. To the latter, the former might come across as rude...

I've had jobs where I was called stupid to my face, repeatedly, and the expectation would be for me to enthusiastically nod, smile, and say "I can see why you'd feel that way, but..." then launch into my sales pitch for an extended warranty on a $70 printer or whatever.

By the end of each day, I was completely fucking drained, and the fact that I was sending out dozens of job applications every day for years to get out of that role was not lost on me.

You set up a false equivalence to judge others more harshly than yourself. All your examples about "controlling emotions in the workplace" are things to avoid doing. The article is talking about actions that must be performed.

> 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.

Different jobs require very different degrees of emotional labour.

I have to be civil and professional with a boss and colleagues who'll be civil and professional with me. That's true of almost all jobs.

But think of when you're cancelling your cable TV, and you have to wait on the phone for a long time then go through two different departments who'll try to convince you not to cancel. The workers get bonuses if they convince you not to cancel, and get fired if they don't convince enough people. Can you imagine how much of that job would involve getting yelled at by people, who are frustrated they've been on the phone for 45 minutes and they just want to cancel their damn cable?

That is emotional labour.

> don't get this. What's the alternative? A customer service job where you can be rude?

Create a good work environment, pay enough, and offer enough benefits that your employees are actually happy rather than having to admonish them into faking it. This has the added benefit of creating demand that allows the company to be more selective.

All of your examples are much less effort than putting on a fake persona for eight hours a day. Most of us would be pretty drained after an eight hour, cameras on Teams meeting with our boss' boss and that's pretty much what customer service is.

From visiting the US, it was always clear to me that the expectations on service worker's cheerfulness are unreasonable and frequently creepy.