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Emotional labor explains why what has become known as women's work is never done. In the home it involves loving, caring actions with invisible mental load dimensions like anticipation, remembering, and planning; and zillions of concrete tasks.Emotional Labor DefinedEmotional labor is the invisible, unnoticed, unwaged, unwritten, undervalued work women do at home and in the paid workforce. It is the thinking about what's coming up, what needs to happen, how to look into the future to anticipate birthdays, school permissions slips, family meals, holiday dinners, do we have enough toilet paper, how come we don't have any more ketchup? There are myriad ways in which we have to think about the functioning of a household. Granted, all of these little tasks are each one of them easy to do but also supremely important to the functioning of a well-ordered home and to family happiness. The tasks are like part of the clothing that women wear. It falls onto her shoulders like a giant set of shoulder pads.In their new book, Lark and Kolberg, two outstanding organizers/feminists who have helped revolutionize the world of women with chronic and severe organizational challenges, now expand our perspective to help us see beyond women with executive function difficulties. They shine a light on how most women carry an enormous burden as a result of the mental gymnastics involved in tracking the needs of each family member in order to prevent both minor inconveniences and larger disasters. This precision navigation by women often occurs below the radar, their automatic seamless coordination of their family's lives going largely unnoticed by others. The price paid by women for this mental and emotional labor seeps into the pores of their everyday lives and saps their emotional reserves, often leaving little time for their own self-care.The kind of system change needed to impact this dynamic will require ongoing direct, heart- to-heart talks within families and with partners.
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