My Proposal to Scrap "Emotional Labor"

And my idea for redefining these tasks, based on my 13 years in tech

Before I get into this article, I want to let you know (especially if you’re a new subscriber) that I’ve done a lot of parenting content this week, but this not my main “thing,” for lack of a better word. I write about social dynamics and culture in general, and sometimes I’ll have a week where I mostly write about friendship, marriage, dating, sex, I mean, recently I wrote a lengthy rant about unleashed dogs…anyway, this week it turned out to be parenting, so if you’re not into the parenting stuff just bear with me. Thank you!

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When I first heard the term “emotional labor,” it had not yet reached the cringe linguistic niche as “gaslighting” or “toxic.” It seemed like a good word to describe work that couldn’t be quantified with money or physical effort. Working at an office job or warehouse? That’s paid labor. Taking out the garbage or doing the dishes? That’s domestic labor. Attending your spouse’s work event, coordinating a babysitter and making small talk with his coworkers who aren’t your friends? Hm…that’s emotional labor. It’s good that we have a term for nebulous tasks like these.

Of course, it wasn’t long before scope creep set in. I think things really took off with this tweet from several years ago, which has since become a meme:

Granted, she didn’t use the term “emotional labor” but it fell into the same basic category, while commodifying normal behaviors within a friendship. There’s also something to be said about the type of person who would react favorably to this advice also being the type of person who always has multiple friends “in crisis.”

But it rubbed people the wrong way. First of all, it just looked weird and stilted (and almost self-absorbed?) but most importantly, it was taking an extremely normal part of life (having a supportive conversation with a friend) and turning it into a “take a number” machine at a Wendy’s.

Emotional labor also became a hot topic when a mom (she was a foster mom, which I think almost makes it worse) complained about having to do the “emotional labor” of *checks notes* interacting with her foster children:

Since then, “emotional labor” has become a bit of a joke, especially among people who are likely to see any frank discussion of women’s mental health as frivolous and self-absorbed. And that’s a shame, because much like the now-reviled term “triggered,” it has a real purpose and meaning. Having difficult conversations with in-laws, sending condolences, managing the family’s social calendar—or even the simpler stuff like remembering birthdays and anniversaries of extended relatives—fall into the category of emotional labor. Although it tends not to be used this way today, the term has roots in the actual workplace, referencing the requirement for service workers to smile and make small talk. Something being emotional labor doesn’t make it inherently wrong, just work. Personally, I don’t believe parenting tasks, like comforting your upset child, should be counted as emotional labor, but I suppose that’s up for debate.

But in some circles—I don’t want to generalize, but I think these circles are the over-therapized ones—emotional labor has extended to basically any non-physical task, and has given birth to the more all-encompassing term “invisible labor.” But what I find interesting here is that a lot of these tasks aren’t really for other people, and actually fall more into the category of “hobbies” than labor. For example, there was a viral post a year or two ago, where a mother talked about the “invisible labor” of vacation prep for her family. She mentioned packing and planning activities. Okay, that’s borderline invisible labor, but I also have a hard time associating a luxury vacation with “labor” in any sense. She then listed “planning coordinating outfits for photos.” Um, what? That’s for you, lady! And that’s fine—I love a good coordinating family outfit pic, but that is not, in any stretch of the imagination, “labor.” As labor seems to apply to more and more things, it makes the very concept of being a wife and mother sound unpleasant and perpetually resentful. Is it emotional labor to read a book to your kids? Is it now sex work to have sex with your husband? If everything is labor, is anything really labor?

I had actually written this article weeks ago, and it was in the backlog. But just yesterday, this screenshot from Instagram graced my Twitter timeline which reminded me:

Who among us hasn’t been mansplained, manipulated and gaslit by that chauvinist chud Santa?

Anyway, my first thought was, lighten up. Christmas is fun, nobody dies from having inadequately layered garland, and if it feels like you’re doing way too much, you can probably dial it back a bit instead of being a martyr over Elf on a Shelf. As for your labor being “invisible,” you kinda just have to deal with it and let Santa take credit. And if you really want credit, have “Santa” make a few small gifts and take credit for the big-ticket items (this is apparently recommended so less fortunate kids at school don’t trade stories with wealthier kids and believe Santa likes them less.)

But as I thought about it more, I realized that while this comic comes off as very whiny and annoying, the problem is multifaceted. Generally, when women are always going on about emotional labor, invisible labor, and how nobody appreciates them, it’s because they have a spouse who, well, doesn’t appreciate them.

Perhaps this spouse feels their lack of appreciation is fair because they aren’t asking for five types of Christmas cookies and color-coordinated gift wrap and they would be happy with a much simpler Christmas. I get it. To some men, it may seem nonsensical for a woman to put herself through the wringer for seemingly no reason, only to then be upset when nobody makes a big deal out of it.

Well, given that I see both sides of the argument, I have a proposal for how to redefine these sorts of tasks to prevent this type of resentment: scrap the term emotional labor entirely, and replace it with a scoring system borrowed from my background in product management and tech.