Societal Expectations, Emotional Labour & Parenting (Oh my!)
(This piece was originally published in the Summer 2019 edition of Holistic Parent)
It’s 8:43 pm on a Monday night. On Saturday, we have a dinner to attend for Justin’s work, and I haven’t found a sitter because of a lack of details. Our child has refused to nap all day and tensions are high. It is clear that Justin feels terrible; I go through my emergency list of sitters and family members and find someone. I am angry but attempt to reassure my partner it is okay. I let him know when I find someone to take care of our child.
I confide with a friend who tells me, “It’s a good thing that you can stay home if you can’t find a sitter”. I explain that, for me, attending the dinner would give me a much needed night with adults. They reply, “But it’s not like you need to be there.” I continue to explain that, for my mental health, I need to be there. They still don’t get it.
Four hours later, I text my sleeping partner that I love him and apologize for my bluntness earlier. I apologize again in the morning. He goes out of his way to try and give me additional self care time and opportunities as an apology.
It’s 4:37 pm and we are shopping at our favourite children’s consignment shop. A woman looks at Morgan, smiles, starts to say something, and then looks at me. “How old are…they?” I say, “She is four and a half months.” She sighs. “Oh I was going to comment on how beautiful they are but then I saw all the blue.”
The woman continues to talk about my baby’s features (with a racialized undertone) and goes as far to start commenting on my features. My husband takes over the conversation so that I, the racialized parent, don’t need to placate this older, white woman. He gently but firmly reaffirms our choice to use gender neutral parenting tactics and warmly discusses our child’s physical traits in a way that disarms her.
I spend the entire drive home ranting about it with Justin. He listens and validates my anger.
In each of these real snapshots of my life as a parent, emotional labour is performed.
Emotional labor is the exertion of energy for the purpose of addressing people’s feelings, making people comfortable, or living up to social expectations. It’s called “emotional labor” because it ends up using – and often draining – our emotional resources.
Every parent, to some extent or another, exerts emotional labour to address the feelings of our children, to make them comfortable. Caring for the wellbeing of our children includes their emotional state.
I am not going to go into emotional labour expected of (usually) fathers to emotionally support their children and their partner(s). I find it blasé. It’s 2019 – if you don’t think that you have a duty to care for your family members’ emotional needs because of gender norms, there’s about a hundred academic articles and thousands of parenting blogs that can show you how antiquated that view is.
No, this is about the emotional labour that parents and guardians perform to live up to social expectations with society at large. Here lies where the unspoken disparity in doing emotional labour happens in the majority of heterosexual-presenting parenting structures.
There are complexities and experiences here, such as households where the birthing parent goes back to work almost immediately and the non-birthing parent stays home, polyamorous households, etc. These experiences already defy social expectations (and all power to them!) and have much more complex ways that they must comply and defy social norms for the wellbeing (and often, basic survival) of their families.
Let’s go back to my two real life examples.
Example 1:
First of all, partners should care for emotional wellbeing of each other. Second, social norms tell us to prioritize the working parent’s mental and emotional state. They are the ones providing value to our capitalist society. The mental state of the caregiving parent is not only discounted but actively not prioritized.
Why does the primary parent constantly have to justify why they need a break? Why does society force them to regulate their emotions (and perform emotional labour for others) with little regard to their own emotional wellbeing? This forces the primary caregiver to constantly be in a state of drainage to satisfy societal expectations.
Example 2:
- Stop complimenting babies through a gendered lens.
- Stop complimenting babies through a racialized lens.
When this is done, the parent who is marginalized (be it gender, race, religion, accessibility need, or orientation) is not only put in a spot where they need to do emotional labour, they must educate someone who might refuse to validate their lived experience.
I use these examples as they are concrete. Moreover, they show how secondary caregivers can support primary caregivers by doing emotional labour and defy archaic norms.
Here are a few simple ways you can decrease the amount of emotional labour the primary parents in your life do:
- Step in and take over when you see the primary parent is doing emotional labour.
- Prioritize the primary caregiver’s emotional wellbeing, not just the working parent.
- And, most importantly, don’t be that woman in the store, don’t be that friend. Check yourself before you put a parent(s) in a situation where they need to do emotional labour for you.
