How to Do Less Emotional Labor at Home

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How to Do Less Emotional Labor

Have you ever felt like there were endless tasks to accomplish and you’ll never have enough time to finish them all? Does this feeling of overwhelm continue while you’re at home? Perhaps consider the amount of emotional labor or invisible labor you are completing daily and read on to find out how to do LESS emotional labor at home.

Let’s first consider what is emotional labor. The term emotional labor has been thrown around lately, especially with women. As Gemma Hartley author of Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward defines, emotional labor is “emotion management and life management combined. It is the unpaid, invisible work we do to keep those around us comfortable and happy” (13).

This term was originally “coined by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild in her 1983 book on the topic, The Managed Heart.” (Beck). As she originally defined it emotional labor is “the work of managing one’s own emotions that was required by certain professions. Flight attendants, who are expected to smile and be friendly even in stressful situations, are the canonical example (Beck). A closely related term “life admin” explained by the author Elizabeth Emens in her book Life Admin, is the “office work of life” (3). Tasks that fit into this definition are: handling finances, managing health, medical, and insurance matters, maintaining gift exchanges, keeping track of important documents, searching for childcare, or managing and coordinating schedules” (Emens 9).

The similarity between these definitions, is that much of this “labor” is invisible. It’s not just putting the dishes in the dishwasher. It’s knowing that certain containers need to be washed for school lunches tomorrow. It’s not just taking the kids to the doctor’s office. It’s scheduling it around work and school. It’s not just paying bills. It’s coordinating the family’s investments, and insurance policies. It’s in many ways foreseeing or predicting and preventing anything adverse happening to your family or people you are responsible for.

Who Does More Emotional Labor?

Emotional labor or life admin by all definitions were experienced in my profession as a teacher, and also at home as a mom. Regardless of the debate on what makes up emotional labor or life admin, Hartley suggests these tasks seemed to be overwhelmingly completed by women, whether at work or at home.

In an article written by Samantha Darby of Romper, she explains that watching the show Tidying Up with Marie Kondo showed gender roles in the home in obvious form. If you haven’t watched the show, basically Marie Kondo goes into a home and tidies up with families, but Darby’s observation was that the “tidying” was almost exclusively on the women’s shoulders, and many were in tears about the state of their homes. In one episode a “mom cried about how she’s the mom, so she knows that it’s expected of her to be the organizer, the homemaker, the one who knows where literally everything in the house is” (Darby). This left me with the question: how can we better share roles in the home?

Motherhood and Emotional Labor

There was a period in early motherhood where I felt completely overwhelmed. I was in charge of all finances, health insurance, bills, buying a new home, investments, childcare etc. This was on top of working full-time, and breastfeeding. The problem was that these mental energies devoted to life admin or emotional labor were invisible to me as well. I was exhausted all the time, and frustrated because I felt like I’d never be able to get everything done. I didn’t even know what type of “help” to ask for. I wanted someone else to solve all the “adulting” problems that would surface daily.

The truth is, I took on these roles early in my marriage, not based on gender but rather because I simply became an adult earlier than my husband. When we were first married, he was in graduate school, and I entered my first year as a teacher. I was thrust into the world of “adulting” with new health insurance, retirement accounts, union dues, and in general maintaining my constant composure amidst a classroom of rowdy middle schoolers. I was an adult before he was, so naturally I took on more of the life admin tasks, since I was the sole breadwinner of the family.

Relationships and Emotional Labor

Usually these life admin tasks can follow you throughout a relationship based on the tasks you complete early on (Emens 57). It wasn’t necessarily that we had uneven roles due to gender, it was more that we had gotten into the habit of letting me take care of it all. It wasn’t even that my husband didn’t want to complete these tasks. It was oftentimes easier for me to complete them (when I had time), but as a new mom, I didn’t anymore.

It turns out I actually like some forms of emotional labor and life admin. I love investing our money, caring for our children, and obviously will happily fill out health insurance paperwork to know that our family will be covered. However, I didn’t need to be doing all of the emotional labor and life admin for our family. My husband actually likes to grocery shop, plan meals, and cook. He also likes to take care of the house and car maintenance, schedule childcare, pay for preschool, and pick up and take our daughter to school. There were plenty of ways we could have shuffled up the emotional labor and life admin tasks earlier, if I could have recognized the invisible labor from the beginning.

How to Do Less Emotional Labor At Home

With my second child, I promised myself I would not get as overwhelmed. I would delegate, simplify, automate and take tasks off my to do list. I would communicate more effectively to avoid bitterness boiling up. Here is how I managed to do less emotional labor at home.  

1. Delegate and Communicate Effectively

There are some life admin tasks that you’ll need to do. You’ll need to schedule your own doctor and dentist appointments. You’ll need to sign up for health insurance through your employer. There might be even some life admin tasks you’ll like taking care of like finances and investing in retirement or index funds. However, you don’t need to be in charge of your spouse’s doctor or dentist appointments (which is something I’ve scheduled in the past).  

Decide on tasks that you don’t thoroughly enjoy doing or can be done by another person and ask your spouse to take these on. Honestly, sometimes I just default to taking care of tasks, but I know that by delegating them to someone else, I can free up more time for my own well being, and feel less overwhelmed.

Effective communication can go a long way. Granted that’s if you have a spouse who views a marriage as a team effort. I would suggest not waiting until you are completely overwhelmed, bitter, and angry to communicate all the tasks that are piling up on your plate. Just speaking from experience. 😊

2. Automate

Automate all bills and investments that can be. This saves a considerable amount of invisible labor. Plus, this helps you actually save and invest more money. We don’t have to even think about saving because it is automatically taken out each month and invested or put into our savings account.

In case any are leery of automated payments, set up reminders to your email or phone. Check credit card and banks statements online regularly to make sure you’re not being overcharged.

You can also automate schedules. Try to make certain meetings, play dates, or get togethers repeat weekly or monthly at the same time or place. This takes away the effort of coordinating where to meet, and when.

Try to coordinate schedules on a shared Google calendar, or large calendar printed in your family room or kitchen. Encourage others to write and schedule appointments.  

You can even automate meal plans. If your grocery store provides this, have a monthly meal plan, with a repeat grocery list scheduled for a pick up every Friday.

3. Let Go of Expectations

If it truly does not bring you joy to remind your family members of birthdays and anniversaries etc. Then, stop doing it. Perhaps inform your spouse that they are now in charge of all birthdays and anniversaries on their side of the family. You can let go of the expectation to constantly be entertaining everyone, or hosting people. You can let go of the expectation that your home needs to be tidy all the time. You can let go of the expectation that you have to have a home cooked meal on the table at 5 pm every night. There are many expectations you can let go of, which will take one less task off your plate.

A few expectations that I’ve let go of are: having a clean home all the time, home cooked meals every night, answering emails all day long, answering my phone at any time, matching my toddler’s outfits (she dresses herself), folding my toddler’s clothing (what’s the point?), and overscheduling my family and self.

My mom used to have a plaque on the wall that read “Martha Stewart doesn’t live here.” Now, it makes more sense. She had let go of expectations.

4. Simplify

A minimalism blog post wouldn’t be complete without mentioning that choosing to buy, consume, and do less will save you emotional labor and life admin. When your family has less toys, it takes less emotional labor to get rid of, organize, or buy in the first place. When you have less clothes, it takes less decisions to choose what to wear every morning. When you have less on your schedule, it takes less energy to schedule more important uses of your time.

Author Emens recommends to “resist the pull of social pressure to keep up with the Joneses” (157).  Furthermore, Emens suggests a few ways to simplify or opt out of too many choices in everyday life (157).

1. Cut down on the number of after school activities.
2. Choose the nearest doctor, dentist, pre-school instead of researching everyone in a 20 mile radius.
3. If you have the money, buy your way out of coordinating the yearly fundraiser.
4. Consider with every purchase if you actually need an item. Otherwise, skip it and know you saved yourself time.
5. Simplify your nutrition by only buying whole nature based foods and avoid bringing any processed foods into your home.

5. Avoid it

Obviously, this is the sneaky way, but a lot of the time when you avoid certain invisible labors like checking email all day long, someone else will answer before you. Yes, someone else will pick up the slack. Small tasks like reminding people of anniversaries might just be learned when said person forgets. 😊 Sometimes dropping the ball is a great way for others to realize these labors are completed by you and they are not invisible.

6.Identify When you are Completing Invisible Labor

The more you recognize when you are actually completing invisible labor, the more you will be able to automate, delegate, avoid, simplify or let go of expectations.

You might also find this post helpful on how to do a brain dump to declutter your mind. This could help you actually see how many invisible tasks you are responsible for in your family.

Honorable Mention:

Outsource

If you realize you want to outsource your taxes, house cleaning, or laundry know that arranging and researching people to hire is also life admin. Make sure to delegate these tasks, if you already have too much on your plate.

Final Thoughts

I have one last piece of advice. Avoid blaming struggles with emotional labor or life admin on anyone else in the family. This only takes away from finding a solution. Even blaming gender roles in our society, takes away from finding a solution to your current problem. If gender roles are present, then don’t blame it, accept it and work to find a solution with your spouse.  Focus on these 6 ways to do LESS emotional labor at home and relish in the time you have to do what you truly want.

Join the Discussion

What emotional labor tasks have overwhelmed you? What are some solutions you have utilized to do less emotional labor?

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Author

-Maria Halcumb
B.A. in Secondary Education, English, and Physical Education
M.A. Ed. in Curriculum & Instruction and Reading Specialist

Sources

Beck, Julie. “The Concept Creep of ‘Emotional Labor’.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 26 Nov. 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/11/arlie-hochschild-housework-isnt-emotional-labor/576637/.

Darby, Samantha. “’Tidying Up’ Won’t Work Until You Address All The Lazy Husbands.” Romper, https://www.romper.com/p/the-emotional-labor-on-tidying-up-with-marie-kondo-does-not-spark-joy-15731538.

Emens, Elizabeth F. Life Admin: How I Learned to Do Less, Do Better, and Live More. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019.

Hartley, Gemma. Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward. HarperCollins Publishers, 2018.