WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT
THE EMOTIONAL LABOR
OF RAISING ADULT MEN
When men are boys and women are mothers
My family frequently
forgot my mother’s birthday.
If she failed to
remind her husband or her children about the upcoming big day, we would
completely ignore them. Remembering everything – from important dates, our
favorite foods, allergies, to what was in the basement pantry – was her ‘motherly’
duty. As well as keeping everything organized and making sure everyone was
happy and healthy.
Sometimes I think she ‘forgot’
to tell us about her birthday on purpose, just to see if we remembered. And we
didn’t. I’m sorry, mom.
Now, you might assume
my mother was a stay-at-home mom, but she wasn’t. She and my father both worked
full-time, and my mother actually worked more and was more successful, but
that’s a story for a different time.
With two working
parents, it would be natural to suppose that they both contribute equally to
raising a family and keeping a house. Only my parents’ didn’t. And many
heterosexual couples these days still don’t.
It is often implied
that it’s up to women to take care of children, housework, but most importantly
– the emotional management that comes with keeping it all together.
Sometimes to the
extent of having to raise their own partners.
I saw it happening in
my parents’ relationship, in my own relationships, and relationships of my
friends.
But it shouldn’t be a
woman’s responsibility to raise adult men. We are not their mothers.
. . .
“Women are just better
at this stuff.”
Dealing with other
people’s feelings is commonly referred to as emotional labor – a concept
first coined by sociologist Arlie Hoschchild in her famous book, The Managed Heart,
1983. Hoschchild described it in the context of women in the workplace, particularly
in public-facing jobs where employees work to produce a particular emotional
effect among their customers.
But now, the term is also often used in
relation to the emotional work we perform at home. In its domestic sense,
emotional labor is the invisible, unpaid, and often undervalued work involved in
keeping other people comfortable and happy.
And in most cases, it’s
us, women, who perform it.
Why?
Because we’re presumed
to be better at this ‘stuff’. It’s implied to be our second nature to behave in
a nurturing, warm manner and want to make everyone around us happy. But how
much of this behavior is innate, and how much is it just social conditioning?
We all assume that
women evolved to be more emotionally intelligent, perhaps because women tend to
express emotions differently from men. Some people also argue that the
differences in our neuroanatomy and brain structures are responsible for our
more compassionate and empathetic behavior.
But latest scientific
research doesn’t necessarily agree with either of these points.
Men and women are
almost equally emotionally intelligent, with some studies only recognizing a
slight female superiority in emotion recognition and empathy. And the latest
advances in neuroscience shattered the myth of the gendered brain for good.
We are groomed to the
role of mother since childhood.
If a brain scan can’t
tell a male from a female brain, why do we keep believing men and women are so different?
Well, the answer is social conditioning – the process of learning to behave in
a way that is acceptable to society.
When I was a kid, I used
to envy my older brother, who got Lego and other ‘cooler’ toys as gifts. I never
liked playing with the lifelike baby dolls I got. Not only because they looked
so real they used to creep me out; I just didn’t see the point. I wanted to
build stuff and create made-up worlds, not pretend to be a mother.
Girls are groomed
for their assumed role of a mother and a caretaker from very early on. We get baby dolls, pretend to play toy
kitchen, even to vacuum cleaners. I don’t think there are many – or any, as a
matter of fact – similar toys intended to be used by boys. Little boys get
science kits, Lego, or pretend medical sets instead.
And this leads girls
as young as six years old to believe boys are inherently smarter and more
talented than them, the latest research finds.
Sure, this emphasis on
strict gender roles and gendered toys might slowly change since we finally
realize that not all women want to be mothers. But there is no denying
that this is how many of us were raised, and many still are.
Now, what happens with
all this social conditioning once we grow up and enter adult relationships? Even
when heterosexual couples don’t have kids, women sometimes tend to behave like
mothers for their male partners. And, consequently, the male partner becomes
the child in the relationship, seeking the kind of care and comfort he is used
to receiving from his own mother.
. . .
The problematic
mother-child relationship dynamic
I’ve seen many couples
fall into this mother-child relationship dynamic. And most of the time, I believe
it happens entirely unconsciously – we might not realize it even after years of
being together. It feels perfectly natural, and we accept the roles we believe
we were raised to become. And if the shoe fits, we should just wear it, right?
This dynamic often
starts as early as in the honeymoon phase of relationship. A couple starts
dating, and a man’s childlike charm and playfulness are often seen as ‘cute’. And
our ‘maternal instinct’ starts kicking in. Or at least we think it does
since it’s been proven to be nothing more than a myth.
It’s all fun and games
until we realize our partner never leaves his playfulness stage. He never
grows up. He still expects his female partner to be the ‘grown-up’ in the
relationship. To be his mother, taking care of his every emotional and physical
need, the household, children, even his parents when they need it. And women
often gladly agree to that. After all, this is what we think we know how
to do best.
And we don’t want to
become that ‘annoying, nagging, bitter’ woman we often see in movies. The one
who yells at her husband to help her out around the house and then drinks her
sorrows in a bottle of wine to forget she is raising a man-child.
Yikes. Oh, no.
We don’t want to
become her.
We want to be a ‘cool
girl’ as brilliantly described by Gillian Flynn in her bestselling novel Gone
Girl:
Men always say that as
the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl
means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty
jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes
and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s
hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size
2, because Cool Girls are above all hot.
Hot and understanding.
Cool Girls never get
angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do
whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.
I fear becoming the ‘nagging
woman’, too.
But then time passes
by, and that ‘cool girl’ façade doesn’t work for us anymore. Our partner forgot
our anniversary, again. He didn’t do grocery shopping as he promised, again.
He didn’t listen to us complaining about something important that we just need
to get out of our system, again.
We understandably grow
tired of all the emotional labor we continuously have to provide without them
noticing and without getting anything in return. And then that tiredness turns
into anger, resentment even.
We start nagging them.
Then we nag more and more. And it’s not working. We might even try to explain
the concept of emotional labor and how it’s a lot of thankless, exhausting work
– and to have to explain that is emotional labor in itself. And then they reply
with ‘if you want us to do something, just ask us to do it.’
But the whole point
is – we don’t want to have to ask.
We don’t want to turn
into their mothers. At least, a good amount of us doesn’t. But this is what
many of us become with time anyway.
And I’ve recently started
to see this in my own relationship, too. My partner and I both work full-time,
and we both try to split the household chores evenly. If I cook, he cleans
afterward. If he takes out the trash, I give food to our cat, etc. But there are
a lot of things that exclusively fall into my area of relationship duties. And
a lot of it is emotional labor.
Recognizing the
root of this behavior isn’t enough
I don’t think there is
a point in blaming either men or women for behaving this way in relationships. In
particular, since it often happens unconsciously. But it should be
recognized that this mental load bore almost exclusively by women translates
into a deeper gender inequality on a personal level.
Latest behavior
science research shows that unmarried and childless women are the
happiest subgroup in the population. Meanwhile, married men are shown to
benefit from being in a relationship. And they benefit from it precisely
because they are too often allowed to act like boys, not men.
Both men and women
need to understand that his mother-child relationship dynamic stems from the
femininity and masculinity dances we all learn to perform. But recognizing
the root of the problem is just the first step.
I’ve started to talk
about this issue more openly with my partner lately. I try to explain how it
makes me feel when I take on the ‘nagging mother’ role. He listens to what I have
to say and tries to alter his behavior. We express our thoughts and feelings,
listen to one another, and try to make it work. We want to be partners in
every sense of this word, but that requires genuine effort and time. And getting
rid of all the traditional gender roles stereotypes that I don’t believe have a
place in many modern relationships anymore.
Now, I have not been
in a decades-long relationship, and it would be silly of me to speak
confidently about an experience I do not yet have. So when I look at my parents’
relationship, I’m not sure how easy it would be for them to approach and solve
this issue.
They are now both
tired, with no kids to take care of. But my mother still acts like the glue
that tries to hold the family together, remind everyone of everything and make
sure we’re happy. And even though they seem content in their relationship, my
mother looks visibly more exhausted and older – even though she is younger than
my father.
Which makes me
wonder, did these traditional gender roles ever make women happy?
And if they didn’t,
why did it take us so long to question them?
This article was copied from here.
