In our quest to “have it all,” women seem to just be “doing it all.” Career, childcare, housework, emotional labour. First shift, second shift, third shift, repeat. Many refer to this work as “the third shift.” If you think of your first shift of the day as your paid work outside the home and your second shift as the unpaid work you do on your return home-childcare and housework-your third shift would be all the tasks that fall under emotional labour. It is labour that goes largely unacknowledged and it is predominantly undertaken by women. But these tasks-often borne of love-consume time and energy and, like childcare and housework, are unpaid. This work binds families together, builds and strengthens communities and has a major impact on people’s wellbeing. These are tasks that are undertaken to enrich the lives of our friends and families, to give thanks to loved ones. When you make a mental note to buy, write and send holiday cards pick up groceries for your elderly neighbour organize a holiday party buy and wrap gifts for your children’s teachers research music classes, summer camps, horse-rising lessons, set up a play date find a physiotherapist for that niggling pain your partner keeps ignoring bake muffins for your kid’s bake sale organize a local parent-tot group, what you are really listing is emotional labour. These tasks are mundane-I’m bored even writing about them-but they are endeavours that more and more scholars, feminist writers and casual observers would call gendered work, an invisible inequality in labour, the “next frontier of feminism.”Įmotional labour is any task that requires care, thought, direction and follow-through within the family home, either directly or tangentially. The only “break” I normally take is to run to the post office to send a belated birthday card, or to pick up soil for the garden or groceries. I rarely take a lunch break (unless shovelling leftovers into my face while hunched over my laptop counts). My home to-do list seems to clog up with notes such as, “buy thank you card,” “send flowers,” “frame and hang photos,” “pick up baby shower gift,” “return wedding RSVP,” “organize cat sitter,” and on and on… Individually, these are small tasks, but they plague my day, crowd my thoughts, eat into my every second. I know exactly which chores fall to me and on which day I do them and so I have no need to write these on my list. Regardless, we’ve drawn up an agreement-our division of labour written in stone-that is rarely diverted from. My husband and I have a 50/50 agreement when it comes to household chores, although we joke that it’s more like a 60/60 split because we are both privately certain that we do more than the other. Despite the fact that I have three jobs (and counting), my home column is normally the longer list. In my daily planner I have two columns: one is a work to-do list (e.g., “file story by end of day,” “send invoice”) and one is a home to-do list.
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