30 min
12. How to Value and Shift your Emotional Labour The Good Enough Mother
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- Kids & Family
You acquire certain skills when you mother children, and ‘maternal thinking’ is one of them. I describe this concept to you as a way of re-valuing the work of motherhood, and relate it to the weight of responsibility mothers carry in caring for children and running a household. This weight can be talked about in terms of ‘emotional labour’ and the ‘mental load’, and also relates to ingrained and ongoing sexism. I draw on research to explain the critical yet invisible burden of these responsibilities that is largely carried by mothers. In doing so I delve into a discussion of ‘maternal gatekeeping’, why it may keep you feeling stuck and alone, and how it relates to the pressures of ‘perfect motherhood’. I finish by speaking about the gendered division of care and domestic labour and the fraught nature of ‘choice’.
You acquire certain skills when you mother children, and ‘maternal thinking’ is one of them. I describe this concept to you as a way of re-valuing the work of motherhood, and relate it to the weight of responsibility mothers carry in caring for children and running a household. This weight can be talked about in terms of ‘emotional labour’ and the ‘mental load’, and also relates to ingrained and ongoing sexism. I draw on research to explain the critical yet invisible burden of these responsibilities that is largely carried by mothers. In doing so I delve into a discussion of ‘maternal gatekeeping’, why it may keep you feeling stuck and alone, and how it relates to the pressures of ‘perfect motherhood’. I finish by speaking about the gendered division of care and domestic labour and the fraught nature of ‘choice’.
30 min