Fed up Emotional labor, women, and the way forward

In September 2017, Hartley wrote an article for Harper's Bazaar about the invisible maintenance and managerial tasks women are expected to perform in and out of the home. The piece went viral, and here Hartley expands it to consider how instead of remaining a woman's burden, emotional labor may offer a path to gender equality. Hartley's prose soars when she shares stories from her own life balancing the responsibilities of a freelance writer, a wife, and Christian mother of three. She acknowledges her husband's ­contributions he cooks and does the ­dishes but observes a profound imbalance in the cultural tendency to give men extra credit for doing such work while women get no credit at all. Children grow up watching their mothers manage the home, and so the gendered cycle continues. Female readers will undoubtedly relate to the many first-person anecdotes of women obliviously or resentfully doing the draining work of emotional labor. But this is a book for men, too. To break the cycle, men need to step up to the plate. And then put it in the dishwasher.--Maggie Taft Copyright 2018 Booklist

Journalist Hartley serves up a passionate and personal assessment of the nature and costs to women of "emotion management and life management combined... the unpaid, invisible work we do to keep those around us comfortable and happy" and households running. Hartley's 2017 Harper's Bazaar article on the topic, "Women Aren't Nags-We're Just Fed Up," was shared nearly a million times; and here, Hartley expands her argument that men must become more "engaged" in their domestic lives, women let go of perfectionism and feel "more free," and everyone value domestic labor more highly. She buttresses her case-that women, even straight women with enlightened male partners, are unfairly expected to perform the overwhelming majority of emotional labor in American society-with sociological, psychological, and anthropological studies; magazine articles; her own marital experience; and the experiences of other women, varied in class and financial status, ethnicity and location, profession and trade. There is much here likely to engage, comfort, and possibly help women who share Hartley's fed-up feelings. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.