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Boys Can Do Everything Girls Can Do
That includes invisible and emotional labor
For years, I told myself a story. The story went something like this: Women are biologically better at invisible and emotional labor. Men, by virtue of their genetic makeup, are more or less hopeless. I told this story to justify the disproportionate amount of behind-the-scenes labor I was taking on around the house.
“It just comes naturally to me,” I told my sister with a what-can-you-do shrug.
To be fair, it was an understandable assumption. I looked around and saw other women like me — strong, smart, feisty, and married to men who loved them for it — and nearly every single one felt backed into the same corner.
Somewhere along the way, we had become household operations managers, along with the dozens of other roles that parents juggle daily. For my part, I had never, not once, considered a career in operations management, as it speaks to neither my passions nor my core strengths. But in my home, I was the one who could recite the grocery list in my head; who knew everyone’s schedule by heart; who created the childcare spreadsheets; who planned playdates, weekend outings, and vacations; who figured out the logistics of getting everyone where they needed to be each day.
Despite the fact that this work made me stressed out and often grumpy, I clung to the notion that my two X chromosomes lent me a natural talent for organizing playdates and that my husband was biologically incapable of remembering what to get, or even knowing what we needed, from Walgreen’s unless I texted him The List.
Otherwise, how could so many women fall into these same roles, and how could our otherwise savvy and caring husbands be so clueless? It had to be biological, and if it was biological, then what else was there to do but grin and bear it?
My sister disagreed. The behavior is both socialized and teachable, she said. Women don’t have to be martyrs any more than men have to be clueless, Chris Pratt-esque partners.
I wondered if my sister was right, but a part of me didn’t want her to be right. Being “naturally better” at invisible and emotional labor was easier, in a way. It helped me to rationalize the status quo. To carry on with…
