Parents of the world, you have nothing to lose but the chains of emotional labor that your children bind you with
Parents of the world, you have nothing to lose but the chains of emotional labor that your children bind you with
My condolences to their son. Full thread if you want to feel bad for their children: https://twitter.com/herong/status/1515846706394501123?s=21
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When you have zero idea of what emotional labor is
She's right. Parenting, especially work women are expected to put in, is uncompensated social labor. Having to manage yours and other people's emotions during said labor is emotional labor.
Extending the definition to parenting is an internet phenomenon, the academic discourse around the concept is largely centered around Workplace relationships, Customers, co-workers, bosses etc
In what world does “compensation” even make sense in a parent-child relationship, aside from the obvious dark implications?
aside from the obvious dark implications
Graeber actually writes a bit about this in Debt
I like his bit about how, even more absurd than the idea of putting a bill together for parental services rendered, is the idea of someone actually paying it. What does that relationship mean now? That child and parent are suddenly equals with no obligations to each other?
The question is: Does it really make sense to think of this as a debt? After all, a debt is by definition something that we could at least imagine paying back. It is strange enough to wish to be square with one's parents - it rather implies that one does not wish to think of them as parents any more. Would we really want to be square with all humanity ? What would that even mean? And is this desire really a fundamental feature of all human thought?
The entire section on primordial debt is really great.
that used to be a thing in the pre-feudal world (called the patriarchal mode of production) where children worked for their fathers on the land belonging to their father without pay.
A child could ask for their inheritance while their parent was alive which was essentially telling your parent you wish they were dead and they should pay up the money due to you when they die. As with all cases of telling your dad to their face that you wish they were dead it was quite drastic and emotionally charged
That's even more interesting to me, flipping the situation on its head. Asking your parent to pay you in order to square your affairs.
the idea was that the children had performed years of service to the parent