A Labor of Love Is Still Labor

Let's list out everything you do that you don’t consider work. Why isn't it work? Who is counting and deciding?

Hi, it’s Margo again.

Last week, we explored what it means when women ask women, “So…do you work?”

We geeked out on the devaluation of domestic labor. And asked, “WHY IS THIS QUESTION BEING ASKED?!” Especially from women to women. But also AT ALL!! WHYYYYYYYY.

We have answers and awesome discussions which you can find and join here.

Today, we’re going to do an activity. I want you to list out everything you do that you don’t consider work. And then we’ll go back and examine that list.

It’s not “work” if you love it! Right?! Wrong. A labor of love is still labor. And deserves to be regarded as such.

I want you to list out everything you do that you don’t consider work.

In the comments ⤵️

Sarah and I challenged the Startup Parent community to do this a few years ago and it was EYE OPENING 😳. If you’ve ever gotten to the end of your night, unable to form a sentence, but you think to yourself, “But I didn’t *DO* anything today?! Why am I SO EXHAUSTED?! What is wrong with me?!”

The answer is: it is everything you’re doing that you “don’t count” as labor but is labor. Those activities are sucking up your energy, resources, brain power, and patience.

Many parents are working the equivalent of 17 jobs and only counting the activities that provide financial income or a tangible outcome as “real work.” Domestic workers, spouses, parents, and undocumented workers are doing the invisible labor that the world gaslights them into thinking is unimportant, “natural so they want to be doing it, she loves it! Trust me!” or not valuable.

I’d like to change that.

Starting by making the “invisible” visible.

So we’re gonna make a list. We started making one in 2022 and I’d like you to add your list in the comments. Below, please find the list the Startup Parent community put together when we were still in the thick of COVID.

Add yours below.

“I feel so seen with all of these responses.” - A.J., 2022. US TOO.

What Things Do You Do Regularly That Don’t Count As “Work”?

Here are the answers from 2022, please add yours in the comments below.

• Drive the child to daycare or school before work

• Pick up the children at 3 PM (or pay extra to pick them up at 6 PM)

• Maintain relationships with parents, in-laws, siblings, and cousins (which involves time, effort, and energy – texting, calling, FTing, coordinating trips + travel) 

• Keeping track of and enforcing the child’s schedule (when is bedtime, when school starts, when it’s time to take a bath, when it’s time to go to soccer practice, to nap, or to leave to attend the tennis tournament)

• Holiday gifts (choose + wrap): Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Christmas, Grandparent’s Day and other misc gift-giving holidays

• Birthday Gifts for your spouse, cousins, grandparents, your children, children’s friends, aunts, uncles, mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother and sisters-in-law (and their spouses) (and their children)….this list gets LOOONG.

• Misc Gifting: Teacher appreciation gifts, anniversary gifts, baby showers, weddings, bridal showers, employee gifts, and hostess gifts (when you go to someone’s house for dinner, remembering to bring something or if you’re attending something and expected to gift your host like for a baby shower)

• Acknowledge receipt of gifts and express the appropriate level of gratitude for receiving gifts (thank you cards or texts or video or a FT) 

• Choosing schools (visiting schools during working hours – missing anywhere from 4-5 workdays)

• Keeping a mental tally of which kids prefer which snacks in your household (ensuring you have adequate amounts of said preferred snacks and maintaining a consistent inventory)

• Knowledge of when and where soccer practice is + being responsible for transporting soccer kid to soccer practice + being responsible for figuring out what to do with other kids while the soccer one is at soccer practice

  • *Replace soccer with softball, baseball, basketball, dance, field hockey, and other sports designed to turn you into a professional Uber Driver and coordinator of chaos (where your cleats?! What do you mean they don’t fit?)

• Knowledge + awareness of when kid(s) needs a new winter coat and noticing in August. Researching and forecasting are necessary here for determining what freaking size this constantly growing human will be in 4 months

  • Switching out the kid’s clothes (and shoes) when they get to a bigger size and figuring out if they need anything once in that new size

  • Managing all of the things required for seasonal changes in our household. From switching out the clothes in the kid’s closet to be seasonally appropriate to make sure we have enough air filters for fire season NOW before everything is sold out because the fires are here.

• Schedule, coordinate, and attend playdates, birthday parties, dances, and other social activities kids cannot do on their own yet

• Cleaning the house (bathroom (monthly) kitchen (daily), make beds, etc). Even with a housekeeper or cleaning service if you have one, YOU’RE STILL ALWAYS PICKING STUFF UP

• Laundry laundry laundry laundry laundry

• Researching items necessary to own at each developmental stage, then determining which to purchase. Determining which are necessary and which are just “nice to have” ex: bottles, sippy cups, Tupperware, utensils, straws, and stroller (and purchasing new ones as the child(ren) reach new developmental stages) + toys + games + books + activities + responsibility charts +AND MORE.

• Researching how to not destroy your kid: how much TV or screen time are they allowed? How much can you get away with before others judge you? When do you get them their own iPad? Is that rash something to worry about or can you just wait it out? How many days is TOO many days without a bath? Can you live without brushing your kid’s hair? How do you get playdough out of hair and carpets? What happens if/when they swallow playdough? When do you teach them how to put their stuff away? When to discipline and when to let it go? What playpens won’t kill your kid? What toys have (not) been recalled?

• Being available to leave work at any moment if your kid gets sick or in trouble and needs to be picked up 

• Being available to leave work at any moment the school decides they should have a PTO meeting or school show at 8AM 9AM 10AM 11AM or literally any time during working hours

• Remembering which days are show-and-tell, ballet, baseball, or swim and making sure the kid has all the items for that activity 

• Signing your kid up for extracurriculars (as well as school) by the deadline – schlepping them to-and-from the activity and ensuring they have all the appropriate items to participate 

• PAPERWORK. WHY. IS. THERE. SO. MUCH. GD. PAPERWORK.

• Feeding your child(ren) breakfast, lunch, dinner, and endless snacks. Trying to find clever ways to encourage your kid to eat something that doesn’t cause heart disease and tooth decay but mostly just wanting them to eat…anything. 

• Getting your kid(s) out of the house involves changing underwear, putting on pants, a shirt, socks, shoes, and a jacket; brushing teeth (and sometimes hair), eating breakfast, and making sure you have the right stuffies and snacks

• Homework: enforcing structure around doing homework, being available to help with homework, realizing you don’t know how to do long division so now YOU have your own freaking homework

• Enforcing bedtime + creating a consistent and stable bedtime routine

• Reading with the kid every night

• Feeling guilty for how you didn’t read with your kid last night or the night before or….you’re never reading with your kid so now you have to expend energy LYING about it so the teacher and other moms don’t shame you.

• Managing YOUR emotions so you can help your kid navigate THEIR big feelings

• Anger management, conflict resolution, and communication skills

• Noticing if (and when) your kid is upset, happy, sad, shy, outgoing, etc

• Having awareness about who your child is, what they need/want, and how to adjust your parenting to meet their personality, needs, and wants

  • Do you enforce a boundary now or do you let this go?

  • What hill do we die on?

  • Is enforcing this lesson worth the next 2 hours being a complete disaster inside this grocery store?

  • Am I making a decision that’s best for my kid or am I thinking about what that woman at the park would think of me right now?

• Nothing your kids idiosyncrasies and adjust your approach to them accordingly (when you have more than one, this item exponentially explodes in effort of noticing)

• Managing your temper when they throw their shoe at you while you’re driving (OR you secretly think it’s funny, but know it cannot happen again so you have to modulate your tone to communicate this behavior is unacceptable and dangerous but also you’re holding back laughing)

• Teaching your kid life skills for being a decent human, like sharing, being polite, and not throwing shoes at people

• Teaching your kid how to recognize the feeling that something is about to come out of them, then training them to run to the bathroom when they notice that feeling, and excrete whatever feels like it wants to come out in the potty (then, again, how to do this at night, at school, at a restaurant, at a friend’s house, at the movies, at the park, and practice 100000 times WITHOUT deploying shame)

• Resist the urge to punch a child, spouse, or wall

• Telling your boss, manager, clients, customers, and constituents that you need to leave a meeting/trip/dinner/work to pick up, have dinner with, or put to bed your kid – and endure the whispers and assumptions that you’re lazy, cutting corners, not “really” working, not working hard enough

• Endure well-meaning friends and family’s “advice” about what you could be doing differently or better because they’re “just trying to help, I’m not judging you, really”

• Maintain relationship(s) with your child(ren)’s friends’ parents (even if you don’t like them or have anything in common) so your kids can hang out with them 

• Teach and MODEL for your kid clear + direct communication, asking for what you need, identifying emotions, managing emotions healthily, metabolizing feelings, conflict resolution, and repair (even tho, who of us can do this as adults??)

• Teach and MODEL self-love, positive self-talk, and body positivity

• Repair. Repair. Repair. Repair. like when you invariably blow a gasket, you take responsibility for your behavior and apologize (for the behavior).

• Letting your kids have their own experience of the world even if it’s wildly different from yours or what you had in mind or what you “think they’d like” - letting them figure it out for themselves

• Teach and model being kind and not hating other groups that don’t look like you. Exposing them to different ways to being in the world (ex: buying books + toys that are representative, introducing media that is representative + inclusive, ensuring your kids are socializing with kids who don’t look like them or come from different family structures or backgrounds, races, religions, or countries; introduce your kids to foods, languages, or places that they may not recognize (eg: there is no “gross” food – only food you don’t like or do like) etc)

• Constantly scan for behaviors that might indicate something is wrong or deserves more attention or support (avoidant attachment, acting out, attention-seeking, anxious attachment, trouble reading, not meeting expected developmental milestones, punching, hitting, throwing, not socializing, inability to calm down, etc)

• Modeling respectful communication with your co-parent and partner

• Booking doctor’s appointments, attending doctor’s appointments (taking time off work, taking the kid out of school, taking them back to school)

• Keeping track of immunization records, sign-up sheets, deadlines, baseball Little League supply checklists, consent forms, credit card authorization forms 

• Knowing where my kid’s favorite blanket is at all times and making sure it gets washed occasionally

• Mentally knowing how much ketchup or flour or cereal or any other food we have at all times

• Making sure we schedule regular maintenance, inspections, and registration for our vehicles

• Knowing what is or isn’t needed at daycare daily (sidebar from Margo: THIS IS THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE with elementary school. I feel like I get more homework than my kid does. “Bring a white shirt on Friday! Don’t forget Tuesday is bring a photo of your dog from 1973 day! Canned Soup Drive ends on Wednesday, did you bring your soup cans in?”

• Household admin:

  • Being responsive to school requests

  • Filling out forms

  • Keeping track of the cat food

  • Making sure camp is registered for

  • Health forms are submitted

  • Buying birthday cards

  • Sending holiday cards to family

  • Making sure the COVID form and temp are taken each morning.

• Managing developmentally appropriate toys for the kids and holding perspective on what books send a good message and which perpetuate expired systems in subtle ways

• All of the food fussiness for my toddler and making sure we have variety to offer at any given meal

• Taking a message from daycare and translating it to the required household conversation (basically initiating everything)

• Ooh, now let’s add Covid on top of it…

  • Monitoring the school announcements for which kids have tested positive this past week and how close they are to your kids

  • Ordering masks and lanyards

  • Washing masks (we. are. constantly. washing masks!)

  • Ordering double-masks when the school required them, and then figuring out how to donate or discard the double-masks when we didn’t need them anymore

  • Finding the other half of the lanyard when it goes missing

  • Taking on the mental load of figuring out just how safe a social event is at any given point in time

  • Texting a health check to friends that we’re meeting up with, the emotional burden of asking the same / fear of it being too much

  • Taking temperatures

  • If temp is elevated, figuring out how to get a PCR test for kids, which also involves having a photo of your insurance card (front and back!) saved somewhere handy

  • Taking time off work to go get said Covid test and keeping the kids at home while you wait

  • Monitoring your email at 6am in the morning when the Covid test comes back, hopefully negative

  • Ordering rapid tests and having them handy when you need them

  • Finding, researching, coordinating, training, and paying childcare. One of the most difficult things about being a working parent is finding good childcare that works for your family.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

The more we see these things in black and white, the more, I hope, you will begin to give yourself and others credit for this labor. Instead of saying, “Well it’s just what you do,” “it’s no big deal.”

It is, in fact, a very big deal.

One you should be giving yourself more credit for.

A labor of love is still labor. And should be regarded as such. And IMO compensated for but that’s for another essay.

A labor of love is still labor.

So. Please, tell us: What are things you do that the world does not consider work, but expects parents to do (specifically women) without complaint or compensation?

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For more cultural diatribes from Margo Aaron, head to www.thatseemsimportant.com and get on her email list.