If you are old enough to remember a time before teens on TikTok, addled by a lifetime of social-emotional learning, started describing literally every human personality trait as a “red flag,” you may also recall a time when “emotional labor” was a useful description for a certain kind of paid work. When a waitress or flight attendant put on a happy face to interact with disgruntled customers, that was emotional labor; ditto the stern disapproval authority figures like cops or teachers needed to sometimes project to do their jobs.
But as millennials came of age and the discourse became laden with therapy-speak, “emotional labor” became shorthand for the basic act of exerting oneself to care for another person. Listening? Labor. Comfort and reassurance? Labor. Expressing sympathy or affection, remembering his birthday, laughing at his jokes even when they weren’t that funny? Labor! All of it! And while some people might describe these things as a more-than-fair price to pay in exchange for the deep and abiding joy of a loving relationship, among a certain highly vocal contingent of women there’s a specific name for all this effort: mankeeping.
And they resent the hell out of it.
