Emotional labor is the work that underpins our lives.
It’s the thought and care that goes into everything, from what meals to make to what discipline style to use to deciding the best time to have a hard conversation. Emotional labor is what creates and nurtures communities and connections, and it’s present in every interaction we have.
What is emotional labor?
In 1983, Arlie Russell Hochschild, the same sociologist who defined “the second shift,” also coined the term “emotional labor.” It was originally used to refer to the emotional work required of a job, such as a flight attendant or therapist, but the term has adapted and expanded to describe similar work in any setting.
A flight attendant who needs to manage their own emotions while being condescended to by a drunk passenger must read the feelings of others, predict their behavior, and respond in a way that creates a certain emotional environment. The same work is present in planning holiday meals, delegating tasks on Sunday cleaning days, and facilitating relationships between in‑laws and their grandkids. Navigating everyone’s needs, wants, personalities, behaviors, and expectations takes empathy, consideration, and care.
Emotional labor, whether it’s paid or unpaid, with customers or between loved ones, is skilled work that demands effort and energy. Emotional labor is ever‑present, tangled up in every interaction we have, from how we deal with receiving dressing on our salad when we asked for it on the side to coming out to our parents. While the term itself is most often used to describe the internal processing and decision‑making that influences how we interact with others, emotional labor is inextricably connected to all other work we do in service of our relationships with others.
It’s real and necessary work
When a friend loses a loved one, emotional labor is present in the lowering of shoulders and softened tone when offering a hug. It’s linked to the mental labor of picking out a black dress and ordering flowers in preparation for funeral attendance. It’s connected to the domestic work of cooking a casserole and preparing for childcare so you can be there.
It takes emotional, mental, domestic, and care work for us to make one another feel secure, loved, and supported. These efforts are the glue that bonds us. This labor creates and nurtures communities. It’s the work that goes into making us feel how we feel. This real and necessary work contributes to how we love, connect, and grow.
Women paying attention to the feelings of others is a survival skill
Emotional labor, like other domestic and care labor, has also been used as a tool of exploitation. There’s all kinds of messaging about how women are “emotional creatures” or “just better at” feelings. This isn’t a biological truth. Sex or gender does not determine someone’s ability to be empathic. It doesn’t determine whether someone can consider others’ feelings, respond with care, or achieve a meaningful emotional outcome.
Empathy, or the ability to assess other people’s feelings and put yourself in their shoes, is something we need to practice. Identifying our own and other people’s feelings and considering the needs of multiple people in decision-making are skills that need developing. Throughout society, this feminized and often racialized work is disproportionately demanded of the oppressed to protect the power of the oppressor.
Women often learn to pay attention to the feelings of the people around them because it’s a survival skill.
It keeps us safe and helps us grow
Anytime one person is expected to create and maintain a certain emotional environment without equal effort from the other party involved, emotional labor becomes a tool for subordination. Within relationships, one person’s lack of emotional management and regulation creates a situation in which the other person is forced to make up the difference, keeping them in their place. This becomes a tool for harm.
One person’s unwillingness to do their fair share of emotional work forces the person they’re in a relationship with to do it for them. Yet emotional labor is the glue that binds us together. It keeps us safe, helps us grow, and makes us feel cared for and loved. Done in service of care and connection, it’s how we build intimacy. When emotional labor is given freely and reciprocated, our relationships thrive. So how do we reclaim emotional labor from the ways it’s used to exploit us and put it to better use?
It starts with rethinking what it means to relate with each other.
Excerpted from “No More Mediocre: A Call to Reimagine Our Relationships and Demand More” by Laura Danger. Copyright 2026, Laura Danger. Published by Plume, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
A licensed educator, facilitator, and domestic equity advocate, Laura Danger can be found online at @ThatDarnChat.
