Reddit mentions of For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to Women

I’m one of those gender nonconforming women who doesn’t see the point of doing emotional and intellectual labor for other people. I am not here to hold your hand but you asked nicely so I will provide you with a high-quality resource with which you may educate yourself.
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Read this fantastic book and you will understand why everyone, male and female, should give very little credit to medical practitioners claiming absolute authority.

“For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to Women”
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https://www.amazon.com/Her-Own-Good-Centuries-Experts/dp/1400078008

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I will finish with a joke that doctors tell (i’ve spent a lot of time working closely with MDs).
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On the first day of medical school, the incoming class of eager incoming students get a lecture from the Dean. “Welcome to medical school,” he says. “We are so glad you’re here. However I must inform you of the following: only half of what we are going to spend the next four years teaching is actually correct. Unfortunately we don’t know which half.”

At that point the doctor laughs heartily.
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Still feel like believing everything doctors say?

I think it’s kind of unfair to assume people are doing this as a “dumping ground” and not rather to give people a greater appreciation of the problem.

I could be similarly uncharitable to you and assume you are arguing in bad faith, but I did not. I think you have better conversations on the internet when one assumes the other is putting in the same level of though and intelligence as themselves.

You will see that my reply is not exactly on topic for the cited article but rather an extended explanation of unseen and emotional labor for someone who did not believe emotional labor (and likely unseen too, as it tends to go together) do not exist as structural problems in society.

My response, therefore, is a crash course on the issue that they can use as a jumping off point for actual peer reviewed research.

> Suddenly, the ridiculously long workdays tech bros brag about completing would be impossible, as their wives were no longer making their meals, doing their laundry, cleaning their house, scheduling their appointments, celebrating their family members birthdays with cards and gifts, ironing their clothes, caring for their children, picking children up at school, handling nighttime feedings, etc.

I also think it’s a mistake (although perhaps a socially reinforced one) to see this only as unseen labor (or rather, unseen labor excluding emotional labor).

Just as emotional labor can have two definitions, the one used more frequently in sociology (exuding emotions as a customer service job) or the media (managing the emotional state of others), so too do many of these unseen labors require an emotional labor of a sort.

Domestic duties go into making the home habitable and welcoming, and social expectations dictate that women should do this with a smile on their face. They should enjoy cleaning the house, caring for children, etc.

If you’ve ever cared for children, you’d know there’s an emotional labor of exaggerated cheerfulness and enthusiasm which is expected when playing with a child, and as the primary caregiver, this means being “on” all the time—even at night for nighttime feedings.

And celebrating a birthday or family occasion for a paternal family member is hardly an emotional labor free endeavor. Often it requires going to visit someone you don’t know and don’t have a connection with and conveying through your emotions that this person is loved and appreciated even if the individual who is supposed to be there is not present (the husband, who is the one with the actual blood or family connection to this person).

Edit: Here’s the book that mentions it:

For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to Women

I think the chapter is called something like “Housework and the making of dirt” or maybe “dust and the invention of housework”

Yup! I'm reading For Her Own Good right now and it has a fantastic overview of how the early women's movement was indistinguishable from the public health movement, largely because the rising Modern Medicine sought to disenfranchise traditional women healers.

For Her Own Good. Really interesting historical and sociological look at the role of women's expertise, especially in childrearing and medicine. Cowritten by Barbara Ehrenreich, who is awesome.