Are You Letting THIS Drain You?

Katie McLaughlin, mom writer at Pick Any Two, is speaking out about the invisible burden that's draining moms everywhere. She writes that the first step to conquering our enemy is awareness, so what is it? What's this invisible burden we take one every day only to be left feeling completely drained?

Kin keeping tasks.

Today many families that include a mom and a dad are challenging the traditional gendered division of labor—mine included. My household couldn’t function if my husband didn’t handle the dishes and I didn’t keep tabs on the checking account. We’re in this together.

Even so, I—along with most moms everywhere—am still almost entirely responsible for the following tasks:

Remembering family birthdays and sending birthday cards.
Planning and organizing family celebrations.
Sending holiday cards.
Selecting holiday presents.
Sending thank you cards.
Planning family vacations.
Keeping in touch with out-of-town relatives.
Remembering to dress the baby in the “right” outfit when her grandma visits.

Sound familiar? I am responsible for almost all of these functions. The exception? My husband calls his relatives in Pennsylvania once a week.

For the most part, it's me who remembers the birthdays, writes out the thank you cards, and remembers what to dress the children in on special occasions.

These special, albeit invisible tasks are referred to as “kin keeping” responsibilities by feminist scholars. These kin keeping tasks serve to keep families connected and provide necessary emotional support within the family structure.

Just think about how different your own childhood would have looked without birthday cakes and family beach trips and homemade gifts for Grandma, and you’ll see how valuable these kinds of tasks really are.

Here’s the problem, though: These incredibly important kin-keeping responsibilities are leaving moms emotionally exhausted.
Why? Well, as I mentioned earlier, they almost always fall completely onto the mom’s shoulders. Even in households where there’s a fairly even division of labor, these tasks are overwhelmingly handled by women.

What’s more, kin-keeping responsibilities are mostly invisible. They’ve become such an expected part of family life that they almost always go unnoticed and unacknowledged. (Unless, of course, you don’t do them, in which case you’re likely to draw some negative attention and head shaking.)

Indeed, moms themselves often don’t realize how much time and effort they put into kin keeping. As feminist scholars Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee (2015) explain, “These tasks are time consuming and involve emotional work that is not easily quantified.”

Yes! The question is: what are we supposed to do about it?

Get help from our spouse and children to complete these tasks. Remind them how important these seemingly silly tasks can be to keeping a family strong and united.

So who does most of the “kin keeping” in your family?