On being grateful
I was recently asked to look when and why we feel gratitude. Following my piece on the mental load (the mostly invisible work of thinking about everything) lots of women expressed feeling grateful when they had supportive partners or workplaces. I felt a sense of recognition and anger at this. Why, after all, do we feel gratitude for something that we inherently have a right to - equality. And if we express gratitude, does it just push gendered roles under the surface?
Well, it turns out there’s a load of researchers who look into the purpose that gratitude serves. Looking at gratitude in the home was trickier. There’s a lot of research on housework and gendered roles, and a lot on gratitude, but research combining both was harder to find.
After speaking to several experts this is what I found. You may not like it, but it’s hugely beneficial for us all to be grateful for any help we get, even if we expect the help. It could even inspire more of it. If it has become your ‘role’ to wash windows, or do laundry, the expectation of it may make it go unnoticed. But for those of us who are partnered, it’s actually worth thanking each other for what we do around the home.
But this comes with a caveat, for anyone in a toxic relationship, or if you find yourself in a relationship where the visible and invisible workload is hugely unequal, with no movement towards equality, then resentment builds and builds. This can and does cause relationships to break down.
Many couples do intend there to be equality, but even if there isn’t, it’s important to recognise what we are doing for each other, and call it out when we feel overwhelmed, as I explain in the article:
Gratitude exists for a good reason: it’s tied to the very essence of what binds people together, and helps to keep relationships positive. Yet it becomes more nuanced in an arena like the child-rearing household, which we know to be unequal…
Gratitude in relationships becomes a little more complex in the home, where tasks are not evenly split. It’s clear that women carry most of the mental load around organising a household, but there remains an uneven division in in the domestic load, too.
In heterosexual couples with children, gender roles and “ideal mother norms” – stereotypes around who does what and what a ‘good mother’ looks like – easily become entrenched, whether either partner intends this or not. That can mean certain household tasks being deemed, consciously or otherwise, a woman’s domain. It then follows that a man may not thank his partner for tasks she has consistently done more of – or she may feel compelled to thank him for tasks he has consistently done less of.
Read the full piece here (BBC)
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