The most interesting part of this article to me is the idea of emotional labor. Haredi women are expected to perform all sorts of emotional labor, taking care of her children as well as her husband. She is also, at times, expected to work outside of the house and maintain strict boundaries among men when she must enter the public sector. This introduces another level of emotional labor, as she is expected to maintain Tzniut and emotional boundaries outside of her home as well as in it. Men, on the other hand, are not expected to perform emotional labor. While they are praised for maintaining loving relationships with their children and wives, it is not entirely expected. Additionally, they are built for the public world because of their supposed “rationality”. Thus, it seems that they are expected not to show emotions or vulnerability outside of the home. Therefore, it falls upon their wives to carry the full weight of their husbands’ vulnerability, a heavy amount of emotional labor. The labor extends to also caring for parents, leaving women with a vast amount of emotional labor to perform.
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This is a fascinating point you make, Zoe. While this reading had many takeaways, especially in relation to the women’s experience in a more religious community, the idea of emotional labor is just not spoken about enough both in the article and overall. As per our conversation in class, we don’t really know how to speak about women in religious communities as we do not know exactly how they feel or if they see the ways in which religion is influencing them in either a healthy way or not and asking us to think critically about the ways in which we analyze religion from an outside perspective.