Let me tell you about my invisible labor
Narrative Change Part I: What we can learn about narrating process from my household chores and a city's youth services ecosystem
This past Sunday, my family celebrated Father’s Day–or, what we’ve started calling Celebrating Baba’s Invisible Labor Day.
Baba, or 爸爸, is my husband Mark. He does a lot for our family. In addition to dad duties, he does the laundry, cleans the bathroom, mows the lawn, takes out the trash and recycling, and—at great peril to his own safety—trims our pet rabbit’s nails. He does all this quietly, without calling attention to his efforts.
Unlike me. I narrate—multiple times daily, and in meticulous detail—my contributions to the running of our household. “I unloaded the dishwasher, watered the plants, and cleaned out the rabbit’s litter box before work today,” I’ll inform Mark, apropos of nothing. I take care to emphasize my own efficiency and ingenuity in accomplishing all that I do. “The subway was delayed, so it took me an hour to get to daycare,” I’ll say, “but I used that time to schedule our next dentist appointments, buy a travel stroller on Facebook Marketplace, and negotiate a lower Internet rate.” I find ways, not infrequently, to remind Mark of my greatest contribution to our family. “Wow, it was totally worth it to be pregnant for nine months and then give birth,” I’ll remark, when our toddler does something especially cute.
Mark remarks that my “invisible labor” is all too glaringly visible.
This urge to make sure I am credited for my efforts is probably rooted in childhood (isn’t everything?) rather than facetiousness. It’s telling that my mother often asks anxiously whether I have enough help, while my dad expresses bafflement that I send my son to daycare.
“But what do you do all day?” he’ll ask, while Mark sniggers in the background.
“I work, Dad,” I’ll say. “I work.”
“But you work from home,” he’ll say.
“But taking care of a one-year-old is a full-time job,” I’ll say.
“It’s not that hard,” my dad will say. “You always make things more difficult than they need to be. Just let him play by himself. Or give him a book. That’s what we did with you kids. Let him learn to be independent.”
In some ways, it’s not my dad’s fault that he doesn’t realize that a one-year-old is a ball of energy, prone to get into scrapes every five minutes. Or that he doesn’t know that a one-year-old won’t sit “reading” a book by himself. Or, that he remembers parenting as easy. His narrative of what it means to be a parent is shaped by the moments to which he was privy. He left the house early for work while my sister and I were still sleeping like angels; he returned late to a clean house with five time-intensive dishes steaming on the table, and us kids already sleeping like angels. My mother would tell him the highlights of the day (we went to the library, my sister could already count to a hundred, the librarian called me precocious). She never told him about the laborious day-to-day processes of trying to get us to eat, trying to get us to nap, trying to clean quietly without waking us, trying to keep us entertained with salt dough while she made dinner, or trying to restore peace when my sister shoved dough in my hair. Because my mom’s storytelling kept her own labor invisible, my dad could maintain his narrative that being a working mom and housewife was easy peasy.
Telling stories about the steps we take to make something happen can seem like aggrandization of trivial efforts or dramatization of mundane events. But actually, telling those stories is key to narrative change.
You may have heard the concept of narrative change buzzing around the social sector over the past few years. The basic premise is that stories shape the way we view and move through the world, so in order to bring around social change, we need to first shift which narratives dominate. For example, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Rashad Robinson advocated to replace the narrative that “Black people are dying at higher rates than others” with the narrative that “politicians are preventing Black people from surviving, denying us the care and attention they give to others.” Whereas the first narrative might prompt PSAs in Black communities encouraging “vulnerable populations” to stay indoors—essentially putting the burden of the disparity among Black people—the second narrative prompts decision makers to address systemic inequities ranging from who is employed in frontline rather than remote work to who has access to quality healthcare.
A lot of people have expressed interest in narrative change, but when we talk further, I usually discover that their concept of narrative change work is often relegated to a DEI exercise in semantics. “We now say emergent multilingual rather than English Learners,” they’ll say. Or: “We say underserved communities, never underprivileged communities.”
But narrative change is hard work. While it does require a thoughtful examination of the language we use, it also requires a whole lot more than that. After all, we don’t debunk centuries of storytelling by just fiddling with our vocabulary! So, I’ve decided to dedicate four issues of this Substack to a series on narrative change. In the first three issues, I’ll explore one narrative change strategy:
Narrate the process (and expand the author pool)
Overhaul our language
Socialize the new narrative
In the fourth, we’ll take a look at an example of applying these narrative change strategies in Cleveland. Today, we’ll start with narrating the process.
In the social sector, we usually tell two types of stories: those that illustrate urgent need and those that illustrate impact. The former has a tendency to veer toward voyeurism (e.g. a promising kid from a bad neighborhood has no opportunity or hope), whereas the latter has a tendency to veer toward saviorism (e.g. amazing nonprofit sweeps in and kid graduates from high school and is accepted to a four-year college). Both have a tendency to generalize so that the human disappears among the statistics (e.g. % of youth who need mental health services, % of youth who feel supported in our program).
Rarely do we see the stories that happen in-between. These are the stories of invisible labor and the conditions that have made that labor necessary. These are the stories that allow systemic cracks and human ingenuity and resilience to be seen and understood. These are the stories that can chip away at the voyeurism and saviorism endemic to most narratives that need to be changed.
for example…
A few months ago, I wrote about a story workshop I led for adults working in youth services in Cleveland. You can read the post in its entirety here, but I’ve copied and pasted the relevant excerpts.
Our goal was to define the kind of story that we wanted to tell about kids and service providers in the city. We started by examining the stories currently being told in the public ether—in newspapers, on television and radio, in parent and neighborhood Facebook groups, during city council public comment, etc. When I asked the group for their reactions, the room erupted into indignation.
The stories were “voyeuristic, like white people talking about Black people.” The group was overwhelmingly struck by the “lack of empathy” and “dehumanization of kids.” A parent pointed out that while all the stories were about the trials and tribulations of Black and brown kids, all the experts quoted were white. Most stories were all “negative and aggressive” about service providers. One youth worker demanded: “Where are all our successes?” Another lamented, “Good stories don’t get to the public… people don’t want to tell the good!” Several expressed feeling discouraged and depressed: “I’m lost as to what to do.”
There are deep implications for the way in which people and communities are painted in these stories. Kids mired in stories in which they see themselves portrayed as objects of pity are less likely to develop confidence and efficacy. Social workers mired in stories that poo-poo their efforts are more likely to lose steam and quit the profession. Decision-makers mired in stories about bad kids, helpless or negligent parents, and indifferent service providers are less likely to invest in systemic changes.
Last month, I went back to Cleveland to facilitate another series of workshops. During these workshops, families told personal stories of a specific time when they needed something and what happened—in play-by-play detail—as they tried to get it. Service providers told stories of a specific time when they needed to help a kid and what happened—in play-by-play detail—as they tried to get that kid that help.
The stories were long. I’d suggested three minutes per storyteller, but once people got started enumerating the steps they’d taken, they couldn’t stop. The details were their truth.
A mother told a story about getting services for her autistic child. She spent hours researching what autism meant and how “to find help and get resources so I can make sure my baby has the best.” She applied to several daycares, some of which wouldn’t accept a child with autism. Her family helped her out when they could, but it wasn’t sustainable, because “everybody has a job, everybody has a life, they all have their own kids.” Once he was in school, she talked to his teachers and called multiple administrators, trying to get her child proper support. She ended up teaching him in the evenings, so that he wouldn’t get left behind. Twice, her son was sent to the ER from school because he got injured without proper supervision. Finally, after five years of struggle and advocacy, she got her son admitted into a school for autism.
A recreational center director talked about providing kids with everything from meals to clean clothes. She told a story about learning that one of the rec center kids, who was in foster care, couldn’t afford to go to prom. Her mother worked for a car rental company and hooked her up with a discounted limo rental. The center lifeguard’s sister worked at a tuxedo store, and hooked her up with a discounted tux. The director paid for the prom ticket, tux, and limo with her own money. The kid won prom king.
What emerged as a common theme throughout these stories was that (1) the system of social services was broken, (2) families had to work unsustainably hard and exercise unrealistic ingenuity in order to obtain support and services, and (3) service providers had to work unsustainably hard and exercise unrealistic ingenuity in order to provide them.
Without being privy to the mother’s five years of googling, making phone calls, scheduling appointments, appealing to administrators, writing emails, and getting legal counsel, it would be easy for the city, the autism school, the district, or some other organization to roll her child into an impact statistic down the road: “% of our students with autism in our program are successful, happy high school graduates.” Without being privy to the provider’s painstaking details of calling upon friends, family, and friends of family for help, and reaching into her own pocket, it would be easy for the city to roll the prom king into a story about the effectiveness of rec centers as an intervention.
Ultimately, this “mundane” recounting of process tells a very different, and very compelling, counter-narrative to the story of helpless Black families and indifferent social workers perpetuated by mainstream media.
long story short…
Making the invisible visible through storytelling makes a difference. Decision-makers mired in a narrative of community ingenuity and resilience are more likely to invest in systemic improvements, rather than investing in intervention programs that selectively help “the best kids” or making policies that remove children from their families.
Next time, we’ll discuss another narrative change strategy, Overhaul our Language. Note that, for the summer months, I’m reducing my Substack cadence from weekly to bi-weekly as I work on my novel. So, see you in a couple weeks!
