Last year gave us lingo for a whole load of pre-existing behaviours and conditions, from quiet quitting togoblin mode, but you may have missed the new phrase edging into popular lexicon for carrying the brunt of invisible labour in the home.
‘Kin-keeping’ is the term popping up which essentially means keeping the family afloat, from knowing your other half’s sister’s birthday, to remembering which foods your kids do and don’t eat and keeping on top of switching energy providers for the best prices.
We already know that women take on the vast majority of domestic labour, with the data suggesting that women do about double the amount of cooking and cleaning than men on average, but kin-keeping is about more than chores. It refers very specifically to the behind-the-scenes maintenance - the type of stuff your partner and kids might think gets done by magic fairies while everyone is asleep – which rarely, if ever, receives the credit or acknowledgement it deserves.
In fact, kin-keeping refers to the labour that, by its very definition, is supposed to be invisible. It exists to silently create convenience while the recipients enjoy the benefits of a smoothly running home.
Christmas in particular is a time when most mothers and wives will feel the emotional and physical toll of choreographing a multi-day celebration, from inviting guests, decorating, and present buying all automatically assigned to them because of their gender – and that’s not to mention the cooking or the cleaning, either. Jokes about dad being ‘just as surprised as the kids’ when the presents are opened on Christmas morning get very old, very quickly, when you’ve spent the last six weeks ran ragged round the shops or tearing your hair out trying to track down that very specific Scalextric kit online.
According to TikTok user Advice Girl, the term is well known in gender and equality studies, but in regular life, it’s the lack of language which means sometimes women don’t even know they’re doing it. Using the analogy of a theatre performance, Advice Girl explains that when you go and see a play, it’s the actors on the stage, and maybe the orchestra in the pit, who you’re applauding come curtain call; but it’s the labour of countless others who’ve facilitated your evening, from the light and sound technicians, wardrobe, make up, bar staff, ushers and cleaners who’ve made sure the production can go off without a hitch. It’s the job of all those behind the scenes to be just that – behind the scenes – and the work they do remains unseen. In heterosexual relationship dynamics, Advice Girl compares the actors to men, while it’s women who perform the roles of everyone else.
First coming into regular usage in the 1980s, the trend has passed down through generations of women, and has even become something we bond over with other women – when you invite Mr and Mrs Smith from next door round for dinner, it’s likely to be Mrs Smith who helps to clear up while you chat over a last glass of wine, which might make it seem like an extension of your social event, but DH and Mr Smith will already be back in the lounge with their feet up.
So how can we start to even the playing field when it comes to performing invisible labour? Using the proper language is a good place to start, allowing women to not only pay attention when we’re ‘performing convenience’, but to be able to point it out to your other half and hopefully incentivise them to pull their weight. And if that doesn’t work, you could always withdraw your kin-keeping all together and see how quickly everything falls apart...