The Emotional Labor of Mothers

Author Alva Gotby's book They Call it Love: The Politics of Emotional Life (Verso Books, 2023), coined the term emotional reproduction to describe the unseen and unappreciated labor involved in maintaining relationships that tends to fall on women in heterosexual pairings. For this Mother's Day, listeners call in to share how this concept appears in their lives and appreciate the emotional reproduction of the mothers in their lives. Photo: A woman gives a child a hug. (Credit: Myles Grant/Wikimedia Commons BY CC 2.0) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published May 8, 2026

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For this Mother's Day, listeners call in to appreciate the emotional reproduction of the mothers in their lives.

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The Emotional Labor of Mothers

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