Two stories: women chafing at doing it ‘all,’ women blamed in their SIDS grief

I was struck by two seemingly disparate articles in the Dec. 17 Sunday Globe — Kat Rosenfield’s “Women, liberate yourselves from caring about getting it all done” (Ideas), about the emotional labor women perform to keep a household running, and “Judging Emily” by Deirdre Fernandes (Spotlight Team, Page A1), about unexplained infant deaths in which parents’ grief is compounded by harsh reactions from government officials.

Rosenfield’s (mainly affluent) women are burdened by perceived expectations of, among other things, keeping a tidy home, where the worst outcome for failure is judgment or gossip by friends/family/strangers/the internet.

For Emily Cross, whose infant died suddenly at home, the stakes were so much higher: potential criminal prosecution and the prospect that the state Department of Children and Families would remove her then-3-year-old son from her care. Why? Because, as the Spotlight story notes, lower-income parents are more likely to be investigated for infant deaths, and investigators are influenced by homes that “are cluttered, … not clean, everything’s old.”

With affluence, women can offload their labor and anxiety onto housecleaners when their social status is at risk. For people like Emily Cross, there is no offloading, and their social status is important only insofar as it may land them in jail or break up their family. KAREN VIEIRA Marshfield

In her Ideas essay, Kat Rosenfield encourages women to liberate themselves from caring about getting it “all” done (whatever “all” is). “But what if women just did less?” she ponders, telling us that the world of the internet will not be hurt and that the main beneficiaries of women’s guilt are not their ungrateful families but rather marketers.

Yet an article by the Spotlight team on the front page of the same edition reveals that if something bad happens to women — say, if their child dies of sudden infant death syndrome — they’d better hope they’re an affluent stay-at-home mom who kept a clean house.

The state Department of Children and Families noted that a woman whose child died while co-sleeping had a house that “was ‘cluttered’ with ‘dirty dishes in the sink and kitchen counter,’ ” which was one factor in attributing culpability to her. In contrast, the husband of another mom — a stay-athome mom — who lost her child while co-sleeping said, “We were treated pretty well. They took one look at our home and it was nice . ... It was clear that we didn’t have anything to hide. I think it was obvious it wasn’t neglect or abuse.”

Those of us who, by choice or necessity, “just do less” can tell you that there are plenty of judgments and consequences, large and small. Pretending that there aren’t is part of the problem. MONICA EILAND Medford