{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"The Emotional Labor Podcast - Dr. Ellen Ledoux","description":"Laboring Mothers, Then and Now: A Conversation with Dr. Ellen Ledoux I get Google alerts for the topic of \u201cemotional labor,\u201d and one day, a name popped up that stopped me in my tracks: Dr. Ellen Ledoux. A scholar of 18th-century literature and feminist theory, Dr. Ledoux\u2019s work powerfully unpacks how historical narratives continue to shape modern understandings of work, gender, and care. Her book, Laboring Mothers: Reproducing Women and Work in the Eighteenth Century, explores the cultural origins of the myth that maternal care and paid labor are mutually exclusive. She reveals how Enlightenment-era ideals elevated the domestic role for white, privileged women while rendering poor, enslaved, and working-class mothers invisible\u2014or unworthy. In other words, motherhood was never just a personal role\u2014it was political, racialized, and deeply tied to labor structures. When I asked Dr. Ledoux why we\u2019re still here\u2014still talking about \u201cwork-life balance,\u201d still treating caregiving as if it were weightless\u2014she pointed to our enduring belief in rugged individualism and our failure to interrogate the systems that demand superhuman effort. As she put it: we expect a woman on the tenure track to birth both a baby and a major scholarly work, as if both forms of labor don\u2019t demand everything. Dr. Ledoux\u2019s scholarship is a gift to anyone grappling with the emotional labor of care, work, and identity. Learn more about Dr. Ledoux and her work: https:\/\/ellen.ledoux.us\/ Order Laboring Mothers: https:\/\/www.upress.virginia.edu\/title\/5949\/ ","author_name":"The Emotional Labor Podcast","author_url":"https:\/\/linktr.ee\/drreginaflark","html":"