I cannot recommend highly enough the book Equal Partners: Improving Gender Equality at Home by Kate Mangino. I doubt this is the last time I’ll reference it! This is a book about gender roles in the home, but is written broadly to show patterns that might begin with heterosexual couples, but stretch far beyond that. It resonated with my experience as a woman in a straight marriage. It also made sense of how I interact with my jobs.
Mangino introduces the Noticer (a concept taken from this 2018 viral piece by Anja Boynton). Did I ever feel called out by this role. She describes the tasks of a Noticer with the following example:
The Noticer makes more ice when the tray is low, stocks favorite snacks for a long weekend, switches out warmer blankets in the winter, cracks the windows to clear out a musty smell, and prints out favorite photos for frames in the living room.1
In short, a Noticer is the person who pays attention and then does something with that knowledge. A Noticer is often a gendered role. And Noticers are very, very often underappreciated for what they bring and do.
I am the Noticer in my home. Yet I don’t stop there! I am the Noticer in my jobs.
You could analyze my life to understand this dynamic. I had the rare and wonderful opportunity to grow up with a stay at home dad and a working mom. My mom works as a manager and supervisor. My dad does the same, but of the home. He does the laundry, she brings home the paycheck. My dad is the Noticer at home and is the one who remembers holiday decorations, sends cards, and more.
You would think I would then be a product of some kind of gendered utopia. And yet, I also learned some interesting noticing patterns from my parents. My mom is an excellent executive. Yet I have seen her time and time again deploy her cookie making skills to cajole the employees around her. She knows about the details of her employees lives, offering support beyond her official role. She, in short, pays attention and takes care of details in her professional life and succeeds because of it.
In summary—I see all this noticing as both a personal and professional conundrum.
Here, it’s important to note what Mangino does when she writes, “I realize that often the Noticer’s acts are done willingly and with love…But being the Noticer does take time and energy, and requires both thoughtfulness as well as active forethought.”2
There’s great success and satisfaction when you have happy employees, and laundry folded and put away, and Christmas lights hung early enough in the season to enjoy them. I’ve seen that in my own life and in the lives of my parents. But how much noticing is too much? When does all that time and energy add up to burnout and underappreciation? When can we better understand the expectations placed upon us and how we might subvert them?
Understanding my own Noticer nature is one of the keys to keeping a healthy balance in my multi-vocational life. I very easily can spot and see the details I could add into my life: the cat stickers I could send to a piano student, the corners of my church office I could vacuum, the Halloween decorations I could pull out at home. And I am free to choose to do any or all of these. But if I am better aware of my impulses, I can also choose not to (mostly).
Many of us have jobs and vocations that don’t have a clear end point. When is a sermon completely written? When is my house really clean? When am I done preparing for a lesson? Working more on any of these things might be nicer for a moment, but is it healthier? Is it more just?
Underneath this all is, of course, how our labor is unfairly distributed across lines of gender, race, and income. My individual choices both then matter deeply and are also part of a whole system beyond my control. I can choose to not clean my house and still live in a world where I (and not my spouse) will be judged for that. I can spend less time on lesson planning and then get passed over for a new student recommendation. But in developing awareness around what I do with my noticing power makes sure I don’t inadvertently support a world that is taking advantage of my thoughtfulness.
More to come, as this is an ongoing conversation with nuance and detail. (For example, what is the role of the non-Noticers in all of this?!) But for today, I’m going to notice a few things that could be done at work or home, and in the spirit of rest and resistance, I’m going to let them go.
Show I’m watching
I went on a full binge watching the latest season of Dimension 20, A Court of Fey & Flowers. This is the latest season of a Dungeons & Dragons actual play that is on the streaming service Dropout. I do not play Dungeons & Dragons myself, but as it turns out am all in on watching others play. I would’ve previously assumed that any D&D content would be nerdy white men enacting medieval fantasy, but wow is this so much more. This is fantasy regency romance with a diverse and queer cast and it is unbelievably good.
For your listening
Be Thou My Vision arranged and played by me.
What life looks like
Refrigerator poetry.
Page 74, Equal Partners.
Page 75, Equal Partners.