The resurgence of the term ‘kinkeeping,’ the often gendered work of keeping a family together

CATHY WURZER: I mentioned this phrase that has lit up the internet recently. Now, it's not new, but it is having a resurgence. I'm talking about kinkeeping. It describes the constant work required to keep a family connected. And the vast majority of that work is done by women.

MOLLY WESTCOTT: If there is one thing that I learned from my women in gender studies class that is on my mind 24/7, it's kinkeeping. Kinkeeping is the root of stress in most women's lives. And because they don't know the name for it, they are often called irrational.

Imagine there is a theater, and they want to put on a play. They're going to hire not only actors and actresses, but they're going to hire costume designers, people to move the furniture in between scenes, people to move the curtains, people to sell the tickets, to advertise for the show, to show the lights, and do the spotlights correctly, people to have the microphones, ushers to have everyone sit in the right spots.

There's a lot of effort and time and energy that goes into a play. But at the end of the day, when the play is done, people are not clapping for everything that they did not see. They're clapping for the actors and actresses that they witnessed. In this analogy, women are the people who go unseen.

During the holidays, there's a lot of cooking, and cleaning, and planning, and organizing, and wrapping of paper, and remembering of dates. But a lot of it goes unnoticed because the whole role of this job is to be invisible and to perform convenience for everyone.

CATHY WURZER: Yes, exactly. That was a TikTok with more than 12 million views posted by Molly Westcott, a student of Erienne Fawcett. Dr. Fawcett is a professor of women and gender studies at Minnesota State University Moorhead. And she's here to talk about this relationship glue and some of the gender inequality involved in producing. And professor, thank you for your time.

ERIENNE FAWCETT: Absolutely. I will say that I'm not a doctor, but I did teach women and gender studies. I did teach women and gender studies at NDSU. I think when you're working in an academic career, we want to make sure that we know these things. But I taught women and gender studies at North Dakota State University for 15 years, 16 years. And I recently moved over to Minnesota State University Moorhead a couple of years ago.

So it's wild that, number one, I have this student that had a viral TikTok. I had no idea that I had her in my final semester of teaching at NDSU. And I'm just so glad that I had a chance to make an impact on someone's life, because now she's going to talk to her partner and say, hey, let's talk about kinkeeping before we move forward in this relationship.

CATHY WURZER: Exactly, exactly. How did you start talking about kinkeeping in class?

ERIENNE FAWCETT: So I had an amazing professor named Dr. Anne Burnett. And I was teaching communication studies at NDSU. And she's like, I think that you should look into some women and gender studies, because that's where a lot of your interests are. And so I started teaching women and gender studies at NDSU.

I was really lucky to have that chance to do that in such an accessible way. And now I've taught thousands of people. So this concept for me was taught in a women and gender studies class through Anne Burnett at NDSU. And then I went on and started teaching it in women and gender studies 110.

It's just one of those tenets of talking about, really, the second shift, and understanding that a woman's work is never done. That is a very popular quote. And certainly it's not, whether it be the emotional labor that you have with regards to your own family, even friends, with your extended family. One of the big things in this is talking about keeping in touch with relatives. And that alone is a job in and of itself.

CATHY WURZER: Yes.

ERIENNE FAWCETT: So talking to students who are primarily 18 to 22-- I've certainly had some that are older than that. But talking about this early, talking about expectations of relationships, of partnerships is really important, because it's going to help that satisfaction of that relationship.

It's going to talk to us, or have us think about how this kind of work is truly for every person. There's still a huge split between men and women, and certainly a lot of our statistics are looking at heterosexual relationships only. And so there's a gap in knowledge there. But when we're thinking about this and when we're talking about this, recognizing that everybody has the ability to learn how to emotionally work with a family in order to keep that family going and not stress out a single family member is really important.

CATHY WURZER: How in the heck do you manage then to convince, say, the male in a partnership to-- you can make medical appointments. It's pretty easy to learn. And you can probably go visit your mom, and invite her for dinner, and that kind of thing. I mean, how do you open these conversations instead of having it, again, fall on the female partner?

ERIENNE FAWCETT: Well, I think that the wild thing for me is that I started teaching women's studies specifically, but I ended up teaching masculinity studies as well. And it's really important to recognize that it is so important for men in relationships to do the work as well.

And I will quote this. I can't remember what study it's from, but just recognizing that men that do more household work and childcare have more substantial sex lives. I think that that's a really good way to talk about that subject, because if you're too tired to have that intimate relationship with your partner, that's going to be really tough on that relationship long term.

CATHY WURZER: And probably there's some resentment, I would think, too, some resentment that builds up on the part of the woman, right?

ERIENNE FAWCETT: Absolutely, absolutely. So I think that it's important. I will say this-- and I always say this, that communication in any type of relationship is key. And this is one of them. So convincing someone to do the work might be hard to do, but recognizing that if they are to do that work, it's going to create a more satisfactory relationship overall, not only with their partners, but with their kids.

If you're talking about somebody who's married and has kids or just has kids-- don't have to have the marriage title there. But that connection, that rapport that you create with your with your kids, if you're a guy, is really, really important. We definitely don't think men are unnecessary. I think that that's been something that's been talked about a lot recently. And I would say that's the exact opposite of the work that I was trying to do while teaching gender studies courses.

CATHY WURZER: I'm curious to know why you think-- this is my final question, then I have to move on. Why do you think kinkeeping is having kind of a moment with all the TikToks and the podcasts? And isn't it dictionary.com's Word of the Day? I mean, there's a lot of attention being paid to it, which I think is good.

ERIENNE FAWCETT: I think that it's definitely this idea of being connected all the time. I mean, kinkeeping at some point in time had a moment where you could step back and say, OK, I can take a minute.

Well, with a 24-hour-- you're on the computer all the time. You have a phone linked up with you every second of the day. Kinkeeping never really ends. It's always a possibility that it will pop up in your life. And that's even included in recognizing that the reason why we're here today is because a student made a viral TikTok. So I think media has a lot to do with it.

CATHY WURZER: I appreciate your time, professor. I wish we had more of an opportunity to talk and maybe take some questions. Thank you so much.

ERIENNE FAWCETT: Thank you so much. Have a great day.

CATHY WURZER: You, too. We have been talking to Erienne Fawcett. She's a professor of women and gender studies at Minnesota State University Moorhead.