The Emotional Labor Podcast - Dr. Ellen Ledoux

Laboring Mothers, Then and Now: A Conversation with Dr. Ellen Ledoux

I get Google alerts for the topic of “emotional labor,” 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’s 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—or unworthy. In other words, motherhood was never just a personal role—it was political, racialized, and deeply tied to labor structures.

When I asked Dr. Ledoux why we’re still here—still talking about “work-life balance,” still treating caregiving as if it were weightless—she 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’t demand everything.

Dr. Ledoux’s 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/