In an essay for Gawker on how Americans grew so attached to attachment theory, Danielle Carr, a scholar who studies capitalism and neuroscience, writes that “attachment theory offers the consolations of the heuristic, a kind of rough-draft outline for a larger essay on our internal life. This is true of almost any Grand Theory of Everything that explains the unknowable—in this case, the interiority of the other—using a few rough-hewn concepts.” Attachment theory is nevertheless used to explain both parenting (usually relying on the mother-child dyad) and romance (usually relying on the man-woman dyad), which furthers the theory’s hetero-patriarchal feel and allows us to blame even our sexual and romantic relationship problems on our mothers.

At best, however, attachment theory is merely a tool for explaining how growing up in a hetero-patriarchal culture tends to create certain personality types, outcomes that are loosely linked to how our caregivers behaved when we were kids, or how we perceive them to have behaved years later, when we grow into adults and consult the attachment playbooks. At worst, attachment theory can be used to reify bad behavior that emerges from living in a sexist society, tracing it all back to Mom and Dad—but usually Mom. “What are the odds that the vast majority of heterosexuals would sort so neatly into what look like gender-coded slots—the women frantic for explanations for their romantic woes self-identifying as ‘anxious’ and slapping the ‘avoidant’ label on guys who seem to be just not that into them? Does this remind you of anything?” Carr asks. “The whole thing smacks of gender.”

Not surprising, given that the theories we have available on how human development, psychology, and relationships both form and function are all inherited from white men. “I think a lot of that science is bad science,” Kate Manne has said about the sexism that continues to plague contemporary studies on how men and women supposedly perceive the world differently because of biological difference. “There’s no control group in a patriarchal culture,” Manne points out. “There’s no group of women raised such as not to have sexist theories and misogynistic enforcement mechanisms operating on them. Of course some differences will show up. But it doesn’t lead to an enhanced kind of epistemic state, where we know something interesting and new about two different groups.” The same is true for how we interpret the science that says secure attachments with our mothers makes us well-adjusted later in life. Who is to say this is not the result of growing up living in a family that felt “normal,” judged by standards that relegate women to positions of inferiority in motherhood?”]

“Female swim coaches who don’t add enough upspeak in their voice when they are yelling ‘kick’ across the pool deck are often seen as mean, while their male coworkers can yell all they want,” Joann explains, referring to the practice of rising intonation at the end of a sentence so that it sounds like a question. She also suggests they add positive, encouraging phrases like “You got it!,” something men do not need to do.

If women do not sweetly modulate their voices as they question mark their way through “Kick? Kick? Kick?” leg movement directions, Joann says she has learned the hard way it will only be a matter of days before parents will come forward to complain.

Joann does not need a sociology textbook to teach her about counter-stereotypic backlash—that punishing effect that happens to women refusing to adhere to the kind, sweet, and demure trope mentioned in earlier chapters. She has seen it summer after summer, with every new cohort of swim instructors coming in. “That is the only way that people can take women’s voices,” she states bluntly.

Tweaking and altering your authentic self to adhere to what is expected of you as a woman, either to please others or for fear of serious repercussion—in the form of social penalties like angry parents, economic penalties like job loss, or physical penalties like violence—is emotional labor. It is not only emotional labor; it is emotional labor with the threat of a slap on the wrist or more if you don’t do it.

When performed in public, before an audience, emotional labor imposed on subjugated groups serves to infantilize and delegitimize those doing it. As an active expression of a submissive, nonconfrontational status, it also presents the power status quo as inevitable, paralyzing those doing emotional labor in place.”]

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