Emotional Labor and the Helper Identity: Student Affairs Mothers of Children with Disabilities

The field of student affairs is considered a helping profession as it requires the provision of assistance and support to others. Likewise, having a child with a disability and/or illness places a burden of help and support on caregivers in the home setting. Through a narrative portraiture lens, this qualitative study examines how women who work in student affairs and who have at least one child with an identified disability, describe emotional labor and strategies they utilize to navigate the aforementioned across work and home environments. Findings suggest that the women interviewed assume a helper identity at both work and in the home, which requires them to use emotional labor frequently in both arenas. For many women, the organizational culture of the workplace coupled with demands associated with parenting a child with a disability drives their need to mask, which ultimately influences overall satisfaction with work performance and home life. We provide higher educational leaders with practical and sustainable recommendations to transform organizational culture, policies, and practices that have the potential to reduce emotional labor for this population of employees.