Kinkeeping is one of numerous job responsibilities for farm women

NORMAL, Ill. — Farm women have many responsibilities in their job descriptions, including kinkeeping.

“Kinkeeping is that aspect of keeping people connected,” said Rachel Brown, mental health specialist at Farm SOS.

“It is the person who remembers birthdays, organizes Thanksgiving and calls to check on the neighbor, family member or friend,” she said during a presentation at the Generations of Women in Agriculture Across America event, a project of Illinois Agri-Women.

Kinkeeping is one of the forms of invisible labor or emotional labor that women often do.

“Women are the ones who are supporting others emotionally in and outside of the family system,” Brown said. “Sometimes women are the arbitrator or the go-to person who listens with compassion.”

As a result, farm women may start to feel burnout or resentment.

“When things start to feel heavy, we don’t know what to do with it, so we just carry it,” Brown said.

“If farm women ask for help, they may think they are letting someone down,” she said. “We feel like we are the ones to carry it and we shouldn’t have to ask someone else to carry it.”

Women use a variety of reasons to avoid asking for help such as: nobody can do it like I can, it is easier to do it myself, I want to achieve and show people I can do it or everybody else is busy.

“Remember that people are not mind readers,” the mental health specialist said. “Needs are not weaknesses. They are information.”

When asking for help, Brown said, it is important to identify the need. It may be something as simple as 20 minutes of quiet time or somebody to pick the kids up after school.

“There is a spectrum for asking for help,” she said. “Sometimes it is one task and sometimes it is at the other end of the spectrum and you need to talk to your therapist.

“The second step is to choose the right person to ask for help. Oftentimes we have our default person we go to such as the person we are married to or maybe our mom. But one person cannot be everything for us.”

Brown often works with people in grief.

“Maybe they have lost a parent and they turn to their spouse for support, but their spouse is going through some emotions and the spouse is probably not a grief counselor,” she said.

“So, the spouse is trying to provide support, when in reality maybe it would be better to find someone outside of the marriage to support the grief. Reaching out to a pastor or grief counselor could be helpful in that situation.

“When we have the capacity, we need to say yes to someone else’s ask. If we want to have people to reach out to when we need it, we also have to do the same for other people.

“One of the beautiful things I see in rural communities is when someone has a need on their farm or in their family, people show up to help or call to check in. Having those reciprocal relationships to show up for each other in that time of need is a beautiful aspect of our farm communities.”

Caring for yourself should be preventative, Brown said.

“We don’t pull the combine out of the shed and go straight to the field,” she said. “We make sure it is ready and we do the maintenance it needs.

“We should do that for ourselves, too. We can’t push and push until we are in crisis. We have to do the preventative maintenance along the way to keep us going.”

People do not need to earn rest, Brown said.

“It is OK to take some time to rest and take care of yourself,” she said.

In family farming operations, sometimes there are lots of people involved and they may have different priorities of what they want the operation to look like.

In addition, people have different communication styles.

“Some people like to share their opinions and they are loud, while some are quieter and they prefer to wait and be asked before they speak up,” Brown said. “Families also have multiple generations growing up in different ways with different life experiences.”

She identified skills that can be used to navigate conflicts in a family.

“Some people make excuses, some people get defensive and some people get angry,” she said. “So, instead of being defensive, we want to be curious first and ask questions.”

It is also important to address issues early.

“Issues can build and build over time and then the conflict has blown up into a huge fight, people are angry and not talking,” Brown said. “If it was addressed along the way in smaller conversations, it may not have turned into a big blow up.”

She encourages family members to focus on solving the problem, not winning.

“Go into the conversation with a solutions mindset instead of trying to win,” she said.

Farm SOS has a helpline — 1-833-FARM-SOS — that is available 24/7, 365 days a year.

“The helpline is not just for crisis moments,” Brown said. “You can call it when you are lonely, stressed, anxious or just need to talk to talk to somebody for a few minutes.”

Farm families can also use the helpline to get access to free counseling sessions.

“We offer up to six counseling sessions to any farm family member or person who works in agriculture who calls the helpline and asks for it,” Brown said.

“We have support groups for farm families,” she said. “We also have a monthly podcast with all different kinds of guests where we talk about things such as how to support somebody who is aging and has memory loss, grief and suicide.”