Working as a funeral director can be a very stressful career. Not only are there time demands and heavy work loads, but funeral directors must deal both with preparing the deceased for their funeral and handling and caring for their grieving loved ones. Juggling all these tasks may account for why some claim that 50% of funeral directors are leaving the profession within their first five years. Why are so many funeral directors' burning out, and what can be done to minimize the effects of stress? Melanie Carr reveals that the secret may lie in emotional intelligence. Drawing on discoveries she made while working on her Ph.D. in Psychology, Melanie will share her key findings on the relationship between emotional intelligence and occupational stress. Some of the key takeaways you'll learn include: *What are the key components of Emotional Intelligence * How gender affects Emotional Intelligence * How age affects Emotional Intelligence * How Emotional Intelligence affects one's occupational stress * How you can improve your Emotional Intelligence This is a must-read for any Funeral Director! Whether you are experiencing stress or burnout currently, or you just want to improve your skill-set, this book will help you gain a better understanding of work stressors and how to overcome them.

In 1983, Arlie Russell Hochschild's groundbreaking work on emotional labor generated a torrent of interest among researchers that produced a robust body of literature over the past several decades. The theoretical scaffolding of her work builds on key concepts of dramaturgy, exchange theory, and to a lesser extent, conflict theory. Emotional labor is the management of feelings or emotions in exchange for a wage. The work of the funeral director is at the same time, a service that few wish for and high potential for emotional labor. Assessing and understanding the families they serve and returning the appropriate display rules. This study seeks to explore the relationship between emotional labor, the work of the funeral director, and its effect on the family and friends. There have been few studies conducted on the emotional labor of funeral directors and the effect on their family and friends. Negotiating the emotions displayed by grieving families in addition these interactions may influence their own family, is just one of the consequences of this profession. In-depth interviews were conducted with six participants. Of the six participants, three are current funeral directors, and three are no longer working in the industry. The researcher determined that the work of the funeral director is divided into two domains: technical skills and social skills. The social skills encompass the largest proportion of the work of funeral directors and is inextricably connected to emotional labor. The researcher found that the emotional labor of participants was taxed by three interrelated factors, including the demands of the job, the impact on personal relationships, and the acumen for reading client emotional cues. The latter was exacerbated by family dynamics, the context of death, and the age of the deceased.

This comprehensive handbook provides a solid foundation in helping skills related to successful funeral service practice.

Many people are curious about what goes on behind the scenes at a funeral home. Add a live-in family to this scenario, and you'll Step Into Our Lives at the Funeral Home. Shh! Be quiet! There's someone at the door! Don't ever talk about anything you have seen or heard concerning someone's death outside the walls of our home. Mourning families need to know they can trust our integrity and our ability to keep confidentiality. For the author's family, these admonitions were ingrained in the children's minds at an early age. This book gives an insightful view of every facet of the funeral, from the time a death call is received until the funeral is completed. Stories of days in the ambulance business in conjunction with the funeral home are also related. The funeral director's role, the spouse's role, the children's role, and how the children thrived in an atmosphere of death are shared with the reader. How funeral directors cope with stress and how wives cope with their husbands during these times are revealed. Years later, following a tragic death, three people look back and share their stories of moving from despair to recovery. Interspersed through every chapter are stories and vignettes shared by many funeral directors throughout the Midwest, concerning the lifestyle for the family living in the funeral home and true incidents of specific funerals. Some stories are sad. Others are tragic. A few are humorous. Embracing faith, hope, and love is a primary requisite for healing. Intended audience: General readers of all ages, funeral home directors, hospice patients, mortuary students, and people who have had a loved one die by natural means or tragedy.

Burkhardt offers this insider's guide on how to plan a low cost, less stress funeral.

Hochschild (1983) stated that emotional labor has unique consequences for women. However, most studies of these consequences have been situated in feminized occupations which have wage penalties and little upward mobility (see Sweet and Meiksins, 2004). This poses a problem as it may be difficult to tease apart what stressors are the result of emotional labor and which are a part of the broader issues of feminized work. The present research suggests that the funeral industry is a unique context for the study of women's emotional labor, as it is a numerically male dominated profession (BLS, 2010). Using semi-structured, in-depth interviews with thirteen female funeral directors, the present research explored how women connected work roles and societal norms. The results suggest that beliefs in gender essentialism, or beliefs in other's essentialism, may influence how women experience and perform emotional labor.

The Good Funeral Guide is the first ever independent consumer guide to the funeral industry. It is for anyone who: - needs to arrange a funeral for someone now - has sick or elderly relatives or friends and knows that a funeral is imminent - wants to find a good funeral director and have some say in the funeral itself - wants to make future arrangements for their own funeral - would like to learn about deaths and funerals Authoritative, impartial and empowering, it is indispensable for those who don't want a conventional religious ceremony and invaluable for those who do. This is a book we will all need - probably at least twice.