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The Invisible Workload: Understanding and Sharing Cognitive Labor at Home

If you’re responsible for the mental load in your home and feel that burden isn’t understood, supported or recognised, this article is for you.

Given that the mental load is invisible and constant cognitive and emotional labour involved in managing a household or family life, it can be hard to quantify.

All that organising, planning and remembering isn’t a “normalised form of work”, even though it’s relentlessly present, explains Allison Daminger.

She’s a sociologist and assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, who identified four clear stages of mental work related to household responsibilities.

“While cognitive labour or the mental load is definitely hidden, relative to physical chores, I wanted to try to bring it into the light so we can see it and talk about it.

“And to do that, we needed a really precise definition.”

What are the four stages of cognitive labour?

Dr Daminger research focuses on cognitive labour, which she says overlaps with the mental load but isn’t quite the same.

“I define cognitive labour as a set of mental processes aimed at figuring out what the family requires, what it owes to others, and how best to ensure that both requirements and obligations are fulfilled.

“Put in much simpler terms, it’s like project management for the household.”

Basically, cognitive labour is the “thinking part” of the mental load, but the mental load also covers emotional labour, such as regulating our own emotions as well as managing the emotions of others in our household.

The four stages of cognitive labour Dr Daminger has identified are:

1. Anticipating a need: what’s coming up that we need to plan for, deal with, or otherwise address?
2. Identifying options: what are the different ways we might reasonably meet this need?
3. Deciding: which option are we going to go with?
4. Monitoring: did this decision get executed successfully, and did it resolve the underlying issue?

Lyn Craig, a professor of sociology and social policy at the University of Melbourne, says breaking down cognitive labour in this way helps to recognise it as work.

“If I was someone’s secretary — this [work] is exactly what I am paid to do.

“It’s worthwhile to count the planning and organising of the project management aspect that isn’t evident when just asking people — what were you doing all day?”

The Stage Where Men Most Often Contribute

While Dr Daminger’s research found mothers did more in all four stages, particularly more of the anticipation and monitoring work, there was one stage where men were more active than others: decision-making.

“Male and female participation in decision-making, arguably the cognitive labour component most closely linked to power and influence, is roughly equal,” the research states.

Basically, fathers are informed when it comes to making a call, but it’s the mothers that do the groundwork to get them there.

“There is quite a lot of preliminary work that goes into presenting someone with options they could decide between,” Professor Craig says.

She says while it may be about power, including male partners in decision-making is also about managing emotional labour.

“If we take on a play date for Joey, how will that affect getting Susie to soccer, and that will have an implication for Mark [husband] as well — which do you prefer, Mark?

“It’s not like sharing the load really, it’s more like an extra part of the emotional labour … working out how it [the decision] will affect him and his emotional needs.”

Rightly or wrongly, Professor Craig says it’s “sensible” for a woman to include men in decision-making because they will have to deal with his reaction if he’s inconvenienced by the decision.

Mental load inequity is more common in heterosexual relationships, with research showing same-gender couples more often divide the cognitive labour according to each other’s strengths, preferences and changing needs.

How Carrying the Load Impacts Women

Mothers “don’t get a complete break”, says Professor Craig, which can lead to stress, overload and exhaustion.

Research shows women are more likely to include children in their leisure time, while men are more likely to have child-free leisure.

And even if women are not physically with the children, “they are concerned about them … hoping dad’s outing Is going well and he remembered to pick up the sandwiches,” says Professor Craig.

Dr Daminger says her research has shown women often feel like “they had a million things happening at once”.

Are Women Really ‘Better’ at Cognitive Labour?

Traditional gender roles and society’s expectations result in women taking on more of the mental load, explains Professor Craig.

“The work world is structured around the expectation that women will be doing this, and men are less likely to.”

Women become more specialised in cognitive and emotional labour in the home, not because they are inherently good at it, but because they have “gotten a lot more practice … and have built up relevant skills,” says Dr Daminger.

That means it can be hard to “switch things up when there’s often a steep learning curve for someone novel to take things on,” she says.

Professor Craig says it’s the kids who may suffer if mothers try to hand over duties.

“A woman might say [to her partner]: ‘You are on lunches this week.’ If it doesn’t happen, it’s not the man that doesn’t get to eat lunch, it’s the kids.

“It’s not going to relieve you mentally if you are worrying something you would normally do will not be done.”

Men may also have a hard time breaking into parenting communities, which tend to be very mum-centric, Dr Daminger says, meaning they don’t have the same information and support.

These barriers are not issues couples alone can resolve, but Professor Craig says talking about cognitive labour as work in the household can help.

Other experts recommend families catalogue the work, discuss it, and then equally divide it.

Have you tried evening out the mental load in your household? What worked — if anything? Share with us.