You leave work and head home, ready to enjoy the weekend after 40 hours on the job. You’re not done, though. On the drive, you’re mentally cataloging the next steps: make a grocery list, stop at the store, check that left rear tire and see if it’s a little low again, text your teenager to check the fridge and see if you’re out of butter, and so on.
It’s the mental load, also known as invisible labor. It’s all that extra work that happens inside your head for daily life to carry on. You need to ask your son how his math test went. It would help to remember to put that doctor’s appointment on the calendar. You must check in with your spouse and ensure they remember to pay the light bill. It goes on and on.
In fact, researchers recently concluded that this process takes up about 30 hours per week—almost a second full-time job. And yes, on the whole, a disproportionate amount of it falls on women.
The Skylight Study
Skylight, a company whose products include a family calendar device, dug into how much time adults, particularly parents, spend simply organizing and planning.
To be clear, this time doesn’t include, for example, driving a child to his baseball practice, but it does include the time spent determining what time to leave to be on time and what other tasks need to be done before leaving.
The Skylight report concludes that parents spend an average of 30.4 hours on these tasks. They handle an average of 17.5 texts or emails about kids’ weekly schedules and activities, along with organizing rides, planning for social events, and juggling their children’s mental health, education, and other needs.
Everybody Thinks They Do The Most
Every parent who completed the survey believed that they handled the majority of the mental load. Primary caregivers report handling 75% of the mental load, and parents who are not the primary caregivers believe they carry 56% of the mental load.
The full report also notes that 60% of parents say they’ve felt taken for granted, and 75% of dads say they intend to split the load equally.
Despite that, when broken down by tasks, the report finds that “moms own every household mental load task at a higher rate than dads, save for managing home finances.”
In most households, moms consider themselves the primary caregiver or “default parent.” They are 20% more likely to be the parent contacted by schools for sickness and are more likely to be the partner who takes sick time from work to care for a child.
It’s Stressing Couples Out
The scheduling and splitting of the load is such a strain that about a quarter of participants in the study say they’ve sought couples counseling over the stress, and 60% say that they’ve lost time with their partner over it.
Regardless of the division of labor, in many couples, both partners feel burnt out and exhausted from the mental labor.
There Are Some Serious Health Consequences
UCLA Health reports that an overwhelming mental load can cause stress, anxiety, sleep disorders, and burnout.
Over time, this sort of stress and exhaustion can even result in chronic illness, as well as decreasing one’s sense of self-worth, destroying relationships, and leaving both partners feeling unappreciated.
What Are The Solutions?
Skylight is selling a device that is a shared touchscreen calendar for the whole family. Families are working together in various other ways to overcome the strain.
Aside from a separate device, families can also share calendars through various apps, including those pre-installed on their phones (Google Calendar for Android users and Apple Calendar on Apple devices).
Discussing the mental load with one’s partner and coordinating which jobs belong to whom is also essential.
Parents are also starting to teach their kids, regardless of gender, about invisible labor, which not only helps balance the mental load in their households now but can help keep things more equal when these kids grow up and start their households and families.
Parents are also advised to set boundaries and limits and stick to them. If you are too busy to comfortably add the bake sale to your to-do list this week, it’s okay to say no (even if it doesn’t feel okay).
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