Keeping a household running smoothly takes a lot of effort. There are the more obvious physical tasks like cooking meals, taking out the garbage, folding laundry and picking the kids up from school. But it also requires a whole bunch of behind-the-scenes planning, organizing, anticipating of needs, decision-making and delegating known as the mental load — an invisible kind of work.
In heterosexual relationships, most of these invisible tasks tend to fall on the mom’s shoulders, even when both partners work outside of the home. Men today may be taking on more hands-on domestic responsibilities than they have in the past, but women are still usually carrying the bulk of the mental load.
“Women aren’t just doing more labor, the labor they’re doing is mentally and emotionally taxing: anticipating and planning for how to meet the family’s needs,” Laura Danger, an educator who facilitates workshops on domestic labor, previously told HuffPost.
“When you consider, in cis-het couples, who is usually keeping the social calendar, signing kids up for summer camps and ensuring the grocery list is planned and prepared? It’s often defaulted to mom. Doctors, teachers and coaches often dial mom first. Even the vet usually calls mom before dad!”
