Have you heard of the “mental load” or “invisible labor”? The mental load refers to the work associated with having children and managing a household and family that no one sees— remembering to schedule doctor’s appointments, planning family social activities and holidays, arranging appointments for house maintenance and repairs, booking travel plans, planning for meals and snacks, registering children for school and summer camp, and even reading posts like this one.
The mental load is often discussed in negative terms, focusing on the stress and unseen work that go into carrying this burden. And, of course, it is important that we recognize the immense burden of the mental load but in practice, how the mental load impacts us may be more complicated. New research even suggests that there may be some positive impacts associated with carrying the mental load. It goes without saying that we should all push for societal changes that will minimize the mental load that all parents carry and make sure neither parent carries an unequal share of this burden. But, in the meantime, recognizing some positive aspects of this load may ultimately help the burden to feel lighter.
This study was published in 2023 in the Journal of Business and Psychology and provided some important insights into how the mental load impacts well-being.
The researchers identified three types of tasks that contribute to the mental load:
Not surprisingly, the researchers found that women spend more time on all three types of invisible labor than men. This backs up previous research finding that about 88% of women report that they are mostly responsible for organizing the families’ schedules, about 78% of women indicate that they are mostly responsible for knowing their child’s teachers and administrators at school, about 76% are mostly responsible for maintaining order and routine in the home, and about 64% are mostly responsible for being aware of the children’s emotional needs.
The mental load matters because previous research has found that when women carry the bulk of the mental load they feel more overwhelmed as a parent and feel more exhausted. However, this new study helped to tease apart the different types of tasks contributing to mental load and the researchers found that different types of invisible labor are associated with different outcomes. The cognitive load was associated with greater family satisfaction (translation: being happier with your family) and improved job performance. The researchers also found that the managerial load was positively associated with work-family enrichment (translation: when your experience with your family enhances your work and your experience with work enhances your family life). However the emotional part of the mental load was associated with negative impacts, such as greater work-family conflict, exhaustion related both to job and family, sleep problems, and poorer job performance. This backs up previous research finding that ensuring a child’s well-being is particularly linked to distress and a feeling of emptiness in women.
This study had some important limitations. First, the researchers developed a new measure to look at the mental load so further research is needed to know how valid this measure is. This study also relied on self-report and, of course, people may over- or under-estimate their contribution to the invisible load (maybe you even have a partner who does this). Because the load is invisible, it is inherently difficult to measure it objectively. Finally, this study is a correlation study, meaning that we don’t know whether invisible labor causes these positive and negative impacts or if it is simply associated with them. However, the researchers did control for personality characteristics to make sure that the type of person who takes on more of the invisible labor isn’t also more likely to experience these positive outcomes.
I wanted to highlight this study because I think it helps to provide a different perspective on invisible labor—that it may not totally negative and may even positively contribute to parents’ lives in some ways. This may be because some aspects of the mental load help to give parents meaning and purpose.
This research (along with previous research) provides the following suggestions for the managing the mental load:
Reframing the Mental Load of Parenting
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08.04.2024
Have you heard of the “mental load” or “invisible labor”? The mental load refers to the work associated with having children and managing a household and family that no one sees— remembering to schedule doctor’s appointments, planning family social activities and holidays, arranging appointments for house maintenance and repairs, booking travel plans, planning for meals and snacks, registering children for school and summer camp, and even reading posts like this one.
The mental load is often discussed in negative terms, focusing on the stress and unseen work that go into carrying this burden. And, of course, it is important that we recognize the immense burden of the mental load but in practice, how the mental load impacts us may be more complicated. New research even suggests that there may be some positive impacts associated with carrying the mental load. It goes without saying that we should all push for societal changes that will minimize the mental load that all parents carry and make sure neither parent carries an unequal share of this burden. But, in the meantime, recognizing........
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