-- Shares Facebook Twitter Reddit Email Despite a new generation of fathers in straight marriages spending more time with their children , the majority of household and childcare work still falls on women. It’s not just the physical labor, but the mental load. Also known as cognitive labor, the term encompasses anticipating needs, planning, organizing and delegating household tasks.
Darby Saxbe , professor of psychology at the University of Southern California (USC), used an example of summer camp. The cognitive labor is researching camps, comparing rates, filling out the forms, and scheduling the camp week. “All of the kind of organizational work versus, the daily work of taking the kid to and from camp,” Saxbe told Salon.
Related American moms feel like Kamala Harris "gets" them Cognitive labor has been at the forefront of public discourse for some time now, from Gemma Hartley’s viral article "Women Aren’t Nags; We’re Just Fed Up ,” to Eve Rodsky’s book " Fair Play .” There is no shortage of discussion around the topic, but instead a lack of research — that is, until recently. Researchers, including Saxbe, at USC are one of the first to investigate the cognitive dimension of household labor and its effects on maternal mental health.
“We found that while mothers did more of the overall domestic labor than their partners, the division of cognitive labor was particularly gendered, such that women’s share of cognitive labor was more disproportionate than.