The Mental Load
Even if fathers are shouldering their fair share of chores, it seems that many women of my generation (including myself) still carry the mental load, and believe that if they didn’t the household would fall apart. If you read the last sentence and thought to yourself “well it would”, there’s a good chance you’re struggling under the weight of the mental load yourself. It’s known as the “mental load” - the burden of remembering, and usually also executing, the myriad tasks required to keep a household ticking over. In all cases (with exception of very few) the mental load is shouldered by the woman of the house, no matter how demanding a career she may also have. What Is The Mental Load? The mental load is the total sum of responsibilities that you take on to manage “the remembering of things.” It has to do with emotional labor , defined by Arlie Hochschild in the 1983 book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling , as the process of managing emotions...