Mothers think more about housekeeping – and this cognitive burden harms their mental health

When you think that of housekeeping, you most likely consider tasks: scrubbing dishes, running errands, chopping vegetables for dinner. And it's nothing recent that Mothers often bear the burden for many of those activities.

But there’s an invisible dimension of housekeeping that goes on behind the scenes: the cognitive effort required to anticipate needs, plan, organize, and delegate household tasks. In other words, someone has to recollect to refill the dishwashing liquid and select which vegetables to cut.

Our recent research finds that this cognitive dimension of housekeeping, also known as “mental load,” is much more unequally distributed inside couples than the physical dimension—and it seems to take a selected psychological toll on women. According to the study, which we published within the Archives of Women's Mental Health, moms who do more disproportionate share of cognitive housekeeping higher levels of depression, stress, relationship dissatisfaction and burnout.

Track who’s doing what

We asked 322 moms of young children who of their family is accountable for 30 common household tasks. We worked with the developers of the Fair Play system – a book and Card game was developed to raised quantify the division of labor inside households – to interrupt each task down into two dimensions: cognitive (anticipating, planning, delegating, and interested by household tasks) and physical (the sensible execution of household tasks). We then examined how these tasks are divided between partners.

We found a striking difference between the sexes: in comparison with their partners, moms not only did more physical housekeeping, but in addition a significantly larger share of cognitive work.

On average, moms reported being accountable for about 73% of all cognitive housekeeping while their partners did only 27%, and for 64% of all physical housekeeping while their partners did only 36%. In fact, for each single task we examined, the gender difference was larger on the cognitive dimension than on the physical dimension.

Fathers were more accountable for planning and carrying out just one task: taking out the rubbish. Fathers also did more housekeeping, but moms took on more of the planning tasks related to it.

Interestingly, while an unequal division of physical tasks was related to poorer relationship quality, it was cognitive work that had a stronger impact on women's psychological well-being.

Family dynamics have social impacts

An unequal distribution of housekeeping is a significant reason for Global gender inequalityoppression of girls full participation in paid employment and significantly influence Women’s health and wellbeing.

Our study is one in all the primary to look at the cognitive dimension of housekeeping and its impact on maternal mental health. Cognitive work might be particularly stressful for girls because it often takes place behind the scenes and not recognized or appreciated by others. It also steals mental energy that’s missing from other priorities.

Further studies show that ladies more negative effects from childcare and housekeeping For example, in comparison with men, they’ve higher rates of depression, partly as a result of their higher cognitive load.

What just isn’t yet known

Our study was limited by its reliance on household chores and the proven fact that we were only in a position to collect data from moms in married, heterosexual relationships. Future studies can survey each partners and directly observe what household chores couples do. They can even examine different relationship configurations, including gay and lesbian couples.

We also have no idea much in regards to the long-term effects of cognitive division of labor on women's mental health and cognitive functioning.

The unfair distribution of housekeeping is a common source of stress in relationships and is usually seen by women as Grounds for divorceCognitive load could also be an underestimated aspect of domestic workload that deserves more attention from couple therapists, psychological counselors, and marriage counselors.