Mothers perform more household chores. But they are also the ones in charge of the family and proactively assign more of the household chores. This is bad news for mothers’ mental health.
When we think of household chores, we think of activities like washing dishes, running errands, chopping vegetables for dinner, etc. And it’s no surprise that mothers shoulder the majority of these activities.
But there’s an intangible aspect to household work that unfolds behind the scenes: the cognitive effort it takes to anticipate, plan, organize, and delegate household needs — in other words, someone has to remember to refill the dish soap or choose which vegetables to chop.
Our new research shows that this cognitive aspect of housework – the so-called ‘mental burden’ – is even more unequally shared between couples than the physical aspect, and appears to place a particular mental health burden on women. Women’s Mental Health Archives, Mothers who shoulder a disproportionate share of cognitive household work have been found to report higher levels of depression, stress, relationship dissatisfaction, and burnout.
Track who did what
We asked 322 mothers of young children who were responsible for 30 common household chores in their families. We worked with the creators of the Fair Play System, a book and card game designed to better quantify the division of labor within the home, and broke each task down into two dimensions: cognitive (anticipating, planning, delegating, and thinking about the chore) and physical (the actual carrying out of the chore). We then looked at how these tasks were divided between partners.
We found striking gender differences: mothers not only performed more physical household work than their partners, but also a significantly higher proportion of cognitive work.
On average, mothers performed about 73% of all cognitive household tasks compared to their partners’ 27% and 64% of all physical household tasks compared to their partners’ 36%. In fact, across all tasks we looked at, the gender differences in the cognitive aspects were larger than the gender differences in the physical performance aspects.
Taking out the trash was the only activity for which fathers planned and carried out more, and although fathers also did more home maintenance tasks, mothers did more of the related planning.
Interestingly, while the unequal division of physical labor was associated with poorer relationship quality, it was cognitive labor that had a greater impact on women’s psychological well-being.
Family dynamics affect society
The unequal division of domestic work is a major driver of gender inequality globally, inhibiting women’s full participation in the paid workforce and having significant implications for women’s health and well-being.
Our study is one of the first to explore the cognitive aspects of household work and its impact on maternal mental health. Cognitive work can be particularly taxing for women because it often takes place behind the scenes and is not recognized or valued by others. It also takes mental energy away from other priorities.
Additional research suggests that women, due to their greater cognitive load compared to men, experience more negative consequences from childcare and housework, including higher rates of depression.
What we don’t know yet
Our study was limited in that it relied on self-reported household labor and could only collect data from mothers in cohabiting heterosexual couples. Future studies could survey both partners and directly observe what household chores couples perform at home. They could also examine different types of relationship configurations, such as gay and lesbian couples.
Additionally, less is known about the long-term effects of sharing cognitive labor on women’s mental health and cognitive functioning.
Unfair division of household chores is a frequent source of stress in marriages and is often cited by women as a reason for divorce. Cognitive load may be an underappreciated aspect of household work that deserves further attention from couples therapists, mental health counselors, and premarital relationship educators.
Darby Saxby, Professor of Psychology USC Doon Saif School of Letters Lizzy Aviv, Psychology PhD Candidate; University of Southern California
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University of Southern California
