Women are more aware of the mental load of the household than at any time in the past.

The dynamics of domestic labor and parenting have historically been biased. The expectation: women would and should do the work of running the home and raising children.

Even for women who work outside the home, the mental load often ends up squarely on their shoulders.

• Women put in 10 more hours of household labor than men each week (US data)

And this impacts their careers. 

• 57% of women feel that their careers are limited by their caregiving responsibilities at home (US data)

So many women want to rebalance the load at home.

But the advice that permeates so much of the social media sphere is blunt: there are “good guys” (who will willingly step up to the plate at home, if asked) and “garbage guys”. And if you’ve got one of the latter, you’re told your only option is to “throw the whole man away.”

As much as that phrase makes me chuckle, this way of thinking keeps a lot of women right where they started: shouldering an outsize burden at home.

It’s time to unpack our thinking about the mental load at home, and how we can drive more alignment with our partners.

What You'll Learn

• Why the unequal division of labor at home is also an obstacle to women’s career ambitions
• The “good guy” versus “garbage guy” binary thinking that permeates social media, and why more nuance is useful
• 4 partner stances to the mental load, and which ones are “good” or  “garbage”
• The two underrated skills that drive more alignment on the mental load at home

Featured in this Episode:

• Fair Play, by Eve Rodsky
• McKinsey/Lean In study, 2022.
• Americans’ Time at Paid, Household, and Childcare Work 1965-2011, Pew Research Center. 
• “Gender Differences in Perceived Domestic Task Equity” Young, Wallace and Polachek; Journal of Family Issues, 2015.
•  Perceived Equity in the Gender Division of Household Labor, Braun; Journal of Marriage and Family

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Full Episode Transcript: