Who Does The Invisible Load Impact?

Even when women out-earn their partners, they often remain the household project managers. You can hire help but that does not necessarily equate to outsourcing the planning, anticipation and foresight required to manage a household with multiple stakeholders.

Research shows that mothers earning more than $100,000 report 30% less childcare and 17% less housework than those with lower incomes, but they do no less mental household labour. On average, mothers perform 13.72 mental tasks, while fathers perform 8.2.

As my career progressed and my income increased, some things became a lot easier. We outsourced a much more in our lives. We hired an additional helper. We ordered more food. From the outside, it looked like I was doing less at home. But in reality, not a lot had changed. I’m not saying that my husband wasn’t helpful or that he didn’t do his share.

But there were tasks that I had always done and continued to do, such as planning play dates, meal planning, medical appointments, birthdays, holidays. The physical work was offloaded, but the thinking behind it all, the invisible work, stayed with me. The study calls this “gendered cognitive stickiness.” In simple terms, it means that once women become the person who plans and anticipates, that role sticks. It sticks even when their jobs get bigger. It sticks even when they earn more. It sticks even when they outsource the visible work.

This is what we get wrong when we talk about equality at home. We keep negotiating chores, but we rarely renegotiate ownership. I no longer had to do the laundry, but I still had to know when it needed doing and what was still at the dry cleaners. I could stop organising playdates, but managing the family calendar was still my responsibility.

You can outsource labour, but you cannot outsource responsibility. Mental load only shifts when someone else owns the thinking, not just the doing. Each family dynamic is different and the carrying of the mental load by mothers occurs for a variety of reasons but in my family, I knew that I was the controller and in order for things to change, I had to learn how to let go of some that control and be ok with things being done differently.