As a social psychologist, Rotem Kahalon is fascinated by how gender inequality persists in everyday routines, even among couples who go out of their way to describe themselves as progressive.
It’s not difficult to see that imbalance in something like who cooks dinner, but “it’s much easier to overlook who does the work of deciding what to make, checking what’s in the fridge, and remembering what to buy,” said Kahalon, a senior lecturer at Bar-Ilan University’s Azrieli Faculty of Medicine in Israel.
“That mental load is basically the thinking and emotional work that keeps a household and a relationship running,” she told HuffPost. “I wanted to find out who carries that responsibility and how sharing it relates to the way people feel about their relationships.”
What she and her colleagues found is detailed in a new two-part study: Women in heterosexual relationships tend to report greater relationship and sexual satisfaction when the mental and emotional work of managing a household and relationship is shared with their male partners.
The research, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, also suggests that sharing this often-invisible labor is a stronger predictor of women’s relationship happiness than how traditional chores, such as cooking and cleaning, are divided.
Conversely, men tended to report greater relationship satisfaction when their female partners took on more of this invisible labor.
In the first study, they surveyed 452 women living with male partners. In the second, both partners in 156 couples answered separately, so they could hear how each person saw the division of work in the same household.
For each item, people told the researchers whether it fell mostly to them, mostly to their partner, or about equally to both. The researchers asked about physical chores separately. Relationship and sexual satisfaction were each measured using single questions rated on numerical scales.
Participants averaged 42 years old, had been together for 1 to 44 years, and about 55% had at least one child. They completed questionnaires about how they and their partners divided mental and physical household labor and how strongly they endorsed traditional gender roles.
“We asked about specific responsibilities, like keeping track of children’s schedules, deciding when the sheets need changing, and noticing when a partner is upset,” Kahalon said. “What struck me was in the study where we heard from both partners, the gender gap was even wider for mental load than it was for physical chores.”
The researchers expected people with traditional attitudes to be associated with a more unequal division of housework. That was the case, but their findings on mental load were different: Regardless of whether women had traditional or egalitarian views, they shouldered a disproportionate amount of invisible labor ― things like scheduling doctor’s appointments and navigating the kids’ emotional crises.
“We also found little evidence that the link between sharing the mental load and women’s relationship or sexual satisfaction varied with their gender-role beliefs,” Kahalon said.
In a clear-cut way, the finding illustrates how the same arrangement can benefit one partner while placing a burden on the other, said Verena Klein, a co-author of the study and a principal research fellow in the School of Psychology at the University of Southampton, United Kingdom.
In the team’s couples data, both women and men reported that women were taking on the lion’s share of the work; this wasn’t just a case of women perceiving an inequality that men didn’t see. Both partners were onto it.
“Men may benefit from having someone else take responsibility for organizing and managing everyday life,” Klein told HuffPost. “This doesn’t necessarily mean they consciously prefer inequality, but it does suggest that traditional gender arrangements can remain comfortable for men, even when they come at a cost to women.”
Laura Danger, an educator who facilitates couples workshops on domestic labor, said she was not surprised by the results of the study. She’s glad that researchers are calling out invisible domestic labor by name.
“Domestic labor is the labor that literally keeps us alive, but it’s also what makes our households run,” said Danger, who is the author of “No More Mediocre: A Call to Reimagine Our Relationships and Demand More.”
“It’s the work that keeps us comfortable, helps us feel like we belong and makes us feel at home in our spaces and with our people,” she said.
Danger had a theory on why women may be more harnessed to this kind of invisible labor: Men just aren’t expected to do as much domestic labor as women, and their worth isn’t judged by it.
“For women, a tidy home is still seen as a reflection of how good they are as people. It’s tied to their morality,” Danger said. “Men benefit from this work without being expected to share the load, while women are often left to carry the responsibility and to push for change or fairness themselves.”
Too often, women are burdened with managing their households to an overwhelming extent. And they’re not given much room to ask for help, propose solutions, or seek out systems that work better for the family ― something Danger calls the “nag paradox.”
When women are carrying this kind of mental load, they want to feel that their efforts are recognized and that help is offered without having to ask for it.
“The work itself can feel routine, or even like drudgery, but it’s also nurturing work,” Danger said. “It’s one of the ways we show the people we love that their needs matter to us.”
How To Make Things More Equitable Between Partners
For couples looking to lift themselves out of an unbalanced division of labor, Danger recommends aiming for equal autonomy, not a perfect 50-50 split.
“Treat your household like the group project that it is,” she said. “Talk openly about what feels fair, play to your strengths, share the unappealing stuff, and commit to revisiting often.
Kahalon, the lead author of the study, had advice, too: For starters, don’t wait for your partner to ask you to take on something.
“When someone says, ‘I do everything you ask me to do’ the asking is already part of the work,” she said. “Taking a child to the dentist is one task. Keeping track of when they’re due, booking the appointment, and making sure it happens is an ongoing responsibility.”
That distinction matters when we talk about how couples share the work at home, she said.
Danger also likes to remind couples struggling with this that there’s no perfect division of labor.“Our lives are messier than that,” she said.
“What matters is for both partners to feel equally responsible for, and cared for in, the life they’re building together.”