There is a long and glorious list of things I have not done this week. Lunches I have not packed. Dishes I have not washed. Laundry I did not fold. Homework I did not sign. Family outings I did not orchestrate. Because my partner did these things instead. Not because I noticed and planned and asked for help and watched over his every move, but because we have finally, after 14 years of marriage and many intense talks, come to a place in our relationship where the mental load and all its moving parts feel balanced between us.
Ours is not a static or perfect system. It requires a lot of communication. It has taken a lot for us to get here — uncomfortable conversations, regular recalibrations, learning new skills and language and unlearning our cultural conditioning. But it does feel in a sense as if we have arrived at that elusive place that still seems like a land of fairy tales for many. I live each day in a relationship where I feel seen, where my work feels valued, where it feels as if I truly have a partner rather than just a helper (or, worse yet, another child in the house to take care of).
Which is great, sure — except that I had hoped that by now my marriage wouldn’t seem like such an anomaly. I had hoped that by now this type of balance would be the norm.
In 2017, I wrote a viral article on emotional labor and the mental load that swept the world in such a furious fashion, it felt as if it were ushering in a new era of feminism. Change was in the air, and the lexicon — terms like “mental load” and “invisible work” — exploded into the mainstream. Mine is one of many books that have been released over the past five years directly challenging the imbalance of not just domestic labor but all the noticing, planning, delegating and mental or emotional load work it takes to keep things running.
We know that trying to get what we need isn’t “asking for help” but instead demanding equal partnership. We have the terminology that allows us to express our frustrations and identify what is keeping our relationships so unbalanced. Yet even now that we have the language to talk about invisible labor and the mental load, an equitable and balanced relationship that allows women to fully step into their potential still feels like a pipe dream. When we can so very clearly see what’s wrong, why is it still so hard to change?
COVID-19 Was a Missed Opportunity
The pandemic, for all its horrors, seemed as if it would offer the perfect chance to rebalance the load. The stay-at-home orders forced the invisible to become visible and gave many folks the ability to see behind the curtain of how their whole family’s life ran. And while it seemed for a brief moment that men were stepping up and taking further responsibility in their roles at home, those changes ultimately didn’t stick. Statistics show that things went back to the way they had been before for the vast majority of couples (there were some lucky exceptions) and left women not just back where they had started but at a whole new level of burnout.
Perhaps this was because women couldn’t take the time to purposefully rebalance their own lives when they were busy holding up the rest of the world. Women bore the brunt of the care labor both within their homes and in the workforce, falling into that familiar, untenable space of “doing it all,” even as it brought them to the brink of losing their sanity. In the pandemic, women continued to show up and do the mental and emotional labor, because if they didn’t, everything would fall apart.
“The pandemic made existing social inequities worse, but because the ones in power continued to benefit from the underpaid and unpaid labor of those providing it, there was little incentive to make any long-lasting change,” says Laura Danger, an educator on the mental load and emotional labor, and the author of the forthcoming book No More Mediocre. “We fail to place value on domestic and care labor despite the fact that all other work relies on it.”
Most women weren’t trying to make lasting change; they were trying to survive. And the burden brought many to a dark place, as rates of anxiety and depression rose to 36% for women and heavy drinking among women increased by 58% over the course of the pandemic.
“Mothers were amongst the most overlooked, undersupported populations during that period, which drove many to turn to alcohol to self-medicate when it felt like there was no other option,” says Celeste Yvonne, a sober mom coach and the author of It’s Not About The Wine: The Loaded Truth About Mommy Wine Culture.
And it helped that as a culture we shrug off excessive drinking among mothers as a cheeky joke. It helps us not look too closely, Yvonne says, at the fact that “the challenges we face in motherhood are systemic, with antiquated or nonexistent policies to support women in the workplace, maternal health care and affordable child care, as well as traditional roles in the household where the unpaid labor still largely falls on the women.”
Will we ever achieve balance?
It was primarily only privileged women who were able to make substantial changes in their relationships during such tumult, and even then the work was hard and the results not guaranteed. But there is some hope in that researchers and sociologists have been looking into which elements have helped create change across the spectrum when it comes to the mental load and more equitable relationships.
Eve Rodsky, author of Fair Play and Find Your Unicorn Space, came across some findings about what it takes to find balance while following couples for the documentary Fair Play. Her team found that to make lasting change, couples needed boundaries around their time, systems to regularly check in with each other and open communication. They key to it all, she says: explicitly defined expectations.
“You need to know what your role is, not based on assumptions or gender roles,” Rodsky says. These relationship roles are ones we need to define for ourselves.
Danger says it’s not unusual to be bombarded with messaging that tells us it’s normal for women to be “supermoms” and for husbands to be helpers around the house, even when the messaging we see is more progressive (think the “Binky Dad” Super Bowl commercial): “When examples of men contributing to their households through mental, emotional and physical care and domestic labor are few and far between, it's no wonder so many men struggle to find footing at home.”
The lack of examples of healthy masculinity, along with the pressure men often feel to be the breadwinner, allows companies to continue exploiting the system of inequality that has already been established, making it harder to find equality and balance at home even when both parties want to.
But though it looks as if little has changed over the past five years since “mental load” and “emotional labor” became widely known concepts, there is hope. Rodsky remains optimistic, noting that the shift toward remote work has men rethinking the priorities in their lives. And the truth is, these things take time. Culture cannot change overnight, but we can start by making small but substantial shifts in our own lives.
“Start with appreciation and acknowledgement,” suggests Stassi Betcher, a therapist who works with women on lightening their mental load. Thanking each other for getting groceries, filling up the gas, restocking the toilet paper, noticing what needs to be done — nothing is too small. “It’s the most fundamental thing you can do in your relationship to feel motivated to continue working on [the mental load] without building resentment.”
It helps to remember that we’re not looking for a quick fix here; no single conversation will change the balance of the mental load in your relationship for good. But in those moments when it feels easier to just do it all yourself, think about the long term. Change requires effort and discomfort, yes, but it’s worth the payoff of a life in which you feel fully supported by your partner, and it’s worth making the change for the generations to come.
Photography by Mike Garten; Prop Styling by Alex Mata. Design: Betsy Farrell. Illustrations: Card patterns, wire and pocket watch illustrations: Getty Images. Scales and antique key illustrations: Adobe Stock Photo
