February 21, 2025 • 42 mins
The mental load in families isn't just about remembering school events or planning meals - it's an invisible, boundaryless, and enduring form of labour that impacts relationships, careers, and wellbeing. Join Professor Leah Ruppanner from the University of Melbourne as she unpacks groundbreaking research on how mental load affects modern families, why it's not just about task-sharing, and what couples can do to create more balance.
Quote of the Episode: "The mental load is the emotional thinking work that we do to keep our households functioning."
Key Insights:
- Women carry 71% of household mental load tasks.
- Mental load is invisible, boundary-less, and enduring.
- Both partners often duplicate mental load without realising.
- Schools generate nearly 3,000 WhatsApp messages per child annually.
- Men in equitable relationships report better health, sleep, and life satisfaction.
- Single parents (both mums and dads) share similar mental load levels.
- Work structures and social norms make it difficult for men to step into care roles.
- Mental load cannot be eliminated but can be better understood and managed.
Resources Mentioned:
- Fair Play cards system
- Goldie app for managing school communications
- University of Melbourne research
- Misperceived podcast
- Professor Leah Ruppanner (@ProfLeah on Instagram)
Action Steps for Parents:
- Start conversations about mental load without blame or past baggage.
- Consider how technology (like AI assistants) might help manage communications.
- Acknowledge both partners' different but equally valid mental burdens.
- Practice accepting help and taking breaks without guilt.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
One conversation that keeps on coming up over and over
and over again has to do with I guess you'd
call it equality in the household. Who's doing what? And
not just who's doing what, but who's carrying the mental load,
the cognitive load. Who's the one that's remembering when sports
day is, when library day is, when piano lessons are,
when swimming lessons are, and what we're supposed to be
(00:27):
doing on Saturday morning, and who's bringing what to the barbecue?
The cognitive load consistently falls upon women today. My special
guest is an expert researcher from the University of Melbourne
who studies what's going on in families when it comes
to who's taking on the household mental load. Hello and
welcome to the Happy Families podcast, Real Parenting Solutions every
(00:50):
day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. My name is
Justin Coolson. Today, my guest on the podcast is Professor
Lea Ruppaner. That's how you'd say it if you're an American.
I'm just going to go with Professor Lea or maybe
just Leah. Is that okay? Lea? Just perfect, perfect professor.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
That's my Instagram Hamital because I know no one can
do that last name. Don't worry, You're not alone.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I love the rupanner, though I'm going to try it. Well,
I should be gentle and polite about it. Leah is
a research professor at the University of Melbourne who studies
how modern families work. Her research focuses on gender equality,
mental load, and how the demands of family management impact
women's lives and careers. I think this is fascinating. Kylie
and I talk about it all the time. In addition,
(01:31):
Leah is the podcast host of I haven't listened yet.
I feel really guilty, but I only just found out
as we began our introduction conversation just now a podcast
called Misperceived Lea, what's that one about?
Speaker 2 (01:44):
So I am an academic. I'm Australia's top sociologist last
year with Australia's top gender scholar. And that is just
me bragging. That's the first interest. It's a nice ones,
thank you, thank you. And what I was really committed
to doing is how do we take research and make
it tangible? How do we take research and translate in
the way that's really easy, digestible for people who don't
really have enough time, so they're ten, fifteen, maybe twenty
(02:05):
minutes unpacking research on things like can women actually multitask?
Do men who have a do more housework get more sex?
What is the mental load? Should you be friends with
people at work? So we're doing episodes each week, just
a little short listen based on empirical research and giving
you the knowledge without having to get the PhD.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Wow, I actually think that I need to subscribe by
the end of this podcast. That sounds like it's a
lot of fun. Leah. I want to ask you some
softball questions, but I also want to be fairly provocative
in this conversation. So here's my first question for you,
expert Professor Leah. Your research shows that mothers take on
seventy one percent of household mental load tasks. What is
(02:48):
the household mental load? Firstly, and this is a double
barren question, terrible interview technique, but I want to get
it all out at once. Number one, what is that
household mental load that women are taking on seventy one
percent all? But secondly, what's happening in families where the
split is more equitable? What are they doing differently?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
This is actually a very good question, because we are
doing some work currently where we're really trying to get
a clear definition of the mental load. One of the problems,
I think is that we don't really understand what the
mental load is and how it's different from say like
emotional labor or cognitive labor, or housework and child care.
And so I have a book coming out later on
that'll really give you a brand new definition, but that'll
(03:30):
come in twenty twenty six Strain. But what I want
to say right now is that the mental load is
the emotional thinking work that we do to keep our
households functioning. It's that work that you do, and that
our research we're calling it cognitive labor because it's this
thinking work. It's around remembering if your kids are signed
up prafter school activities. We have twenty one items and
(03:50):
it's asking the question of like, you know, are you
remembering if the kids nails are cut? Are you remembering
if to bring that thing that activity for school? Are
you thinking about the finances, are thinking about car maintenance?
Are you thinking about childcare? So there's a range of items,
but is that work around the domestic work, that's the
thinking work to making sure everyone's doing what they're doing
(04:10):
as they need to be doing when they need to
be doing it.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
I have a question on this before we get into
the families that are splitting it equitably. You mentioned one
item there that was definitely what I would categorize as
male oriented rather than female oriented. And I know that
this is probably right at the very heart of everything
that you do from a research point of view. Why
do we perceive that the car maintenance booking is the
man's job, whereas the kids getting their haircut or having
(04:34):
their toenails clipped is the woman's job. I know that
I'm sounding I'm probably sounding like I was born in
the nineteen fifties. I'm sounding completely ideologically pure when it
comes to what male and female are supposed to be
all about or not about. But how do you balance
those items? Do you have more that orient towards the
men as well? Because you only mentioned the one, whereas
(04:55):
you mentioned all of those more female oriented items.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
I'd bless you because there's this is literally what the
research article did, right. So what we did was and
it's with Anna Weeks at the University of Bath and
this is part of Anna Week's PhD project. So what
she did was she collected these twenty one items right,
and they fall into these broad categories food, care, maintenance, finance, socialization, right,
the organization. And it's that thinking we're going on behind.
(05:20):
And the research project was to do exactly that to
see because we know to see how this shakes out
by gender, like our men sharing all of it? Are
and this is all parents, right? Are they sharing it all?
Is it not sharing it all? And in part this
is because I've been studying housework, right who does what
at home? For decades and in the housework literature, what's
really clear is that men take on the more episodic tasks.
(05:42):
They do the maintenance, they do the finance, they do
the bills, they do the changing of the light bulb
right when things go wrong, they do the yard maintenance.
And this is often called episodic or outdoor tasks. These
are the things that are not done every day, and
women tend to take on the daily tasks, the cooking,
the cleaning, the laundry, the childcare, these types of things.
And so what we were really interested in understanding is
(06:04):
like does the mental load split in that way? Do
you actually see that men are taking on more of
the mental load around say finance and maintenance, which, as
you said, is like that's gender roles that we tend
to say, these are the tasks that men do in
part because their fathers did it, in part because you know,
we could do the whole lineage. Right, it's logical work,
it's tied to it's tied to machines. Or do we
(06:27):
actually see that the mental load is different and it blends.
And what we found was on the edge of your seats,
I'm sure what we found was is that, yes, it
splits in that way that actually men are much with
the fathers are much more likely to say they do
the maintenance stuff. They're much more likely they say they
do the finance stuff and the mothers. That leaves the
mothers with pretty much everything else. But what was kind
(06:50):
of interesting is because the mental load can be duplicated. Now,
just like bear with me, when we think about something
like changing the light bulb, you are not going to
have one partner in the family go change that light
bulb and then the other partner is going to unscrew
it and change that light bulb again. Right, This is
like very unlikely if you're doing this stop. But with
(07:12):
the mental load. You could have both partners carrying both
things right. The father and the family could be thinking about, Okay,
that dishwasher doesn't look well. It needs you know, it's
breaking down, it needs to be repaired, and the mother
can be doing the same work. Right, Both people can
be monitoring the same thing because it's internal, it's your
mental load, and we're tracking it. And so this was
(07:34):
one of the things that we did find. Right, that
fathers do do more of those episodic tasks. They're much
more likely to say they're primarily responsible. But it's not
an even split. It's not like the fathers do it
and the mothers drop it. The mothers do it too.
And you can say the same thing when we look
at you know, the childcare and stuff like that. You know,
father's picked up pieces of this, pieces of the childcare,
pieces of the meal preparation. But the mental load is
(07:57):
this really different type of war work that both people
can be doing simultaneously. It's invisible, it's boundaryless, it's never ending,
and it's a really different and distinct tape.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
The second part of my question was about what's happening
in the families, whether split is more equitable, but I
want to change the question ready for two reasons. What
you've just highlighted is it's kind of a light bulb
moment for me when I've talked about mental load, because
my expertise is in psychology, not in household domestic labor
and cognitive wear and tear. It's just occurred to me
(08:34):
Kylie and I worry about the same things we check
up on each other. I've got the fact that I've
got a daughter who's supposed to be bouldering or at drums,
or a child who's got to be picked up from
here and taken to there. That's going through my head
at the same time that it's going through hers. I'm
worrying about dinner tonight just as much as she's worrying
about dinner tonight. So there's a whole lot of duplication
(08:55):
that's happening in couples when it comes to this mental load.
I would imagine that there's a lot more mental load
being carried than one hundred percent. Is kind of what
I'm getting at right, Like, I'm worried about it eighty
percent of the time, Kylie's worried about it ninety two
percent of the time. Therefore, one hundred and seventy percent
of the time we're worried about dinner, and yet we
still have to buy takeout because because we haven't organized dinner.
(09:17):
So isn't about equality? What do we do about the duplication?
Speaker 2 (09:21):
How do we.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Solve the heaviness of this? Because I can't imagine couple
sitting down and saying, well, I'm just not going to
worry about these things anymore. You worry about them, I'm
putting them out of my mind? Or do they.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Why can't you?
Speaker 1 (09:37):
I don't know. Maybe I'm just too much of a
backseat driver. One of the things I was just on.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
A conversation with Eve Rotsky, who wrote this New York
Times bestseller and it's called Fairplay, And she read this Wellga,
and what she basically is saying is she has this.
When she was asked to think about all the things
that she does right before the baby is born, she
made this list of tasks. And what this has happened
is the list of tasks has grown and grown and
grown and grown and grown grown. So if you think
(10:04):
what do we do at home, like, what are if
we broke everything we do down into tasks? What does
it look like, and so what she's done is she
has this deck of cards right where you sit down
with your partner and you can buy them on Amazon
and you allocate them based on who does what you know,
I love and load the dishwasher from its top to
bottom minutia right. And and her argument is you have
(10:26):
to take the whole task. You have to take the
whole task, including the mental load. And you have like
that is it? So when you said to me, we're duplicating,
I'm having this light bulb moment. I think many people
listening will have the same light bulb moment because I
think we don't think about the mental load. We're doing it,
we're in it, we're swimming in it, but we're not
cognizant of it. When you have that light bull moment,
(10:47):
I want to say to you, but why couldn't you
guys specialize? Like why couldn't you drop drop? What would happen?
I'm going to thank you for my research project, thank
you for thank you very much for participating in my interview.
What would have if you actually one of you stopped?
I feel and our interviews?
Speaker 1 (11:06):
So what do you have for ye? So if I
was a research participant and I was asked this question,
I would tell you that I felt uncomfortable with the
proposition that I was going to leave things entirely to
my wife, and I would feel uncomfortable that she left
things entirely to me. That would feel transactional. And I
would also potentially, I feel like there's the potential for
conflict here. And I'll tell you why, because if Kylie
is looking after let's say, for example, dinner, and I
(11:28):
walk into the house and dinner's not done, there's the
possibility that I'll become resentful and say, well, I'm doing
everything on my list. I'm working my backside into the ground.
I don't have time to do everything on my list
because my list is so big. I know you've got
a big list too, but I'm getting mine done. You're lazy,
you're not doing your thing. And of course I would
never speak to my wife like that, but the potential
for resentment to build when somebody isn't doing what's on
(11:51):
their list, it makes it feel transactional to me. Moreover,
if something comes up that's an emergency, like one of
the kids calls and says, I forgot this thing and
it's really important. It's life and death. I need you
to drive to the school, or my life is over
that kind of thing, which happens frequently. That will impinge
unfairly on her lists, which means that it's harder for
her to do her things, which means that I start
(12:12):
to get irritated at the children because they're ruining their
mother's life, and therefore they're ruining mine because I rely
on highly to do those things, because I'm doing the
things that she's relying on me to do, and it's
just not fair. So my response would be, I don't
like the transactional nature of it. That was a long
way of saying that I liked it.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
So if you have duplication, it's interesting because if you
have duplication being saying, if we all of a sudden
become transactional, then our relationship becomes transactional, which is interesting
because I think for a lot of couples that don't have,
you know, aren't put focused on equally sharing something. It's
sometimes a way to reshuffle away from the women and
into the men's laps, right, get fathers engaged. But you're saying,
(12:50):
I'm a fully engaged father, and actually I like to
have this equal share because otherwise I feel like it'll
create tension.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Well, I don't even think that our share is equal.
I have no idea, and that's because I don't keep score.
But what I do have, and this is my opportunity
virtue sickle and tell everyone how great I am. So
forgive me for being a little bit all about me
for a minute. But my orientation when I walk into
the house unless I'm absolutely exhausted and just need to
pass out, which does happen from time to time. We
all have those days. But my orientation is how can
(13:20):
I serve who needs me? What can I do? Oh,
the dishwasher needs unstacking, Well I'll do that, and I'll
call a couple of the kids in because they need
to contribute, and we can be together while we do it.
At nighttime, after dinner, we do this thing called all in,
which is literally what it sounds like. We're all in
the kitchen and we're cleaning and we're putting away. We're
washing dishes. We don't use the dish washer. We wash
(13:40):
them and drive them and put them away, and the
vacuum cleaner comes out, and the benches are clean and
the food's put away. It's all in. So the orientation
that we've tried to instill, the family culture we've tried
to create is one of let me see the opportunity
to contribute, rather than that's not my job, which is
a sentence that if I hear, I kind of crack it.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
I love this. Actually, Hailey Swinson, we're doing some live
interview podcasts that will come out later on, but one
of the things we're trying to do is help give
families like concrete tools to help produce their mental load, right, like,
how do we help people understand how AI could help you?
How do we help them understand you know, what you
can do on a day to day task. And Hailey Swinson,
she's a she's at New America and they have this
(14:20):
Better Life Lab and they're doing these experiments where they're
trying to give people actually concrete like worksheets like and
one of the things you're saying that all in sounds
like something that she was talking about, Like they have
an experiment like this where it's like everyone's involved, so
everyone can see what's going on. Everyone comes together for
a period of time to go all in to do
(14:41):
a task, and at the end the mom said, then
we bake cookies, like we put cookies into the oven,
and we all come together and while the cookies are
baking for thirty minutes, we're all in the kitchen or
in the house doing everything. And then at the end
of the thirty minutes, you get the cookies right. And
I thought, what a beautiful way to create family bonding
but also raise visibility about what's being done in house right,
shared responsibility in the household. And so I think that
(15:04):
all in is an incredible tool for people who haven't
heard it or haven't used it. And it seems like
it really does work. Am I right?
Speaker 1 (15:13):
It does? And we make it fun because sometimes the
kids come in pretty grumpy and they don't want to
do all in. But we play games, we talk about
our days, we engage in in constructive conversations. You've raised
two things in your quick response there that I need
to ask about. The first is the invisibility of the
labor of others. The children consistently say to me, you
(15:38):
always make me do all the work. My sisters never
do anything. My response to them is, you don't know
what they're doing. You don't know what I'm asking them
to do. You're only aware of yourself talk to that idea,
because I'd imagine that's right in the sweet spot of
the research that you do.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Yeah. Absolutely so. In twenty twenty I published an article
with Lisdy and Brenda Churchill at University in Melbourne and
one of the things we were really trying to understand
is how is the mental load different from cognitive or
emotional labor. So just bear with me because I'll be
a little bit of an academic right now. So when
we think about the type of labor that you do,
(16:13):
you might do cognitive labor, like thinking work. This could
be keeping a track of everything that needs to be done.
It could be a list, you know, tracking. This could
be making a list, for example, of what ingredients we
need for dinner. Cognitive labor thinking work. You also might
do some emotional work, thinking about if your child is,
you know, having a hard day, or something in your
(16:35):
partners having hard day, someone in your family requires emotional
work and emotional support. These are two types of work
that you're probably doing every day, all day long. Then
you're also doing paid work. You know, you're getting paid
in your job if you're working, or you're doing domestic work,
which again is work but is unpaid childcare and housework,
and these are kind of four types of labor. And
one of the things we talked about was that the
(16:56):
mental load is something different. It's when thinking work becomes emotional.
So it's this idea that it's the coming together of
emotional thinking work and that's what makes it heavy, and
that's what makes it a load. So it's not just
did we remember to, I don't know, buy the milk,
It's more did we remember to buy the milk? Do
(17:18):
we get the right type? Actually, are the kids going
to be able to have cereal in the morning? If
they don't have cereal in the morning, they're going to
start their day off terribly. What am I going to
try to find? Right? That's the emotional thinking work that
you can see kind of goes in different directions. In
addition to that, we said that the mental load was
three things. It's invisible, which means it's done internally. It's
in your brain. You can't literally cannot see when people
(17:40):
are doing mental load work or the work. You might
right now as I'm talking be thinking about something else,
like I might have tiggered, like do we have enough milk?
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Am I going to have to go to the shops
and get the groceries for that amazing recipe we're going
to cook tonight, exactly, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
And one of the things we're trying to get is like,
how do you measure the mental load? Do you measure
it in seconds? Measure it in minutes? Do you measure
How do you do that? Because it comes like a
split second right into your brain and you're derailed, and
it can leave just as quickly, but you're still derailed.
So it's invisible. It's it's invisible work. It's boundaryless. And
what we mean by that is like you, if you
(18:18):
have unfinished laundry or you have dishes that are dirty
at home, you are not carrying your dishes into work.
You're not like, hey, everybody, sorry, I just didn't get
to finish these fifteen dishes, so I'm gonna bring up
a stack them in the work dishwasher, right like, You're
not doing that. And that means that that kind of
work is bound to a space and a place like you.
(18:38):
It stays at home.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Yes it does, but it doesn't right like you carry
it in your head. You're like, ah, when I get home,
I've got to do this and this and this. So
you're not bringing it to work, but you kind of, ah.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
You're bringing the mental load of it to work. You
a break. Correct, Absolutely, you're not going to bring your
physical dishes, but you'll bring that mental load to your
job exactly like you said, right, God, I gotta go home,
dishes are there, so you'll bring So that's where it
doesn't sit in one spot, right. It's not tied to
a place or things or people. It goes with you
and everywhere you go on, walks in the bath, wakes
(19:12):
you up at night. You take it to work, you
take it when you're at the someplace where you're trying
to decompress. It goes with you everywhere. And then the
last thing is it's enduring because it's tied to the
love and care of people you love and care about.
When do you stop having a mental load to your children?
When you die? Like right, like when you die.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
That's so optimistic, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
It'll never end, right, It just morphs. And so that
invisibility is what makes it. Like all these three characteristics
of invisibility, emotional thinking, work that is invisible, boundaryless, and enduring,
I think is what makes a mental load so pernicious,
like so potentially damaging. It also can be really beautiful, right,
I mean in our interviews we're hearing things like when
(19:56):
the mental load goes well, when I've done all that
planning work and there's joy in my face family, Oh,
it's the best feeling. So it's not all bad. I
don't want people to be like the goal is not
to have a zero mental load, but the goal is
to understand what it is and think about when it's
bringing us value and when it's draining us. When are
we do lookinning and when are we not? How do
(20:16):
we use it more effectively?
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Okay, let me ask you the second question that I
had From your answer previously, you highlighted that AI could
be used to reduce the mental load that parents are carrying.
Kylie and I have experimented a little bit with this
in terms of having AI put together an itinery for
a family trip, help us to work out some fun
activities on a weekend because every now and again we
(20:47):
just don't want to think about what to do. We
just want to be told what to do. And even
finding recipes or having AI sort of cheat a little
bit for us, is it cheating I don't think it's cheating.
It makes some shortcuts so that we don't have to
carry the load. What's your take on AI's you found
intrusion or implementation in family life?
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I think what you described is perfect. It's a tool.
Use it effectively to your benefit, right, Like the AI
I think has the potential to be an important solution.
And I'm really what I'm really committed to. We're doing
a research project and we're doing it with Goldie whose
apps that's taking generative AI and helping to read parents' emails,
(21:32):
correspondence calendar invites and seeing if helping that kind of
break you down and then put it into your calendar. Right.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
I like this, and I'll tell you why. I just
delete the emails. I don't even read them, and I
must know. Schools tell me all the time this is
a problem. So what's called Goldie, Goldie Goldie And it
does that for me?
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yes? And then yes it does Okay. And if we
think about the fact that Google or like if Google,
it's funny because I'm reading this book right, I'm there
at the computer blah blah blah, blah blah blah, and
I write this thing where I say I think one
of the great solutions is if things like Google who
they can read our email and they can tell me
when I haven't replied to anything, when a bill is due,
when something needs to be done. Why can't we take
(22:15):
this and move it into family life? And then all
of a sudden, someone sends me this beautiful thing about
Verity Tuck who started Goldie. Who's this woman founder? And
is you know, stepping into the world. And she's done it.
She's done it, She's built the out that can do it.
So I think, like, how can we think about this
is one of the powerful things. How do we think
about the ways in which we use AI in other
(22:35):
areas to create efficiencies? How can we help it to
lighten the family elements? And this is one example of
a technology that can do that. We all just if
you will indulge me for one more second. One of
the things I'm working on now is and we did
a little pilot of it, is how do you give
Goldie's one solution but it's not the only solution, and
(22:58):
so how do we help understand the suite of solutions?
So what we did was we gave parents money. We
gave mothers money to see where would they spend it,
what would they do, and how would they allocate that
resource to lighten their mental load. And this, I think
is what we need to do more of understanding the
range of things that are on the market, coming together
(23:19):
with good ideas like that everyone in the kitchen moment right,
sharing them across, having them on one spot, because there's
not going to be a single solution to this problem.
So if you can have a range of solutions and
you can see what they are, and you can see
what's worked for other people, you could then adopt what
works for you at whatever moment in time.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Let's stay on this theme. I read that nearly three
thousand WhatsApp messages land in parents WhatsApp groups every single
year per child. That must be adding to the digital load,
because I would guess that it's the mom's not the
dads that tend to be in the WhatsApp groups. What's
that doing in terms of adding to mother's men? What's
(24:00):
your research showing.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
It's interesting because we asked this question in our interviews,
or let me say it a different way, this question
came up in our interviews again and again and again,
and the idea is basically that schools are a huge
generator of correspondence and meant a huge drain on parents'
mental load. One of the things we're hearing from the
interviews is like mothers can't escape it even if they
(24:25):
put the fathers as a contact person. We had one
mother that said, like, I am in a secure location
because of my job, which means literally my cell phone
does not work, and yet the school calls me even
though the forum says to call the dad. Let me
be clear, I'm not here blaming schools, right. I think
schools have an incredible pressure on them to be everything
(24:47):
to everyone at all moments in time. And I understand
why schools are making the decisions that they're making. But
we can see the ways when you ask me that
question of like at the start of it, how do
we understand why certain things get allocated to mom and
certain things get allocated to dad. That is one example
of gender norms that have mothers is like the primary
(25:08):
contact person that even if the course, even if the
directive is do not call me, call him, she gets called.
And so I think it's thinking about ways in which
so we heard this a lot that schools generate a
huge amount of correspondence that it's not just coming from
the compass. I don't know what your children have, but
like the compass, like constant stream of that kind of
(25:29):
stuff that comes at the most inopportune times across the day.
You get a letter from the math teacher, you get
a letter from the English teacher, you get a letter
from the principle. You get right, the volume of correspondence,
But then also it goes into the groups, and then
what happens if you don't monitor them. What happens if
you miss something and the parents are worried that their
kids are going to miss out right, that's that's going
(25:51):
to be a missing out. So I guess in summary,
what I want to say is huge amount of correspondence,
drain on the mental load, difficulty to put a boundaries
because how do you put it boundaries to the concert stream,
and then a worry that if I do and I
forget something, the person who suffers as my kid.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Yeah, like I said, I'd delete them. I don't have
the headspace for them. I travel a lot for work,
so I'm not the person who's going to be implementing
ninety nine percent of it. Anyway. I also tell Kylie
the dee that to delete it. My guess is, if it's
really important, my daughters will already know about it. But
it's something that she refuses to do. She says, no, no, no, no,
I'm keeping the emails. I've got to stay across it.
(26:32):
But then she also tells me that she has six
hundred unopened emails in her inbox because who's got time
for all of that? I just I look at this
and I mean to hear you talk about an app
that can do this for you, and I think there's
actually some good value in that. I think that that
could be worth playing around with. Okay, the very first
question I asked you I ended up changing, but I
(26:54):
want to come back to it for a sec. This
idea of equality is the right idea. Should we be
aiming for equality? Is it about both doing fifty percent
of the load? How do how do you even measure that?
Is the whole concept flawed? Or is it something that
is both desirable and attainable? Or are we just worrying
(27:15):
about the wrong stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
This is like a very difficult question. So my brain
went to thirteen different things. Get ready, Okay, there's a
discussion about whether it should be about equality, which is
like a fifty to fifty split, everyone shares everything equally,
or should it be about equity whoever needs this is
I think you're taking an equity perspective right, like who
needs at what moment in time? When we come in
(27:40):
and we support that person from an equity perspective, I
think the challenge is is that if we go from
an equity perspective, which is who needs what at that
moment in time, and how do we step in and
support that person. The thing that worries me is sometimes
mothers have a very hard time, and I'm hearing this interviews,
they have a very hard time sharing through what they need.
(28:03):
There is a block.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
I wish I had Kylie here right now because we've
had this conversation. If I say to her, I want
to have a weekend away. I just want to go surfing.
I need to clear my head, Kylie says, Okay, go surfing,
have a great time. But when I make the offer
to her, it's been a while since you've had a
day or two to yourself. Do you want to do anything?
She'll say no, Why I've got too much to do
(28:27):
or I can't leave this And we've heard Unfortunately from
way too many moms. They'll just say, I can't trust
my husband or my partner with the kids while I'm gone.
Everything's going to fall apart while I'm gone. So I
guess that's kind of what you're angling at, isn't it correct.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
It's a huge amount of guilt, right, It's a huge
amount of guilt, a huge amount of loss trust, Like
you're saying, if they don't trust them, This is one
of the things that e Rothi said just actually in
the podcast we're recording, like, you need to have trust
that if that person's going to take it step in.
Accountability and trust. Those are her two keywords, accountability and trust,
and then mothers feeling they can step away. I'm saying
(29:06):
to you, I am also hearing a huge block about
I don't give to myself. I give to others, and
it's hard to take. And so my goal in this
world is to break down some of that, right, like,
to break down some of that guilt and shame about taking,
because I think mothers are so conditioned to give, give, give, give,
and if you have ten dollars, then you're going to
(29:26):
put it into your kid's college fund, university fund for y'all,
and probably is private school tuition. I don't know where.
I don't know where the money goes in this country,
but like if the US would be like saving for
college or you know, their down payment for their home.
So there's this idea that if there's extra, it should
go to everyone else. And that has to I think
they three have to come together on that. There has
(29:46):
to be trust, some accountability that when you step out,
you're not coming back to a chaotic mess. But there
also has to be an ability to say, I can't
hold this all together at one person cannot be responsible
for this whole thing. That's fair on me. We don't
ask in any other circumstance for one person to be
responsible for everything, right, Like it's weird, right, you wouldn't say,
(30:09):
like no one says to me at Melbourne UNI, Okay,
you're now in charge of Melbourn UNI, good luck. Right.
But for some reason, it's like there's this incredible pressure
social norms on mothers to be like you're in charge
of the future of this family. Good luck, And so
that's unrealistic and that's unsustainable, and so there has to
be some moment too. And again when mothers get extra
(30:31):
they give in or they give forward to either their
kids or their husband or their family. I heard this
one I said to mothers. I said to them, here's
four hundred dollars to do what you want. And the
first thing most of the mothers did was they try
to give it back to the family. And I had
to say, no, no, no, I didn't tell you. I mean,
if you want to, but you don't have to give
it to yourself. And that is I'm here to break
that down. I guess that's my last thing. I'm here
to break that down, that shame around giving to yourself,
(30:54):
because in giving to yourself, you're giving to the group,
and in no other circumstances won't feel that.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
I can tell you right now, Kylie would go straight
to the day spa. Four hundred dollars is going to
give her a good couple of hours of Ah, just joy,
I don't like day spars anyway. I Digress's Kylie's special place.
Your research, Leah, as you're highlighted in relation to your
podcast topics, involves and investigates the area of how male
(31:25):
and female or partnered contributions in the home impact on
relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, life satisfaction. Tell me for men
who contribute more, do they get luckier?
Speaker 2 (31:41):
They get it all. Let me tell you something, they
get everything.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Oh yeah, I'll.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Tell you across and the research, like I've done across
the research. They get better sleep. Right Like, if you
live in a more equitable, gender equal society, let me
tell you the things you get. You get more better
sleep or high quality sleep, you get better health, You're
less riskier decisions. You know, they're less likely to make risky,
they're less likely to die. The sex question, I'm going
(32:09):
it's a little bit murky on that one. But they
have more sustained relationships, they have more life satisfaction, Their
partners are more satisfied. I mean, I think the weird
thing is like we often think about this and I
talk a lot about this and have for decades, but
like we think of the conversations are often pitted like
men versus women, And it's like the answer is is
actually these social norms that tell men you need to
(32:31):
be solely responsible for bringing in all the money for
the family. You know what, rising inflation, I don't know,
work harder. You know what, global pandemic work harder. COVID nineteen.
Just dig in and work harder. It's detrimental to men.
They're traps for men too. And what we're hearing is
men are like, I want to be there with my partner,
I want to be there with my kids. I want
to work less, but I don't know how to do that.
(32:53):
I don't have the incredible pressure of like I want
to be less focused on work, but I don't know
how to do that because I have simultaneous pressure to
be focused on work, and I'm worried. We have a study. God,
I could be here for like four hours, but we
have a study where we actually looked at what happens
when men take a career gap, what happens if we
put us in their CV a gap for caregiving. And
(33:15):
we found that the men get punished more than the fathers,
get punished more than the mothers. And in particular and
men dominated industries, like we fed them through algorithms, right
and just saw what happens is a project with Shila
and Nijodo, Mark Chong and Leah Furman at the at
University of Molment. And so the consequences, the structural consequences
for men stepping into care can be serious, and it
(33:39):
makes sense that they're hesitant. They want to be equal cares.
They want to be equal shares. They want to have
lives where they can be connected to their children emotionally,
they want to be actively engaged. And until we start
to shift work, shift our policy structures and understand that
men aren't insane on this. They're just looking at the
world and facing pressures too that stressful for them too.
(34:02):
It's not men versus women, it's us together to help
create worlds in which everyone can step into love, life, laughter, care,
and enjoyable experiences. That's Michael.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Much of the conversation has been centered around women and
the load that they carry as a man. Listening to
what you're saying, I'm feeling like I'm getting goosebumps and
think to myself that this is something that I hear
men say all the time. They'll say, nobody understands the
load that I carry as a man, especially in single
(34:32):
income families, having to provide and provision and protect and
do all the things that men are quote unquote supposed
to do. Even if that sounds a little bit archaic,
there is that masculinity drive to do those things that
men have done across cultures and across millennia. But I'm
also supposed to show up and have the energy to
(34:54):
do X, Y and Z when I get home, and
be willing to have the input and the emotional burden
that lands on a man's shoulders when he walks in
the door after he's done all the stuff and gone
out and slain the line every day which he's supposed
to go and do all the elephant or whatever it is.
I've had men literally look at me and almost weep
as they say, I just don't know if I'm saying this.
It is such a heavy load. Now I'm again, I'm
(35:16):
not trying to make it sound like life is extra
hard for men or anything like that, but rather the
cognitive load that we've been talking about, this idea of
a household mental load. It seems it seems like, especially
(35:36):
in a single income family, if we only focus on
who's doing what at home, this might be a bit provocative,
But if we only focus on the split at home,
it will look like men are loafing. And yet the
men that I speak to, specifically those who are in
singling income situations, are doing anything but loafing. They are
absolutely killing it. So let me ask you this. If
(35:59):
both parts are happy with the split, and I mean
genuinely happy, if both are feeling satisfied with the split,
there's no coercion, there's no manipulation, there's no martyrdom occurring.
If both in the couple are happy with the split,
do we have a problem.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
The first answer is no. The only thing I want
women to think about right in their relationships is when
women step out of and paid employment, there's a lot
of long term consequences for them, especially if they end
up divorcing or separating from their partner. So I always
want women to be thinking, like, in the end, if
I think that there are multiple family forums, that what
(36:38):
works for you at point for this person may not
work for the other. What works for you at point
A may not work at B, C and D. Right,
But I want women to as they're thinking about making
these decisions, to go, Okay, what does it mean for
my superannuation? What does it mean for my long term earnings?
And what would happen if we actually split? What would
it look like for me? And if in making those decisions,
(36:59):
in thinking about those things, you're like, no problem, right,
I can be independent I have enough financial resources, Like, great,
do whatever you want, but having the knowledge. My goal
is always to give women as much knowledge and men
to as much knowledge as possible so that they're making
informed decisions at key pivot points. There's these pivot points
(37:19):
right where we end up on different tracks. And so
if you have all the information at that point and
then you make your decision, great, whatever decision you make, perfect,
but let's make sure you have all that information. But
in terms of what men are doing, So in our
study that we just published Internal Marriage and Family with
Enne Weeks on the mental load, what we found is
in single households and non partnered for non partnered parents,
(37:42):
it was exactly as you said the men did. There
was no difference. The mental loads were similar between you know,
single moms and single dads. So the men stepped in
right and and they and they did it all. And
so you're right on that, like you're right that there,
You're right there is and I think you're also right there.
Like the problem happens sometimes when we point like we
(38:05):
point the finger at each other. It's hard because I
can see that mothers are overwhelmed. Everyone's burnt out right now,
and we show that in our research too. Australia is
like experiencing this great burnout, especially post pandemic. So how
do we think about this as like a public health problem?
And then if we have a public health problem where
everyone's burnt out, how do we make sure we're supporting
men's mental loads and women's mental loads. It may look different,
(38:27):
the composition may be different, but how do we make
sure we're understanding that composition and then giving the supports
as as necessary, and how do we have honest conversations
about that.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
I was about to say, it feels to me like
this is about couples talking to each other, being transparent,
being vulnerable, having real conversations, and looking for opportunities to contribute.
That's what I'm hearing, and that's where the satisfaction is.
That's why both the men and the women who are
in those relationships sleep better or at not have been
life satisfaction and marital satisfaction and so on. Okay, last
(39:01):
question for you. This podcast is about giving parents real solutions.
In some ways, this has been quite an academic discussion.
We've been talking about research and what we see in
terms of this family is doing X, Y and Z
and how that's playing out in their lives. If you
could pull out your favorite solution, your number one solution
from the bag and guide us to it so that
(39:22):
we can have the kind of life and family and
marital satisfaction that we all crave. What would you recommend.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
You're going to hear my answer. Sorry, I'm sorry for
what it's about to happen. You're going to need to
buy my book next year.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Right, that's a long time. Can you give us something
when your book comes out, I'll get you back on
the pod because I think it's to It'll be another
There's so much we haven't talked about that we could.
But if there was one thing today that a family
could do, that a couple could do to make that
load feel lot of for the person who's carrying the
(40:01):
ball cover at the seventy one percent that women are carrying.
What what would the one thing be that you'd recommend.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Let me be clear too, I would love to tell
you what I had the solution I give you in
the book because and I am I love telling everybody everything,
and I have to put handcuffs on my on my mouth,
tape my mouth because I'm always like, let me tell
you what I found, I think, but until then, because
I'll probably be busted by every editor and publisher in
the world. Until then, what I think one thing to
(40:31):
do is I think what you said about I think
coming into it being like, Okay, I don't think we
totally understand this work right, right, Like I don't think
people have a good understanding exactly of what is the
mental load, what is the cognitive labor. Even the fact
that you said in this conversation like I had a
million light bulb moments, which means I'm saying something to
you that you haven't heard before or right, So, I
(40:53):
think understanding that at this moment in time, we are
not having quite the right conversation about this because we
don't yet have the language for it, and so trying
to work as a couple in terms of communication to
better to really hear without the resistance coming behind. Take
the twenty years of baggage and drop it for one
second and come in and listen. I think that's the
(41:15):
first step to hear it, to understand it, to ask questions,
to remain curious, and to acknowledge that what you're carrying
on what I carry are two different things. But they're
equally heavy and that start, I think is the start.
I'll tell you that in my book too, but you
have to wait till twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
And I'm going to add mums. When you get the
opportunity to breathe, or you get someone give you four
hundred bucks, run with it, run with it, take it,
do something with it. This has been such a fun conversation.
So glad to spend some time with your. Professor Lea
Rupaner is rese Sorry I had to do it.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
You did great.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
Professor Lea Rupana is a research professor at the University
of Melbourne in sociology is how modern families work, and
her podcast is called Misperceived.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Perfect and you. I have a at craft Leah, because
no one can do my last name and at miss
perceived handle on Instagram. If you want me to tell
you how great I am every single day, great.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Stuff, We'll make sure we link to all of that
in the show notes. Great to be with you. Thank
you so much, Leah, thank you for having me. The
Happy Family's podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media.
If you would like more information and resources to make
your family happier, check the show notes for today's episode
for everything that you need to know about Professor Leah
Rapana from the University of Melbourne, or visit happyfamilies dot
(42:38):
com dot au
One conversation that keeps on coming up over and over
and over again has to do with I guess you'd
call it equality in the household. Who's doing what? And
not just who's doing what, but who's carrying the mental load,
the cognitive load. Who's the one that's remembering when sports
day is, when library day is, when piano lessons are,
when swimming lessons are, and what we're supposed to be
(00:27):
doing on Saturday morning, and who's bringing what to the barbecue?
The cognitive load consistently falls upon women today. My special
guest is an expert researcher from the University of Melbourne
who studies what's going on in families when it comes
to who's taking on the household mental load. Hello and
welcome to the Happy Families podcast, Real Parenting Solutions every
(00:50):
day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. My name is
Justin Coolson. Today, my guest on the podcast is Professor
Lea Ruppaner. That's how you'd say it if you're an American.
I'm just going to go with Professor Lea or maybe
just Leah. Is that okay? Lea? Just perfect, perfect professor.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
That's my Instagram Hamital because I know no one can
do that last name. Don't worry, You're not alone.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I love the rupanner, though I'm going to try it. Well,
I should be gentle and polite about it. Leah is
a research professor at the University of Melbourne who studies
how modern families work. Her research focuses on gender equality,
mental load, and how the demands of family management impact
women's lives and careers. I think this is fascinating. Kylie
and I talk about it all the time. In addition,
(01:31):
Leah is the podcast host of I haven't listened yet.
I feel really guilty, but I only just found out
as we began our introduction conversation just now a podcast
called Misperceived Lea, what's that one about?
Speaker 2 (01:44):
So I am an academic. I'm Australia's top sociologist last
year with Australia's top gender scholar. And that is just
me bragging. That's the first interest. It's a nice ones,
thank you, thank you. And what I was really committed
to doing is how do we take research and make
it tangible? How do we take research and translate in
the way that's really easy, digestible for people who don't
really have enough time, so they're ten, fifteen, maybe twenty
(02:05):
minutes unpacking research on things like can women actually multitask?
Do men who have a do more housework get more sex?
What is the mental load? Should you be friends with
people at work? So we're doing episodes each week, just
a little short listen based on empirical research and giving
you the knowledge without having to get the PhD.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Wow, I actually think that I need to subscribe by
the end of this podcast. That sounds like it's a
lot of fun. Leah. I want to ask you some
softball questions, but I also want to be fairly provocative
in this conversation. So here's my first question for you,
expert Professor Leah. Your research shows that mothers take on
seventy one percent of household mental load tasks. What is
(02:48):
the household mental load? Firstly, and this is a double
barren question, terrible interview technique, but I want to get
it all out at once. Number one, what is that
household mental load that women are taking on seventy one
percent all? But secondly, what's happening in families where the
split is more equitable? What are they doing differently?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
This is actually a very good question, because we are
doing some work currently where we're really trying to get
a clear definition of the mental load. One of the problems,
I think is that we don't really understand what the
mental load is and how it's different from say like
emotional labor or cognitive labor, or housework and child care.
And so I have a book coming out later on
that'll really give you a brand new definition, but that'll
(03:30):
come in twenty twenty six Strain. But what I want
to say right now is that the mental load is
the emotional thinking work that we do to keep our
households functioning. It's that work that you do, and that
our research we're calling it cognitive labor because it's this
thinking work. It's around remembering if your kids are signed
up prafter school activities. We have twenty one items and
(03:50):
it's asking the question of like, you know, are you
remembering if the kids nails are cut? Are you remembering
if to bring that thing that activity for school? Are
you thinking about the finances, are thinking about car maintenance?
Are you thinking about childcare? So there's a range of items,
but is that work around the domestic work, that's the
thinking work to making sure everyone's doing what they're doing
(04:10):
as they need to be doing when they need to
be doing it.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
I have a question on this before we get into
the families that are splitting it equitably. You mentioned one
item there that was definitely what I would categorize as
male oriented rather than female oriented. And I know that
this is probably right at the very heart of everything
that you do from a research point of view. Why
do we perceive that the car maintenance booking is the
man's job, whereas the kids getting their haircut or having
(04:34):
their toenails clipped is the woman's job. I know that
I'm sounding I'm probably sounding like I was born in
the nineteen fifties. I'm sounding completely ideologically pure when it
comes to what male and female are supposed to be
all about or not about. But how do you balance
those items? Do you have more that orient towards the
men as well? Because you only mentioned the one, whereas
(04:55):
you mentioned all of those more female oriented items.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
I'd bless you because there's this is literally what the
research article did, right. So what we did was and
it's with Anna Weeks at the University of Bath and
this is part of Anna Week's PhD project. So what
she did was she collected these twenty one items right,
and they fall into these broad categories food, care, maintenance, finance, socialization, right,
the organization. And it's that thinking we're going on behind.
(05:20):
And the research project was to do exactly that to
see because we know to see how this shakes out
by gender, like our men sharing all of it? Are
and this is all parents, right? Are they sharing it all?
Is it not sharing it all? And in part this
is because I've been studying housework, right who does what
at home? For decades and in the housework literature, what's
really clear is that men take on the more episodic tasks.
(05:42):
They do the maintenance, they do the finance, they do
the bills, they do the changing of the light bulb
right when things go wrong, they do the yard maintenance.
And this is often called episodic or outdoor tasks. These
are the things that are not done every day, and
women tend to take on the daily tasks, the cooking,
the cleaning, the laundry, the childcare, these types of things.
And so what we were really interested in understanding is
(06:04):
like does the mental load split in that way? Do
you actually see that men are taking on more of
the mental load around say finance and maintenance, which, as
you said, is like that's gender roles that we tend
to say, these are the tasks that men do in
part because their fathers did it, in part because you know,
we could do the whole lineage. Right, it's logical work,
it's tied to it's tied to machines. Or do we
(06:27):
actually see that the mental load is different and it blends.
And what we found was on the edge of your seats,
I'm sure what we found was is that, yes, it
splits in that way that actually men are much with
the fathers are much more likely to say they do
the maintenance stuff. They're much more likely they say they
do the finance stuff and the mothers. That leaves the
mothers with pretty much everything else. But what was kind
(06:50):
of interesting is because the mental load can be duplicated. Now,
just like bear with me, when we think about something
like changing the light bulb, you are not going to
have one partner in the family go change that light
bulb and then the other partner is going to unscrew
it and change that light bulb again. Right, This is
like very unlikely if you're doing this stop. But with
(07:12):
the mental load. You could have both partners carrying both
things right. The father and the family could be thinking about, Okay,
that dishwasher doesn't look well. It needs you know, it's
breaking down, it needs to be repaired, and the mother
can be doing the same work. Right, Both people can
be monitoring the same thing because it's internal, it's your
mental load, and we're tracking it. And so this was
(07:34):
one of the things that we did find. Right, that
fathers do do more of those episodic tasks. They're much
more likely to say they're primarily responsible. But it's not
an even split. It's not like the fathers do it
and the mothers drop it. The mothers do it too.
And you can say the same thing when we look
at you know, the childcare and stuff like that. You know,
father's picked up pieces of this, pieces of the childcare,
pieces of the meal preparation. But the mental load is
(07:57):
this really different type of war work that both people
can be doing simultaneously. It's invisible, it's boundaryless, it's never ending,
and it's a really different and distinct tape.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
The second part of my question was about what's happening
in the families, whether split is more equitable, but I
want to change the question ready for two reasons. What
you've just highlighted is it's kind of a light bulb
moment for me when I've talked about mental load, because
my expertise is in psychology, not in household domestic labor
and cognitive wear and tear. It's just occurred to me
(08:34):
Kylie and I worry about the same things we check
up on each other. I've got the fact that I've
got a daughter who's supposed to be bouldering or at drums,
or a child who's got to be picked up from
here and taken to there. That's going through my head
at the same time that it's going through hers. I'm
worrying about dinner tonight just as much as she's worrying
about dinner tonight. So there's a whole lot of duplication
(08:55):
that's happening in couples when it comes to this mental load.
I would imagine that there's a lot more mental load
being carried than one hundred percent. Is kind of what
I'm getting at right, Like, I'm worried about it eighty
percent of the time, Kylie's worried about it ninety two
percent of the time. Therefore, one hundred and seventy percent
of the time we're worried about dinner, and yet we
still have to buy takeout because because we haven't organized dinner.
(09:17):
So isn't about equality? What do we do about the duplication?
Speaker 2 (09:21):
How do we.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Solve the heaviness of this? Because I can't imagine couple
sitting down and saying, well, I'm just not going to
worry about these things anymore. You worry about them, I'm
putting them out of my mind? Or do they.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Why can't you?
Speaker 1 (09:37):
I don't know. Maybe I'm just too much of a
backseat driver. One of the things I was just on.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
A conversation with Eve Rotsky, who wrote this New York
Times bestseller and it's called Fairplay, And she read this Wellga,
and what she basically is saying is she has this.
When she was asked to think about all the things
that she does right before the baby is born, she
made this list of tasks. And what this has happened
is the list of tasks has grown and grown and
grown and grown and grown grown. So if you think
(10:04):
what do we do at home, like, what are if
we broke everything we do down into tasks? What does
it look like, and so what she's done is she
has this deck of cards right where you sit down
with your partner and you can buy them on Amazon
and you allocate them based on who does what you know,
I love and load the dishwasher from its top to
bottom minutia right. And and her argument is you have
(10:26):
to take the whole task. You have to take the
whole task, including the mental load. And you have like
that is it? So when you said to me, we're duplicating,
I'm having this light bulb moment. I think many people
listening will have the same light bulb moment because I
think we don't think about the mental load. We're doing it,
we're in it, we're swimming in it, but we're not
cognizant of it. When you have that light bull moment,
(10:47):
I want to say to you, but why couldn't you
guys specialize? Like why couldn't you drop drop? What would happen?
I'm going to thank you for my research project, thank
you for thank you very much for participating in my interview.
What would have if you actually one of you stopped?
I feel and our interviews?
Speaker 1 (11:06):
So what do you have for ye? So if I
was a research participant and I was asked this question,
I would tell you that I felt uncomfortable with the
proposition that I was going to leave things entirely to
my wife, and I would feel uncomfortable that she left
things entirely to me. That would feel transactional. And I
would also potentially, I feel like there's the potential for
conflict here. And I'll tell you why, because if Kylie
is looking after let's say, for example, dinner, and I
(11:28):
walk into the house and dinner's not done, there's the
possibility that I'll become resentful and say, well, I'm doing
everything on my list. I'm working my backside into the ground.
I don't have time to do everything on my list
because my list is so big. I know you've got
a big list too, but I'm getting mine done. You're lazy,
you're not doing your thing. And of course I would
never speak to my wife like that, but the potential
for resentment to build when somebody isn't doing what's on
(11:51):
their list, it makes it feel transactional to me. Moreover,
if something comes up that's an emergency, like one of
the kids calls and says, I forgot this thing and
it's really important. It's life and death. I need you
to drive to the school, or my life is over
that kind of thing, which happens frequently. That will impinge
unfairly on her lists, which means that it's harder for
her to do her things, which means that I start
(12:12):
to get irritated at the children because they're ruining their
mother's life, and therefore they're ruining mine because I rely
on highly to do those things, because I'm doing the
things that she's relying on me to do, and it's
just not fair. So my response would be, I don't
like the transactional nature of it. That was a long
way of saying that I liked it.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
So if you have duplication, it's interesting because if you
have duplication being saying, if we all of a sudden
become transactional, then our relationship becomes transactional, which is interesting
because I think for a lot of couples that don't have,
you know, aren't put focused on equally sharing something. It's
sometimes a way to reshuffle away from the women and
into the men's laps, right, get fathers engaged. But you're saying,
(12:50):
I'm a fully engaged father, and actually I like to
have this equal share because otherwise I feel like it'll
create tension.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Well, I don't even think that our share is equal.
I have no idea, and that's because I don't keep score.
But what I do have, and this is my opportunity
virtue sickle and tell everyone how great I am. So
forgive me for being a little bit all about me
for a minute. But my orientation when I walk into
the house unless I'm absolutely exhausted and just need to
pass out, which does happen from time to time. We
all have those days. But my orientation is how can
(13:20):
I serve who needs me? What can I do? Oh,
the dishwasher needs unstacking, Well I'll do that, and I'll
call a couple of the kids in because they need
to contribute, and we can be together while we do it.
At nighttime, after dinner, we do this thing called all in,
which is literally what it sounds like. We're all in
the kitchen and we're cleaning and we're putting away. We're
washing dishes. We don't use the dish washer. We wash
(13:40):
them and drive them and put them away, and the
vacuum cleaner comes out, and the benches are clean and
the food's put away. It's all in. So the orientation
that we've tried to instill, the family culture we've tried
to create is one of let me see the opportunity
to contribute, rather than that's not my job, which is
a sentence that if I hear, I kind of crack it.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
I love this. Actually, Hailey Swinson, we're doing some live
interview podcasts that will come out later on, but one
of the things we're trying to do is help give
families like concrete tools to help produce their mental load, right, like,
how do we help people understand how AI could help you?
How do we help them understand you know, what you
can do on a day to day task. And Hailey Swinson,
she's a she's at New America and they have this
(14:20):
Better Life Lab and they're doing these experiments where they're
trying to give people actually concrete like worksheets like and
one of the things you're saying that all in sounds
like something that she was talking about, Like they have
an experiment like this where it's like everyone's involved, so
everyone can see what's going on. Everyone comes together for
a period of time to go all in to do
(14:41):
a task, and at the end the mom said, then
we bake cookies, like we put cookies into the oven,
and we all come together and while the cookies are
baking for thirty minutes, we're all in the kitchen or
in the house doing everything. And then at the end
of the thirty minutes, you get the cookies right. And
I thought, what a beautiful way to create family bonding
but also raise visibility about what's being done in house right,
shared responsibility in the household. And so I think that
(15:04):
all in is an incredible tool for people who haven't
heard it or haven't used it. And it seems like
it really does work. Am I right?
Speaker 1 (15:13):
It does? And we make it fun because sometimes the
kids come in pretty grumpy and they don't want to
do all in. But we play games, we talk about
our days, we engage in in constructive conversations. You've raised
two things in your quick response there that I need
to ask about. The first is the invisibility of the
labor of others. The children consistently say to me, you
(15:38):
always make me do all the work. My sisters never
do anything. My response to them is, you don't know
what they're doing. You don't know what I'm asking them
to do. You're only aware of yourself talk to that idea,
because I'd imagine that's right in the sweet spot of
the research that you do.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Yeah. Absolutely so. In twenty twenty I published an article
with Lisdy and Brenda Churchill at University in Melbourne and
one of the things we were really trying to understand
is how is the mental load different from cognitive or
emotional labor. So just bear with me because I'll be
a little bit of an academic right now. So when
we think about the type of labor that you do,
(16:13):
you might do cognitive labor, like thinking work. This could
be keeping a track of everything that needs to be done.
It could be a list, you know, tracking. This could
be making a list, for example, of what ingredients we
need for dinner. Cognitive labor thinking work. You also might
do some emotional work, thinking about if your child is,
you know, having a hard day, or something in your
(16:35):
partners having hard day, someone in your family requires emotional
work and emotional support. These are two types of work
that you're probably doing every day, all day long. Then
you're also doing paid work. You know, you're getting paid
in your job if you're working, or you're doing domestic work,
which again is work but is unpaid childcare and housework,
and these are kind of four types of labor. And
one of the things we talked about was that the
(16:56):
mental load is something different. It's when thinking work becomes emotional.
So it's this idea that it's the coming together of
emotional thinking work and that's what makes it heavy, and
that's what makes it a load. So it's not just
did we remember to, I don't know, buy the milk,
It's more did we remember to buy the milk? Do
(17:18):
we get the right type? Actually, are the kids going
to be able to have cereal in the morning? If
they don't have cereal in the morning, they're going to
start their day off terribly. What am I going to
try to find? Right? That's the emotional thinking work that
you can see kind of goes in different directions. In
addition to that, we said that the mental load was
three things. It's invisible, which means it's done internally. It's
in your brain. You can't literally cannot see when people
(17:40):
are doing mental load work or the work. You might
right now as I'm talking be thinking about something else,
like I might have tiggered, like do we have enough milk?
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Am I going to have to go to the shops
and get the groceries for that amazing recipe we're going
to cook tonight, exactly, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
And one of the things we're trying to get is like,
how do you measure the mental load? Do you measure
it in seconds? Measure it in minutes? Do you measure
How do you do that? Because it comes like a
split second right into your brain and you're derailed, and
it can leave just as quickly, but you're still derailed.
So it's invisible. It's it's invisible work. It's boundaryless. And
what we mean by that is like you, if you
(18:18):
have unfinished laundry or you have dishes that are dirty
at home, you are not carrying your dishes into work.
You're not like, hey, everybody, sorry, I just didn't get
to finish these fifteen dishes, so I'm gonna bring up
a stack them in the work dishwasher, right like, You're
not doing that. And that means that that kind of
work is bound to a space and a place like you.
(18:38):
It stays at home.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Yes it does, but it doesn't right like you carry
it in your head. You're like, ah, when I get home,
I've got to do this and this and this. So
you're not bringing it to work, but you kind of, ah.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
You're bringing the mental load of it to work. You
a break. Correct, Absolutely, you're not going to bring your
physical dishes, but you'll bring that mental load to your
job exactly like you said, right, God, I gotta go home,
dishes are there, so you'll bring So that's where it
doesn't sit in one spot, right. It's not tied to
a place or things or people. It goes with you
and everywhere you go on, walks in the bath, wakes
(19:12):
you up at night. You take it to work, you
take it when you're at the someplace where you're trying
to decompress. It goes with you everywhere. And then the
last thing is it's enduring because it's tied to the
love and care of people you love and care about.
When do you stop having a mental load to your children?
When you die? Like right, like when you die.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
That's so optimistic, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
It'll never end, right, It just morphs. And so that
invisibility is what makes it. Like all these three characteristics
of invisibility, emotional thinking, work that is invisible, boundaryless, and enduring,
I think is what makes a mental load so pernicious,
like so potentially damaging. It also can be really beautiful, right,
I mean in our interviews we're hearing things like when
(19:56):
the mental load goes well, when I've done all that
planning work and there's joy in my face family, Oh,
it's the best feeling. So it's not all bad. I
don't want people to be like the goal is not
to have a zero mental load, but the goal is
to understand what it is and think about when it's
bringing us value and when it's draining us. When are
we do lookinning and when are we not? How do
(20:16):
we use it more effectively?
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Okay, let me ask you the second question that I
had From your answer previously, you highlighted that AI could
be used to reduce the mental load that parents are carrying.
Kylie and I have experimented a little bit with this
in terms of having AI put together an itinery for
a family trip, help us to work out some fun
activities on a weekend because every now and again we
(20:47):
just don't want to think about what to do. We
just want to be told what to do. And even
finding recipes or having AI sort of cheat a little
bit for us, is it cheating I don't think it's cheating.
It makes some shortcuts so that we don't have to
carry the load. What's your take on AI's you found
intrusion or implementation in family life?
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I think what you described is perfect. It's a tool.
Use it effectively to your benefit, right, Like the AI
I think has the potential to be an important solution.
And I'm really what I'm really committed to. We're doing
a research project and we're doing it with Goldie whose
apps that's taking generative AI and helping to read parents' emails,
(21:32):
correspondence calendar invites and seeing if helping that kind of
break you down and then put it into your calendar. Right.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
I like this, and I'll tell you why. I just
delete the emails. I don't even read them, and I
must know. Schools tell me all the time this is
a problem. So what's called Goldie, Goldie Goldie And it
does that for me?
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yes? And then yes it does Okay. And if we
think about the fact that Google or like if Google,
it's funny because I'm reading this book right, I'm there
at the computer blah blah blah, blah blah blah, and
I write this thing where I say I think one
of the great solutions is if things like Google who
they can read our email and they can tell me
when I haven't replied to anything, when a bill is due,
when something needs to be done. Why can't we take
(22:15):
this and move it into family life? And then all
of a sudden, someone sends me this beautiful thing about
Verity Tuck who started Goldie. Who's this woman founder? And
is you know, stepping into the world. And she's done it.
She's done it, She's built the out that can do it.
So I think, like, how can we think about this
is one of the powerful things. How do we think
about the ways in which we use AI in other
(22:35):
areas to create efficiencies? How can we help it to
lighten the family elements? And this is one example of
a technology that can do that. We all just if
you will indulge me for one more second. One of
the things I'm working on now is and we did
a little pilot of it, is how do you give
Goldie's one solution but it's not the only solution, and
(22:58):
so how do we help understand the suite of solutions?
So what we did was we gave parents money. We
gave mothers money to see where would they spend it,
what would they do, and how would they allocate that
resource to lighten their mental load. And this, I think
is what we need to do more of understanding the
range of things that are on the market, coming together
(23:19):
with good ideas like that everyone in the kitchen moment right,
sharing them across, having them on one spot, because there's
not going to be a single solution to this problem.
So if you can have a range of solutions and
you can see what they are, and you can see
what's worked for other people, you could then adopt what
works for you at whatever moment in time.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Let's stay on this theme. I read that nearly three
thousand WhatsApp messages land in parents WhatsApp groups every single
year per child. That must be adding to the digital load,
because I would guess that it's the mom's not the
dads that tend to be in the WhatsApp groups. What's
that doing in terms of adding to mother's men? What's
(24:00):
your research showing.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
It's interesting because we asked this question in our interviews,
or let me say it a different way, this question
came up in our interviews again and again and again,
and the idea is basically that schools are a huge
generator of correspondence and meant a huge drain on parents'
mental load. One of the things we're hearing from the
interviews is like mothers can't escape it even if they
(24:25):
put the fathers as a contact person. We had one
mother that said, like, I am in a secure location
because of my job, which means literally my cell phone
does not work, and yet the school calls me even
though the forum says to call the dad. Let me
be clear, I'm not here blaming schools, right. I think
schools have an incredible pressure on them to be everything
(24:47):
to everyone at all moments in time. And I understand
why schools are making the decisions that they're making. But
we can see the ways when you ask me that
question of like at the start of it, how do
we understand why certain things get allocated to mom and
certain things get allocated to dad. That is one example
of gender norms that have mothers is like the primary
(25:08):
contact person that even if the course, even if the
directive is do not call me, call him, she gets called.
And so I think it's thinking about ways in which
so we heard this a lot that schools generate a
huge amount of correspondence that it's not just coming from
the compass. I don't know what your children have, but
like the compass, like constant stream of that kind of
(25:29):
stuff that comes at the most inopportune times across the day.
You get a letter from the math teacher, you get
a letter from the English teacher, you get a letter
from the principle. You get right, the volume of correspondence,
But then also it goes into the groups, and then
what happens if you don't monitor them. What happens if
you miss something and the parents are worried that their
kids are going to miss out right, that's that's going
(25:51):
to be a missing out. So I guess in summary,
what I want to say is huge amount of correspondence,
drain on the mental load, difficulty to put a boundaries
because how do you put it boundaries to the concert stream,
and then a worry that if I do and I
forget something, the person who suffers as my kid.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Yeah, like I said, I'd delete them. I don't have
the headspace for them. I travel a lot for work,
so I'm not the person who's going to be implementing
ninety nine percent of it. Anyway. I also tell Kylie
the dee that to delete it. My guess is, if it's
really important, my daughters will already know about it. But
it's something that she refuses to do. She says, no, no, no, no,
I'm keeping the emails. I've got to stay across it.
(26:32):
But then she also tells me that she has six
hundred unopened emails in her inbox because who's got time
for all of that? I just I look at this
and I mean to hear you talk about an app
that can do this for you, and I think there's
actually some good value in that. I think that that
could be worth playing around with. Okay, the very first
question I asked you I ended up changing, but I
(26:54):
want to come back to it for a sec. This
idea of equality is the right idea. Should we be
aiming for equality? Is it about both doing fifty percent
of the load? How do how do you even measure that?
Is the whole concept flawed? Or is it something that
is both desirable and attainable? Or are we just worrying
(27:15):
about the wrong stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
This is like a very difficult question. So my brain
went to thirteen different things. Get ready, Okay, there's a
discussion about whether it should be about equality, which is
like a fifty to fifty split, everyone shares everything equally,
or should it be about equity whoever needs this is
I think you're taking an equity perspective right, like who
needs at what moment in time? When we come in
(27:40):
and we support that person from an equity perspective, I
think the challenge is is that if we go from
an equity perspective, which is who needs what at that
moment in time, and how do we step in and
support that person. The thing that worries me is sometimes
mothers have a very hard time, and I'm hearing this interviews,
they have a very hard time sharing through what they need.
(28:03):
There is a block.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
I wish I had Kylie here right now because we've
had this conversation. If I say to her, I want
to have a weekend away. I just want to go surfing.
I need to clear my head, Kylie says, Okay, go surfing,
have a great time. But when I make the offer
to her, it's been a while since you've had a
day or two to yourself. Do you want to do anything?
She'll say no, Why I've got too much to do
(28:27):
or I can't leave this And we've heard Unfortunately from
way too many moms. They'll just say, I can't trust
my husband or my partner with the kids while I'm gone.
Everything's going to fall apart while I'm gone. So I
guess that's kind of what you're angling at, isn't it correct.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
It's a huge amount of guilt, right, It's a huge
amount of guilt, a huge amount of loss trust, Like
you're saying, if they don't trust them, This is one
of the things that e Rothi said just actually in
the podcast we're recording, like, you need to have trust
that if that person's going to take it step in.
Accountability and trust. Those are her two keywords, accountability and trust,
and then mothers feeling they can step away. I'm saying
(29:06):
to you, I am also hearing a huge block about
I don't give to myself. I give to others, and
it's hard to take. And so my goal in this
world is to break down some of that, right, like,
to break down some of that guilt and shame about taking,
because I think mothers are so conditioned to give, give, give, give,
and if you have ten dollars, then you're going to
(29:26):
put it into your kid's college fund, university fund for y'all,
and probably is private school tuition. I don't know where.
I don't know where the money goes in this country,
but like if the US would be like saving for
college or you know, their down payment for their home.
So there's this idea that if there's extra, it should
go to everyone else. And that has to I think
they three have to come together on that. There has
(29:46):
to be trust, some accountability that when you step out,
you're not coming back to a chaotic mess. But there
also has to be an ability to say, I can't
hold this all together at one person cannot be responsible
for this whole thing. That's fair on me. We don't
ask in any other circumstance for one person to be
responsible for everything, right, Like it's weird, right, you wouldn't say,
(30:09):
like no one says to me at Melbourne UNI, Okay,
you're now in charge of Melbourn UNI, good luck. Right.
But for some reason, it's like there's this incredible pressure
social norms on mothers to be like you're in charge
of the future of this family. Good luck, And so
that's unrealistic and that's unsustainable, and so there has to
be some moment too. And again when mothers get extra
(30:31):
they give in or they give forward to either their
kids or their husband or their family. I heard this
one I said to mothers. I said to them, here's
four hundred dollars to do what you want. And the
first thing most of the mothers did was they try
to give it back to the family. And I had
to say, no, no, no, I didn't tell you. I mean,
if you want to, but you don't have to give
it to yourself. And that is I'm here to break
that down. I guess that's my last thing. I'm here
to break that down, that shame around giving to yourself,
(30:54):
because in giving to yourself, you're giving to the group,
and in no other circumstances won't feel that.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
I can tell you right now, Kylie would go straight
to the day spa. Four hundred dollars is going to
give her a good couple of hours of Ah, just joy,
I don't like day spars anyway. I Digress's Kylie's special place.
Your research, Leah, as you're highlighted in relation to your
podcast topics, involves and investigates the area of how male
(31:25):
and female or partnered contributions in the home impact on
relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, life satisfaction. Tell me for men
who contribute more, do they get luckier?
Speaker 2 (31:41):
They get it all. Let me tell you something, they
get everything.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Oh yeah, I'll.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Tell you across and the research, like I've done across
the research. They get better sleep. Right Like, if you
live in a more equitable, gender equal society, let me
tell you the things you get. You get more better
sleep or high quality sleep, you get better health, You're
less riskier decisions. You know, they're less likely to make risky,
they're less likely to die. The sex question, I'm going
(32:09):
it's a little bit murky on that one. But they
have more sustained relationships, they have more life satisfaction, Their
partners are more satisfied. I mean, I think the weird
thing is like we often think about this and I
talk a lot about this and have for decades, but
like we think of the conversations are often pitted like
men versus women, And it's like the answer is is
actually these social norms that tell men you need to
(32:31):
be solely responsible for bringing in all the money for
the family. You know what, rising inflation, I don't know,
work harder. You know what, global pandemic work harder. COVID nineteen.
Just dig in and work harder. It's detrimental to men.
They're traps for men too. And what we're hearing is
men are like, I want to be there with my partner,
I want to be there with my kids. I want
to work less, but I don't know how to do that.
(32:53):
I don't have the incredible pressure of like I want
to be less focused on work, but I don't know
how to do that because I have simultaneous pressure to
be focused on work, and I'm worried. We have a study. God,
I could be here for like four hours, but we
have a study where we actually looked at what happens
when men take a career gap, what happens if we
put us in their CV a gap for caregiving. And
(33:15):
we found that the men get punished more than the fathers,
get punished more than the mothers. And in particular and
men dominated industries, like we fed them through algorithms, right
and just saw what happens is a project with Shila
and Nijodo, Mark Chong and Leah Furman at the at
University of Molment. And so the consequences, the structural consequences
for men stepping into care can be serious, and it
(33:39):
makes sense that they're hesitant. They want to be equal cares.
They want to be equal shares. They want to have
lives where they can be connected to their children emotionally,
they want to be actively engaged. And until we start
to shift work, shift our policy structures and understand that
men aren't insane on this. They're just looking at the
world and facing pressures too that stressful for them too.
(34:02):
It's not men versus women, it's us together to help
create worlds in which everyone can step into love, life, laughter, care,
and enjoyable experiences. That's Michael.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Much of the conversation has been centered around women and
the load that they carry as a man. Listening to
what you're saying, I'm feeling like I'm getting goosebumps and
think to myself that this is something that I hear
men say all the time. They'll say, nobody understands the
load that I carry as a man, especially in single
(34:32):
income families, having to provide and provision and protect and
do all the things that men are quote unquote supposed
to do. Even if that sounds a little bit archaic,
there is that masculinity drive to do those things that
men have done across cultures and across millennia. But I'm
also supposed to show up and have the energy to
(34:54):
do X, Y and Z when I get home, and
be willing to have the input and the emotional burden
that lands on a man's shoulders when he walks in
the door after he's done all the stuff and gone
out and slain the line every day which he's supposed
to go and do all the elephant or whatever it is.
I've had men literally look at me and almost weep
as they say, I just don't know if I'm saying this.
It is such a heavy load. Now I'm again, I'm
(35:16):
not trying to make it sound like life is extra
hard for men or anything like that, but rather the
cognitive load that we've been talking about, this idea of
a household mental load. It seems it seems like, especially
(35:36):
in a single income family, if we only focus on
who's doing what at home, this might be a bit provocative,
But if we only focus on the split at home,
it will look like men are loafing. And yet the
men that I speak to, specifically those who are in
singling income situations, are doing anything but loafing. They are
absolutely killing it. So let me ask you this. If
(35:59):
both parts are happy with the split, and I mean
genuinely happy, if both are feeling satisfied with the split,
there's no coercion, there's no manipulation, there's no martyrdom occurring.
If both in the couple are happy with the split,
do we have a problem.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
The first answer is no. The only thing I want
women to think about right in their relationships is when
women step out of and paid employment, there's a lot
of long term consequences for them, especially if they end
up divorcing or separating from their partner. So I always
want women to be thinking, like, in the end, if
I think that there are multiple family forums, that what
(36:38):
works for you at point for this person may not
work for the other. What works for you at point
A may not work at B, C and D. Right,
But I want women to as they're thinking about making
these decisions, to go, Okay, what does it mean for
my superannuation? What does it mean for my long term earnings?
And what would happen if we actually split? What would
it look like for me? And if in making those decisions,
(36:59):
in thinking about those things, you're like, no problem, right,
I can be independent I have enough financial resources, Like, great,
do whatever you want, but having the knowledge. My goal
is always to give women as much knowledge and men
to as much knowledge as possible so that they're making
informed decisions at key pivot points. There's these pivot points
(37:19):
right where we end up on different tracks. And so
if you have all the information at that point and
then you make your decision, great, whatever decision you make, perfect,
but let's make sure you have all that information. But
in terms of what men are doing, So in our
study that we just published Internal Marriage and Family with
Enne Weeks on the mental load, what we found is
in single households and non partnered for non partnered parents,
(37:42):
it was exactly as you said the men did. There
was no difference. The mental loads were similar between you know,
single moms and single dads. So the men stepped in
right and and they and they did it all. And
so you're right on that, like you're right that there,
You're right there is and I think you're also right there.
Like the problem happens sometimes when we point like we
(38:05):
point the finger at each other. It's hard because I
can see that mothers are overwhelmed. Everyone's burnt out right now,
and we show that in our research too. Australia is
like experiencing this great burnout, especially post pandemic. So how
do we think about this as like a public health problem?
And then if we have a public health problem where
everyone's burnt out, how do we make sure we're supporting
men's mental loads and women's mental loads. It may look different,
(38:27):
the composition may be different, but how do we make
sure we're understanding that composition and then giving the supports
as as necessary, and how do we have honest conversations
about that.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
I was about to say, it feels to me like
this is about couples talking to each other, being transparent,
being vulnerable, having real conversations, and looking for opportunities to contribute.
That's what I'm hearing, and that's where the satisfaction is.
That's why both the men and the women who are
in those relationships sleep better or at not have been
life satisfaction and marital satisfaction and so on. Okay, last
(39:01):
question for you. This podcast is about giving parents real solutions.
In some ways, this has been quite an academic discussion.
We've been talking about research and what we see in
terms of this family is doing X, Y and Z
and how that's playing out in their lives. If you
could pull out your favorite solution, your number one solution
from the bag and guide us to it so that
(39:22):
we can have the kind of life and family and
marital satisfaction that we all crave. What would you recommend.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
You're going to hear my answer. Sorry, I'm sorry for
what it's about to happen. You're going to need to
buy my book next year.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Right, that's a long time. Can you give us something
when your book comes out, I'll get you back on
the pod because I think it's to It'll be another
There's so much we haven't talked about that we could.
But if there was one thing today that a family
could do, that a couple could do to make that
load feel lot of for the person who's carrying the
(40:01):
ball cover at the seventy one percent that women are carrying.
What what would the one thing be that you'd recommend.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Let me be clear too, I would love to tell
you what I had the solution I give you in
the book because and I am I love telling everybody everything,
and I have to put handcuffs on my on my mouth,
tape my mouth because I'm always like, let me tell
you what I found, I think, but until then, because
I'll probably be busted by every editor and publisher in
the world. Until then, what I think one thing to
(40:31):
do is I think what you said about I think
coming into it being like, Okay, I don't think we
totally understand this work right, right, Like I don't think
people have a good understanding exactly of what is the
mental load, what is the cognitive labor. Even the fact
that you said in this conversation like I had a
million light bulb moments, which means I'm saying something to
you that you haven't heard before or right, So, I
(40:53):
think understanding that at this moment in time, we are
not having quite the right conversation about this because we
don't yet have the language for it, and so trying
to work as a couple in terms of communication to
better to really hear without the resistance coming behind. Take
the twenty years of baggage and drop it for one
second and come in and listen. I think that's the
(41:15):
first step to hear it, to understand it, to ask questions,
to remain curious, and to acknowledge that what you're carrying
on what I carry are two different things. But they're
equally heavy and that start, I think is the start.
I'll tell you that in my book too, but you
have to wait till twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
And I'm going to add mums. When you get the
opportunity to breathe, or you get someone give you four
hundred bucks, run with it, run with it, take it,
do something with it. This has been such a fun conversation.
So glad to spend some time with your. Professor Lea
Rupaner is rese Sorry I had to do it.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
You did great.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
Professor Lea Rupana is a research professor at the University
of Melbourne in sociology is how modern families work, and
her podcast is called Misperceived.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Perfect and you. I have a at craft Leah, because
no one can do my last name and at miss
perceived handle on Instagram. If you want me to tell
you how great I am every single day, great.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Stuff, We'll make sure we link to all of that
in the show notes. Great to be with you. Thank
you so much, Leah, thank you for having me. The
Happy Family's podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media.
If you would like more information and resources to make
your family happier, check the show notes for today's episode
for everything that you need to know about Professor Leah
Rapana from the University of Melbourne, or visit happyfamilies dot
(42:38):
com dot au
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