This is a super-freakin' important post. I think a lot of men, including super-senior, super-well-educated men don't understand the principles that surround cognitive labor in the home and in the workplace. I'm a single dad, so I perhaps get parts of this, but I do have a co-parent so I think even I'm immune to a lot of cognitive labor, because I do have some load-sharing in my parenting. The economic consequences here in tech and finance are widely felt. There's no way this cannot influence the allocations of capital to female founders and fund managers.
It absolutely does affect allocations of capital. Its a universal truth, men know that statistically women perform 75% of the unpaid care work on the homefront which robs them of time to focus on paid work.
I’m a stepmom to 3 adult children who’s father had joint (50/50) custody. The oldest was 14, the youngest 6, when I came on scene. It would be fair to say that I carried 100% of the “cognitive labor” in our home, as well as the manual labor of cooking, cleaning & shopping while being the financial support for the first 10 years. I worked outside the home as a nurse. I carried no authority as a “step” & by his own admission my husband was/is not a disiplinarian, nor good at planning & communication. “He’s an arist!” was what I was told constantly by counselors, family, friends & any other persons I may have sought advice from.
Fast forward 35ish years. I’ve assumed the care of my 65 yr old sister with brain injury & my husband’s experiencing some cognitive decline (memory). I have retired from nursing & now have a paint studio outside the home. My husband is still an artist but I give him 1 day/wk to assist.
It is astonishing to me that I never questioned this path. Even more astonishing that at one time I WANTED to have a child of my own! Today I’m grateful that never came to pass (by decision btw). But I have been questioning it A LOT recently. I’ve even started seeing a therapist as I really don’t want to be a bitter resentful woman in the only time left to me to create.
I sometimes daydream about the life choices I would make had I been more…knowledgeable, aware, fill in the blank…selfish? I think about what may have been if I hadn’t felt the need to “please” when I chose nursing over art (I’m not naive enough to believe there isn’t a hell of a lot of misogyny in the art world cuz there is!).
I do not want to sound like a martyr or be a “bitter, angry woman”, the name hurled at me when I ask for the smallest consideration from my husband with regard to when & if his children will be dropping by (unannounced!). This is why I follow posts like this. This is why I research sociology, feminism, divorce (I’m not getting one) & women in art, politics & marriage.
Someday I may write a book or article delving more deeply into all of this. Meanwhile I’ll continue to read the fascinating articles here, read the recommendations I find here and PAINT!!
This article found its way to my feed today. It's spot on to what was happening in my marriage. It's why my wife wanted to separate. I'm currently writing on Substack about how I righted the sinking ship of my marriage. Spoiler alert... addressing this issue was the key.
I restacked this because husbands everywhere need to read and understand this important topic. I'm grateful you wrote it.
In this example, since the husband identified the problem why not get him to reorganise the swimming lessons or is your point that when arranging tasks he does not take into account time you spend organising things.
As for the toilet paper, this seems like creating work for its own sake however there may be something I’m missing or just an example
I hate it when people are intentionally dense and miss the point entirely. And when I recognize that in someone, my new approach is to just move on and spend time with people who care enough to understand, or even better, enjoy the peace of being alone.
I am almost 70, happy, fairly healthy, and single. After one divorce and ending a long term relationship, it’s been hard to reconcile why. Raised in a grand loving family, Blessings writing has shed brighter light on that question. My dad. While not always perfect, he and my mom shared the raising of my four siblings and me, as well as the homes in which we lived. One example I often laugh about is this, completing the yard work. Without missing a beat I humorously say ( while looking at piles of leaves left all over my yard) “it’s a mystery to me, my mom would rake piles of of sticks, leaves , etc, and then it would all vanish without her doing any more. “ My piles of leaves just sit there until i actually moved them days later. What a team they were, mom raked, dad picked up. This was their way. Men in my life never picked up the leaves after I raked.
Yes! I have heard of mental load but I think cognitive labor makes it more tangible! The amount of vigilance required to ANTICIPATE and NOTICE things takes such a toll. People talk about "mommy brain" and, sure, there are hormonal changes and sleep disturbances, but for my part it's the cognitive labor that best explains why I still have "mommy brain" symptoms when my youngest is almost five.
Great post. Looking back on my own marriage (and divorce), I think that our best times were when we both felt like we were on the same team. But that feeling is hard to come by unless we regard every single task and responsibility as shared ones, regardless of who winds up doing the work. And to be able to do that, men (like myself) need to actually see what is involved in tasks and responsibilities outside of those traditionally considered male, especially the cognitive labor you mention.
When you broke down the elements of organizing the swimming lessons, it becomes obvious that underlying these sorts of activities is a lot of thought, effort, organizing and communication. Multiply that times maybe 50 and you begin to see how much goes into maintaining a household and raising children on a weekly basis.
What men don’t get is that when they leave work, they can relax, even if they have some chores at home. Men are like the actors in a play — they prepare themselves, hit the stage, do their thing, get the applause, take off their makeup and go out. Women are the stage managers and producers. They have to make sure that the sets are put up, the sound checked, the musicians are in place, the stage hands know what to do, manage absences, placate egos, pay the bills, have playbills ready, with an insert for substitutes, the fire extinguishers are where the fire marshals want them, etc. Today, women who want to be actors are told they can but that they still have to be the stage managers.
I read this article and my first thought was "holy managerial moly". You do know that most of this work was unnecessary, right? You don't have to spend hours researching swimming lessons and instructors - just pick one and sign them up. This level of cramming activities is hard on the kids *and* dad. You don't need to run your household like a damned corporate HR department. You don't need to micromanage everything, take a break and a breath and relax.
My wife does this too, but not nearly as manically as this author....probably because I am there to remind her to not worry so much about all of these things. It just wears you all out and the kids don't sit there and think that their life is a living hell because it isn't crammed with organized activities. They won't even notice the difference.
Maybe if you and your spouse spent more time with each other instead of ferrying the kids to infinity extracirriculars, you might not feel so overwhelmed and isolated.
Yes. This. Working an actual job. Doing every single task around the house. And most of all, doing all of the research all of the triaging all of the managing, reminding, etc., and still trying to have enough time to literally clip your toenails, along with realizing I was married to a narcissistic sociopath, prompted me to divorce. Well, still in the divorce process. $30,000 so far. I am on the ropes, exhausted, after years of being in “get it done mode” and not enough time to take a breath and assess the disparity of my ever-worsening circumstance, because he’s been able to just sit in his lazy ass recliner as a drunk and watch TV for the last almost 30 years. Narcissistic, sociopath aside, I should’ve divorced him long ago just for being so intentionally lazy.
I've been thinking a lot about this lately and have a post in the works, but haven't quite processed it to the point of sharing, but some studies show that women are generally better at multi-tasking (granted, other studies show that no one is good at multi-tasking, so who knows!), but my working theory is that often women's brains are often just wired in a way where we see / feel the cognitive load more than men do. My husband and I talk about this all the time and even though he is incredibly observant, he simply does not see the things i do in household functions (and vise versa), so we've had to work to talk about what we see and then split things up based on our strengths, capacity and availability in each season. Basically, i just don't know that men can see/think like women do when it comes to cognitive labor - that's not an excuse to leave it all to the wife/mom, but more so something to acknowledge and then work with that. I know for me personally, any time i wish my husband could read my mind and get frustrated that he doesn't, that just ends up being counter productive. If i acknowledge he is different from me and cannot see what i see, it's much easier for me to talk about how to split up household duties.
I think men have been socialized to not multitask and to not see what needs to be done in the home. In the workplace, it's called being a self-starter, and coincides almost perfectly with skills needed to be a manager or project lead. They can do this at home. They've learned (consciously or unconsciously) not to.
Yep- all of that wouldn’t fly at work but at home they’ll say “you’re better at it” to absolve themselves of responsibility, while they think it’s some kind of compliment. It’s weaponized incompetence and its manipulative and exhausting. That 70s show had an episode before we even labeled it and the Simpsons mocked homer for his in song recently
Valid point - but i'm not talking about the trait of whether you see something that needs to be done and take initiative, but rather WHAT you see and don't see in what needs to be done - even in the workforce, that varies in male vs. female. As a woman working in a male dominated profession for a decade (attorney working at an accounting firm), I see this in the professional world too. Women tend to see more of the office "housework" that needs to be done and volunteer to do it because they see the gaps and then end up not getting promoted compared to their male counterparts because the men are doing the front facing client work that is billable and "promotable" but women are too often taking on office housework tasks that distract their time and attention from billable work (e.g., planning birthday lunches, getting baby shower gifts for an expecting co-worker, updating team trackers, taking notes and summarizing the meeting for the team, scheduling meetings on behalf of the team, etc). So it's not about whether you're self starter or not (that's a separate point), but rather what you see needs to be done vs. what you don't and that men and women see different priorities / gaps.
This is a super-freakin' important post. I think a lot of men, including super-senior, super-well-educated men don't understand the principles that surround cognitive labor in the home and in the workplace. I'm a single dad, so I perhaps get parts of this, but I do have a co-parent so I think even I'm immune to a lot of cognitive labor, because I do have some load-sharing in my parenting. The economic consequences here in tech and finance are widely felt. There's no way this cannot influence the allocations of capital to female founders and fund managers.
It absolutely does affect allocations of capital. Its a universal truth, men know that statistically women perform 75% of the unpaid care work on the homefront which robs them of time to focus on paid work.
I’m a stepmom to 3 adult children who’s father had joint (50/50) custody. The oldest was 14, the youngest 6, when I came on scene. It would be fair to say that I carried 100% of the “cognitive labor” in our home, as well as the manual labor of cooking, cleaning & shopping while being the financial support for the first 10 years. I worked outside the home as a nurse. I carried no authority as a “step” & by his own admission my husband was/is not a disiplinarian, nor good at planning & communication. “He’s an arist!” was what I was told constantly by counselors, family, friends & any other persons I may have sought advice from.
Fast forward 35ish years. I’ve assumed the care of my 65 yr old sister with brain injury & my husband’s experiencing some cognitive decline (memory). I have retired from nursing & now have a paint studio outside the home. My husband is still an artist but I give him 1 day/wk to assist.
It is astonishing to me that I never questioned this path. Even more astonishing that at one time I WANTED to have a child of my own! Today I’m grateful that never came to pass (by decision btw). But I have been questioning it A LOT recently. I’ve even started seeing a therapist as I really don’t want to be a bitter resentful woman in the only time left to me to create.
I sometimes daydream about the life choices I would make had I been more…knowledgeable, aware, fill in the blank…selfish? I think about what may have been if I hadn’t felt the need to “please” when I chose nursing over art (I’m not naive enough to believe there isn’t a hell of a lot of misogyny in the art world cuz there is!).
I do not want to sound like a martyr or be a “bitter, angry woman”, the name hurled at me when I ask for the smallest consideration from my husband with regard to when & if his children will be dropping by (unannounced!). This is why I follow posts like this. This is why I research sociology, feminism, divorce (I’m not getting one) & women in art, politics & marriage.
Someday I may write a book or article delving more deeply into all of this. Meanwhile I’ll continue to read the fascinating articles here, read the recommendations I find here and PAINT!!
This article found its way to my feed today. It's spot on to what was happening in my marriage. It's why my wife wanted to separate. I'm currently writing on Substack about how I righted the sinking ship of my marriage. Spoiler alert... addressing this issue was the key.
I restacked this because husbands everywhere need to read and understand this important topic. I'm grateful you wrote it.
I am so so glad you are addressing this big divide at home. Way to go!
Cognitive load is real! And overload leads to things like irritability, forgetting important facts, and panic.
Yes and yes!
In this example, since the husband identified the problem why not get him to reorganise the swimming lessons or is your point that when arranging tasks he does not take into account time you spend organising things.
As for the toilet paper, this seems like creating work for its own sake however there may be something I’m missing or just an example
Oh he did re-organize the swimming lessons after I promptly shared registration details and the swimming instructors contact details.
I hate it when people are intentionally dense and miss the point entirely. And when I recognize that in someone, my new approach is to just move on and spend time with people who care enough to understand, or even better, enjoy the peace of being alone.
I am almost 70, happy, fairly healthy, and single. After one divorce and ending a long term relationship, it’s been hard to reconcile why. Raised in a grand loving family, Blessings writing has shed brighter light on that question. My dad. While not always perfect, he and my mom shared the raising of my four siblings and me, as well as the homes in which we lived. One example I often laugh about is this, completing the yard work. Without missing a beat I humorously say ( while looking at piles of leaves left all over my yard) “it’s a mystery to me, my mom would rake piles of of sticks, leaves , etc, and then it would all vanish without her doing any more. “ My piles of leaves just sit there until i actually moved them days later. What a team they were, mom raked, dad picked up. This was their way. Men in my life never picked up the leaves after I raked.
This! Thanks Margaret for sharing your experience growing up and what it looks like now.
Thank you Blessings. I look forward to reading more of your work.
Yes! I have heard of mental load but I think cognitive labor makes it more tangible! The amount of vigilance required to ANTICIPATE and NOTICE things takes such a toll. People talk about "mommy brain" and, sure, there are hormonal changes and sleep disturbances, but for my part it's the cognitive labor that best explains why I still have "mommy brain" symptoms when my youngest is almost five.
Yes, I also prefer the term Cognitive Labor.
Great post. Looking back on my own marriage (and divorce), I think that our best times were when we both felt like we were on the same team. But that feeling is hard to come by unless we regard every single task and responsibility as shared ones, regardless of who winds up doing the work. And to be able to do that, men (like myself) need to actually see what is involved in tasks and responsibilities outside of those traditionally considered male, especially the cognitive labor you mention.
When you broke down the elements of organizing the swimming lessons, it becomes obvious that underlying these sorts of activities is a lot of thought, effort, organizing and communication. Multiply that times maybe 50 and you begin to see how much goes into maintaining a household and raising children on a weekly basis.
What men don’t get is that when they leave work, they can relax, even if they have some chores at home. Men are like the actors in a play — they prepare themselves, hit the stage, do their thing, get the applause, take off their makeup and go out. Women are the stage managers and producers. They have to make sure that the sets are put up, the sound checked, the musicians are in place, the stage hands know what to do, manage absences, placate egos, pay the bills, have playbills ready, with an insert for substitutes, the fire extinguishers are where the fire marshals want them, etc. Today, women who want to be actors are told they can but that they still have to be the stage managers.
I read this article and my first thought was "holy managerial moly". You do know that most of this work was unnecessary, right? You don't have to spend hours researching swimming lessons and instructors - just pick one and sign them up. This level of cramming activities is hard on the kids *and* dad. You don't need to run your household like a damned corporate HR department. You don't need to micromanage everything, take a break and a breath and relax.
My wife does this too, but not nearly as manically as this author....probably because I am there to remind her to not worry so much about all of these things. It just wears you all out and the kids don't sit there and think that their life is a living hell because it isn't crammed with organized activities. They won't even notice the difference.
Maybe if you and your spouse spent more time with each other instead of ferrying the kids to infinity extracirriculars, you might not feel so overwhelmed and isolated.
I also wrote about this a few years back: https://www.momswhowinetogether.com/2017/10/20/emotional-labor/
Yes. This. Working an actual job. Doing every single task around the house. And most of all, doing all of the research all of the triaging all of the managing, reminding, etc., and still trying to have enough time to literally clip your toenails, along with realizing I was married to a narcissistic sociopath, prompted me to divorce. Well, still in the divorce process. $30,000 so far. I am on the ropes, exhausted, after years of being in “get it done mode” and not enough time to take a breath and assess the disparity of my ever-worsening circumstance, because he’s been able to just sit in his lazy ass recliner as a drunk and watch TV for the last almost 30 years. Narcissistic, sociopath aside, I should’ve divorced him long ago just for being so intentionally lazy.
This is a spot on explanation of an issue that had received scant attention. Thank you!
I've been thinking a lot about this lately and have a post in the works, but haven't quite processed it to the point of sharing, but some studies show that women are generally better at multi-tasking (granted, other studies show that no one is good at multi-tasking, so who knows!), but my working theory is that often women's brains are often just wired in a way where we see / feel the cognitive load more than men do. My husband and I talk about this all the time and even though he is incredibly observant, he simply does not see the things i do in household functions (and vise versa), so we've had to work to talk about what we see and then split things up based on our strengths, capacity and availability in each season. Basically, i just don't know that men can see/think like women do when it comes to cognitive labor - that's not an excuse to leave it all to the wife/mom, but more so something to acknowledge and then work with that. I know for me personally, any time i wish my husband could read my mind and get frustrated that he doesn't, that just ends up being counter productive. If i acknowledge he is different from me and cannot see what i see, it's much easier for me to talk about how to split up household duties.
I think men have been socialized to not multitask and to not see what needs to be done in the home. In the workplace, it's called being a self-starter, and coincides almost perfectly with skills needed to be a manager or project lead. They can do this at home. They've learned (consciously or unconsciously) not to.
Yep- all of that wouldn’t fly at work but at home they’ll say “you’re better at it” to absolve themselves of responsibility, while they think it’s some kind of compliment. It’s weaponized incompetence and its manipulative and exhausting. That 70s show had an episode before we even labeled it and the Simpsons mocked homer for his in song recently
Valid point - but i'm not talking about the trait of whether you see something that needs to be done and take initiative, but rather WHAT you see and don't see in what needs to be done - even in the workforce, that varies in male vs. female. As a woman working in a male dominated profession for a decade (attorney working at an accounting firm), I see this in the professional world too. Women tend to see more of the office "housework" that needs to be done and volunteer to do it because they see the gaps and then end up not getting promoted compared to their male counterparts because the men are doing the front facing client work that is billable and "promotable" but women are too often taking on office housework tasks that distract their time and attention from billable work (e.g., planning birthday lunches, getting baby shower gifts for an expecting co-worker, updating team trackers, taking notes and summarizing the meeting for the team, scheduling meetings on behalf of the team, etc). So it's not about whether you're self starter or not (that's a separate point), but rather what you see needs to be done vs. what you don't and that men and women see different priorities / gaps.