Sharing the emotional labor load in a world that doesn't want us to.
My secret plan to make that happen someday.
One maternal stressor that absolutely fascinates me is the gendered mental labor load.
This is one stressor that feels particularly invisible. One that, when pointed out and made visible, often comes with an audible sigh of recognition. And one that is severely understudied from a stress perspective.
Social scientists divide mental load into two categories: cognitive labor and emotional labor. As researchers Dean, Churchill, and Ruppaner point out in their 2022 review article:
“The way the mental load operates within families and society has three characteristics: (1) it is invisible in that it is enacted internally yet results in a range of unpaid, physical labor; (2) it is boundaryless in that can be brought to work and into leisure and sleep time; and (3) enduring in that it is never complete because it is tied to caring for loved ones which is constant.”
Lots to decode in there within the context of psychological stress and connections with other stressors but I’m going to hold that layer peeling for future posts with mental labor load experts.
For now, I want to focus on emotional labor.
To give your brains a temporary break from the science-heavy pregnancy series, this post goes in a far less research-driven direction – my secret plot to push a culture shift that will enhance caregiving-related neural plasticity in non-birth parents (mostly fathers, for reasons mentioned below), and distribute the emotional labor load for future generations.
I know. That’s a mouthful. And a bit ambitious. When maternal stress-reducing solutions require a culture shift in a gendered world resistant to culture-shifting, we have to get creative. Here is my attempt at that…
The cultural phenomenon I like to call: “mothers are just better at…”
In a non-scientific analysis, I keep coming back to a potential root cause for emotional labor disproportionately falling onto women: the “mothers are just better at…” narrative.
I have heard this statement completed in various forms. I’ve heard it amongst friends explaining their acceptance of gender-skewed caregiving in their household. I’ve heard it from politicians arguing against investment in child care or access to paid leave. I’ve heard it from colleagues half-assing paternity leave. I’ve heard it from that guy doing absolutely nothing while the mother of his child exhibits single-handed diaper-changing ninja skills in a public park.
Besides this assumption being grossly heteronormative, it is not entirely accurate.
“New research on the parental brain makes clear that the idea of maternal instinct as something innate, automatic and distinctly female is a myth, one that has stuck despite the best efforts of feminists to debunk it from the moment it entered public discourse.” – Chelsea Conaboy
When
explained why ‘maternal instinct is a myth’ in her book, Mother Brain, my own brain broke a little bit. The brain changes during and following pregnancy are absolutely incredible. Mothers experience the coolest neural shifts that are somehow both under-appreciated and over-relied upon in the cultural narrative of motherhood. The maternal brain is a wonder1.But, the real story of neural changes and parental/caregiver ‘instinct’ is far more expansive.
You know what else changes with the experience of caring for a helpless baby human? The dad brain. The adopted parent brain. The caregiver brain, in general. And our inability to recognize these changes is not related to lack of changes themselves but rather the lack of research, which only underscores how little we appreciate the brain benefits of parenting for dads and everyone who doesn’t fit the traditional ‘mother’ mold.
and I wrote that statement in a recent article for Harvard Business Review, where we focused on changing the narrative around paternity leave. In the article, we emphasize the incredible opportunity fathers and adopted parents have for “brain training” when they use available leave to care for their infants. For all dads (who do and do and do not have access to leave), we highlighted research showing the importance of “engaged time” — taking the baby, tackling the challenges of early parenting, and not overly relying on their primary parenting partner to do all the things."Gender norms are so entrenched in our culture that we have come to mistake them as biology.”
So what does this all have to do with maternal stress and emotional load? Between friends (👋🏽 hi friends!), Kate and I had a secondary agenda…
Sharing the load, the backstory
Here is another goal we had with this piece: break the self-perpetuating cycle of “mothers are just better at…” caused by the biased assumption that ‘maternal instinct’ is a biological certainty. We believe that by breaking that cycle, we can work towards a world that enables priming the caregiving dad brain to take on more emotional labor.
Ok, yes, this plot might not create big changes today, but maybe it will start to make a dent by the time our daughters become parents?
The backstory: The inspiration for this piece came when Kate and I were discussing how mothers (in different-sex couples2) end up taking on the bulk of the emotional labor load. Kate is a gender equity expert. She literally wrote the book on equal partnership. And yet, here we were, examining how the emotional labor load skew shows up in our own homes, going right to the “mothers are just better at…” and “women have maternal instinct” default to explain it.
But when we stepped back to challenge this assumption, the holes became apparent.
Assumption – The female brain is more equipped for caregiving and empathy. We have ‘maternal instinct’.
Holes – This ‘fact’ is based on biased research that specifically looked for the underlying mechanisms of caregiving in the female brain while ignoring potential for similar changes in the general caregiver brain. The reality is far more expansive but the research gaps need time to fill in.
Once we acknowledged that our assumptions related more to cultural norms than scientific facts, we started to hypothesize about the self-perpetuating cycle of neural changes related to the ‘maternal instinct’ narrative.
Where does it start?
Do we, as mothers, get set onto the emotional-labor-load-taking brain trajectory because we are the primary parents at the newborn care stage? Does it start even earlier because girls are more encouraged than boys, socially, to take on gendered care work at a young age?
About those neural changes — ongoing research has started to illuminate how engaged time with infants underlies the brain changes associated with caregiving. Guess who is taking on the bulk of the engaged time with infants? Mothers. The mother is getting the neural benefits while the sideline-sitting dad3 does not get the experience needed to stimulate his brain in a way to create lasting changes.
When only the mother’s brain is primed to respond to an infant cry, guess who is going to respond quicker to a toddler sniffle in the middle of the night? Mothers.
When the mother responds more often in the middle of the night and her brain and behavior adapt a little more every time, guess who is going to be up at 3am worrying about their tween’s social dynamics? Mothers.
Here’s my working theory (because we’re going to have to wait a while for research and funding to catch up) – It is NOT that mothers take on a bulk of the emotional load because only our brains are primed for empathy. We take on a bulk of the emotional load because our male partners did not get set on the same neural trajectory that we did. This lack-of-change could relate to gendering early in life or it could relate to paternity leave in America — not having access to paternity leave, not fully take paternity leave, never having to solo parent early on in a way that forced engaged experience with their infant — or anything in between.
This is just a theory of course but we know non-birth parents can experience neural plasticity related to caregiving so what a missed opportunity, right?
Everyone is capable of neural changes that relate to parenting instincts. Everyone is capable of sharing the emotional labor load. “Moms are just better at…” is no longer a good enough excuse.
Share the load. Decrease maternal stress.
The Maternal Stress Project is an educational and idea-spreading initiative and we want it to be available to all. You can subscribe for free and get all posts delivered right to your inbox. However, if you feel compelled to bump up to a paid subscription, your generous support will facilitate the growth of this project… and be much appreciated!
Sharing and spreading the word is equally valuable and appreciated!
I am all for the incredible maternal brain. If an appreciation for the distinctly maternal brain changes positively affects how you, personally, feel about your maternal instinct and your choices in motherhood, that is awesome. Expanding the definition and evidence around neural changes related to caregiving, more generally, is in no way meant to take this identity away from you.
Like most funding-related research gaps, there aren’t nearly enough data on this subject considering same-sex couples or comparing them to different-sex couples. But from the data and anecdotal evidence that do exist, Kate does a great job explaining how the labor load tends to work in same-sex couples in this interview. Summary: when a couple does not slip into cultural and stereotypical gender norms, there is a lot more discussion and a lot more balance in the household.
I know that there are a lot of men out there who want to be fully immersed in the life and caregiving of their children but are not able to for various reasons. The “mothers are just better at…” narrative also affects how fatherhood + caregiving responsibilities + leave-taking are respected at all levels of family and society, but especially in the workplace. We need to work on that one too.
I'm in! ---- re: "my secret plot to push a culture shift that will enhance caregiving-related neural plasticity in non-birth parents (mostly fathers, for reasons mentioned below), and distribute the emotional labor load for future generations."
Great article, Molly!
not so secret plan!!