The Audacity: When did Girlfriend become a job description?

Let's begin with our first piece of evidence, the mental load, because household labor isn't just doing things.

Household labor is noticing things need to be done, like, you know, remembering when they need to be done or figuring out how they're going to get done, making sure they actually do.

you know, get done than somehow knowing when they need to be done again.

You know, it's six business days.

That's the invisible part.

Taking a kid to the dentist, that's just a task.

Knowing that they need a dentist appointment, that's a different task because you got to find a dentist.

You got to check your insurance.

You got to make the appointment.

You got to remember the appointment.

You got to put the appointment in your calendar.

You got to remember that his school is going to need a note.

He's got to call him out.

You got to fill out the forms, reminding everybody the night before and knowing.

that your kid is absolutely going to throw up if he drinks milk beforehand.

That whole thing, that's project management.

And there's actual research on this.

I have a little statistic.

A study of mothers with young children found that women reported carrying 73% of the cognitive household labor compared with 27% for their partners.

And cognitive labor, that's not the physical.

That's the stuff happening upstairs, right? The anticipating, the planning, remembering, monitoring, the invisible browser tabs.

And researchers found that carrying more of that cognitive workload was associated with more stress and burnout, worse mental health, and poor relationship functioning.

Surprise! So when a woman says,

I'm tired,

I'm tired.