Abstract
Mental labor is an under-researched and long-invisible component of family work. Scholars have described mental labor as important, taxing, and disproportionately performed by mothers compared to fathers. However, operational definitions used in these studies were only preliminary and lack unified terminology. Answering calls for expanded views of household labor and better definitions of its content, we undertook a phenomenological investigation of family-related mental labor performed by mothers. Our interpretive phenomenological analysis of seven focus group interviews produced a definition of mothers’ mental labor and its component parts that was empirically grounded in the lived experience of mothers of young children (N = 25). Distinct from housework chores, childcare, and emotion work, mental labor emerged as thinking activity performed for the sake of accomplishing family goals. We identified six forms of mental labor: (a) planning and strategizing, (b) monitoring and anticipating needs, (c) metaparenting, (d) knowing (learning and remembering), (e) managerial thinking (including delegating and instructing), and (f) self-regulation. All participating mothers represented themselves as their family’s primary mental laborer, regardless of employment status or their partner’s level of involvement. Our description of mental labor may help parents, researchers, clinicians, policy makers, and educators recognize, value, and better account for the mental labor dynamics operating in the construction of family life, reproduction of gender roles, and perpetuation of gender gaps in family labor division and mental load. Online slides for instructors who want to use this article for teaching are available on PWQ's website at http://journals.sagepub.com/page/pwq/suppl/index
Keywords
Family work researchers have described mental work as an under-researched and long-invisible component of family care (Meier, McNaughton-Cassill, & Lynch, 2006; Treas & Tai, 2012; Walzer, 1996; Warren, 2011; Winkler & Ireland, 2009). An incohesive, though useful, body of literature on mental aspects of family life exists and indicates that mental dimensions of family care are economically and experientially meaningful. Researchers have called for an expanded view of household labor that includes the cognitive tasks related to managing family life—tasks that are often labeled “mental labor” (Lee & Waite, 2005; Offer, 2014; Treas & Tai, 2012). Investigation of mental labor has been limited by insufficient construct clarification. In order to accurately operationalize the construct of family care overall, a richer, more comprehensive understanding of mental labor phenomena is needed. Interdisciplinary scholarship provides a foundation for exploring the phenomenology of mental labor, including sociological, psychological, and philosophical studies of invisible labor (Daniels, 1987, 1988; DeVault, 1987, 1991; Hess, 1990; Oakley, 1974), emotion work (Bird & Ross, 1993; Erickson, 2005; Hochschild, 1983), household management and responsibility (Doucet, 2001; Mederer, 1993; Meier et al., 2006; Treas & Tai, 2012; Winkler & Ireland, 2009), and family-related thinking (Hochschild & Machung, 1989; Offer, 2014; Thorstad, Anderson, Hall, Willingham, & Carruthers, 2006; Walzer, 1996). Several constructs in the parenting literature are also relevant, including parental monitoring and parental knowledge (Crouter & Head, 2002), metaparenting (Holden & Hawk, 2003; Nicholson, Howard, & Borkowski, 2008), and maternal thinking (Ruddick, 1989).
Invisible Work
In the middle of the 20th century, activists began highlighting the social invisibility of women’s work. This helped to legitimize civic volunteer efforts, political advocacy, care for older adult dependents, childcare, and housework—domains of unpaid labor often performed by women—as work that is economically valuable and appropriate to study as a labor activity (Erickson, 2005; Hess, 1990; Hochschild & Machung, 1989; Oakley, 1974). Feminist sociologists like Ann Oakley (1974) and Arlene Kaplan Daniels (1987, 1988) produced theoretical and empirical scholarship to make this invisible work visible. They helped dismantle folk understandings of work that excluded or devalued the work women perform in domestic spaces; they re-conceptualized housework as an occupation rather than a “natural” expression of femininity and love (Daniels, 1987; DeVault, 1987; Lopata, 1972 as cited in Edgell, 2012; Pedersen, Minnotte, Mannon, & Kiger, 2011).
Scholars have cautioned, however, that efforts to legitimize family care within the framework of the paid economy may hinder cultural reform by inadvertently reducing mothering exclusively to a concept of “work,” which obscures the true character of mothering (DeVault, 1991; Ruddick, 1989). Scholars have also criticized the influence of an exclusionary feminist ideology that centers on White, middle- and upper-class cisgender women, ignores intersectional contexts, and erases the experiences of people with multiple minority identities; these scholars have called for new conceptual categories—categories based in the lived experience of caregiving (DeVault, 1987; Kan & Laurie, 2018; Ting, Perales, & Baxter, 2015).
Sociologists Hochschild and Machung (1989) used invisible work to refer to labor that was not just socially unacknowledged but also literally invisible. Calling attention to the uncompensated commodification and health risks of invisible work that is required of women in hospitality jobs, Hochschild (1983) coined the term emotion work (i.e., affect performance enacted to fulfill job requirements). Hochschild distinguished emotion work from the physical and mental aspects of a job but did not elaborate on the mental aspects. Studying families’ meal preparation, DeVault (1987, 1991) used the terms invisible labor and mental work interchangeably to describe psychological work that precedes grocery shopping or cooking (e.g., meal planning, monitoring kitchen stores, ascertaining what family members will eat, orchestrating meal-time rituals). She characterized this work as occurring in one’s thoughts, extending throughout the day, and consuming the largest portion of the responsible party’s (almost always the mother’s) food-related efforts. Analyzing interviews with new parents, Walzer (1996) used mental labor as an umbrella term to distinguish thinking, feeling, and interpersonal work from the physical tasks of infant care. She identified three forms of baby-related mental labor that were performed by mothers (worry, information processing, and division of labor) and argued that gendered division of unacknowledged mental labor contributed to marital stress and increased gender differentiation after having children. Although these studies illuminated the existence and gendered nature of non-physical family work, they are limited by their narrow focus (i.e., feeding, infant-care), loose use of terminology, and failure to distinguish thinking from affect-regulation aspects of invisible work.
Conceptualizations of Family Work
Psychologists who research work and family have emphasized the need to disambiguate and define the components of household labor in order to accurately study domestic life and patterns of time-use (Bird & Ross, 1993; Coltrane, 2000, 2010; Perry-Jenkins, Repetti, & Crouter, 2000). Early efforts produced lists of core housework chores (Coleman, 1988; Coltrane, 2000) and expanded operational definitions of household work to include both childcare and emotion work (Bianchi & Milkie, 2010; Blair & Lichter, 1991; Erickson, 2005; Shelton & John, 1996). It is increasingly common in family work studies to include measures for these three constructs: physical chores, childcare, emotion work (Erickson, 2005; Pedersen, 2017; Shelton & John, 1996). A number of researchers have described additional family-related work activities that are unaccounted for in conceptualizations of family work consisting only of these three constructs. Some researchers recognized responsibility as a form of family work, noting the difference between “helping with” and “responsibility for” a task (Barnett & Baruch, 1987). The family member who performs a physical chore is not always the same family member who has executive responsibility for “defining tasks as necessary, creating standards for their performance, and making sure they are completed in an acceptable manner” (Mederer, 1993, p. 133). Other studies have acknowledged that family care involves planning, scheduling, and organizing; these studies provided preliminary theoretical and empirical data about domestic responsibility (Doucet, 2001), household management (Mederer, 1993; Meier et al., 2006; Winkler & Ireland, 2009), and mental labor (Lee & Waite, 2005; Offer, 2014; Thorstad et al., 2006). Other studies illuminated specific activities involved in family life that are infrequently included in family work studies, such as household finance management (Risner, 2012; Thorne, 2010), juggling priorities and time conflicts (Arendell, 2001; Bianchi & Wight, 2010; Hessing, 1994; Hochschild, 1997), family identity management (Edwards, 2004), and mnemonic work (Ahn, Haines, & Mason, 2017). Given that family work research continues to document household undertakings that do not fit into the three-category scheme for defining family work (i.e., housework, childcare, emotion work), these findings suggest we need a fourth category of family care that includes the invisible mental work related to managerial and family caregiving responsibility.
Efforts to Conceptualize Mental Aspects of Family Work
Mederer (1993) proposed an expanded definition of household labor: the creation of a household in which members are cared for—involving caring for members, the home, and transactional matters. Meier, McNaughton-Cassill, and Lynch (2006) used this definition to study mental work, conceptualized as managing the completion of household and childcare tasks, as well as worrying about the successful completion of such tasks. Although their operational definition was not based in empirical data and therefore does not represent a comprehensive understanding of this construct, findings did confirm that task management and task accomplishment were distinct constructs and that mothers were disproportionately responsible for this management work compared to fathers (Mederer, 1993; Meier et al., 2006).
Focusing on production rather than care, Winkler and Ireland (2009) conceptualized household management as the “process by which a family determines the quality and quantity of various goods and services to be provided, by whom, and how adequate provision will be monitored” (p. 293), involving “a series of steps including setting goals, planning, implementing, and evaluating results” (p. 295). The authors called their work preliminary, citing among other things, their reliance on pre-existing survey items and methods that failed to account for unique qualities of management work (i.e., completed in small increments throughout the day, as a secondary activity, etc.).
Doucet (2001) recognized that managerial parenting responsibilities are heavily interpersonal, enacted in complex sociocultural networks, and oriented toward the goal of identifying and meeting personal needs. She argued that the job’s highly relational, process-oriented nature makes it impossible to reduce to task lists or time allocations. She also distinguished emotional responsibility (e.g., processes related to relational attentiveness, knowledge, noticing, comforting, and advising) from intrahousehold responsibility (i.e., processes related to “collating limited resources of time, energy, and money,” coordinating with other carers/institutions involved in children’ lives, and arranging babysitting and birthdays). However, Doucet’s study is limited by a narrow focus on childcare rather than household labor.
In 1998–2000, the Sloan Center’s 500 Family Study (Alfred P. Sloan Working Families Center, 2018) used an experience sampling measure to ask participants to report current activities and the subject of their thinking throughout the day, whenever a timer alerted them to do so. If the content of reported thoughts was linked to any of eight core household/family tasks, the researchers coded it as an approximation of mental labor (Lee & Waite, 2005; Offer, 2014). They distinguished emotion work from mental labor based on differences between thinking acts and social-emotional behaviors. However, as Offer’s (2014) findings about gender differences in mental labor effects indicated—only mothers experience it as stressful—the presence of “thoughts about” work is insufficient to explain the qualities of mental labor phenomena or clarify the difference between musing about family tasks and feeling responsible for those tasks.
Parenting Constructs Related to Mental Labor
Researchers studying parenting have also described mental dimensions of family care. Parental monitoring and parental knowledge refer to tracking family member whereabouts, deliberate surveillance, noticing, listening, awareness, and knowledge of whereabouts and social-emotional condition (Crouter & Head, 2002). These parenting behaviors are significantly related to positive child outcomes and lower vulnerability to delinquency (Bianchi & Wight, 2010; Korie, 2015; Zlomke, Lamport, Bauman, Garland, & Talbot, 2014). Metaparenting—the intentional development of a philosophy or parenting plan that prescribes certain parental practices—has been conceptualized as anticipating children’s needs, assessing their developmental context, solving parenting challenges, and reflecting on parent–child interactions (Holden & Hawk, 2003). Metaparenting has been found to correlate with optimal parenting practices (Nicholson et al., 2008), suggesting that intentional mental work is characteristic of good parenting.
Feminist philosopher Sara Ruddick’s (1989) work on maternal thinking also associates mental labor with efforts to parent well. Investigating maternal thinking—a concept she saw as relevant to people of all genders—Ruddick conceptualizes mothering-related thoughts as a set of intellectual capacities developed through active, volitional choices to engage in a caring response to the demands of a dependent child. Ruddick’s maternal thinking calls for daily decisions, alert reflectiveness, and the exercise of maternal judgment, metaphysical attitudes, and ethical values. The self-regulatory, volition-based, and ethical consciousness involved in Ruddick’s picture of family care further reflects mental labor’s critical role in nurturing not just physical health but also the characterological, interpersonal, and moral wellbeing of family members. These mental processes—monitoring, knowing, developing and intentionally working to align parenting practices with a parenting philosophy, and skills related to care-giver attunement—are clearly important to family life, given the evidence that they directly affect a family’s ability to provide for child welfare. Yet, these mental processes have not been empirically demonstrated nor have they been accounted for in theoretical conceptualizations of family-related mental labor in psychological research on gendered division of household labor.
Mental Labor
Although existing literature had not provided an expanded, disambiguated definition that accounts for the full range and complexity of all that mental labor involves, studies of related phenomena do offer preliminary insights. These have informed the current study’s efforts to provide the needed, experientially derived construct clarification. For example, DeVault (1987) found that mental labor related to family feeding often occurred simultaneously or was interwoven with other activities (e.g., mentally tracking price comparisons while also cutting coupons and watching children). DeVault believed this camouflaged its presence and accounted for the absence of mental labor in participants’ self-reports when asked directly about their family work. Other researchers have noted that family-related mental labor is difficult to detect and accurately measure, given its cognitive and invisible nature (Lee & Waite, 2005; Winkler & Ireland, 2009). Furthermore, mental labor tends to be closely associated with gender socialization, personal identity, and family role. For example, Thorstad, Anderson, Hall, Willingham, and Carruthers (2006) noted the intimate link between self and mental work in participant quotations such as this one: “I’m the supervisor, making sure it’s all thought of” (p. 242). Mental labor is often an implicit process that goes unacknowledged and unnamed even by the workers themselves (DeVault, 1987; Hessing, 1994).
Substantial evidence suggests that mothers are the primary mental laborers (DeVault, 1991; Meier et al., 2006; Thorstad et al., 2006; Treas & Tai, 2012; Walzer, 1996; Zimmerman, Haddock, Ziemba, & Rust, 2001). This is often associated with gender ideologies and socialization that prescribe mothers as the “default” parent with the ultimate responsibility for how things run in the household (Arendell, 2001; Bianchi, Robinson, & Milkie, 2006; Mederer, 1993). Lee and Waite (2005) found that the observed gender gap in domestic workload increased significantly when mental labor was included (Lee & Waite, 2005). In contrast, two survey studies suggest that mothers and fathers spend similar amounts of time thinking about family, children, or spouse (Offer, 2014, Winkler & Ireland, 2009). To make sense of these differences, we need to further understand the breadth and quality of mental labor phenomena.
Researchers have also suggested that managerial responsibility for family life is more difficult to share than physical or emotional labor, even for couples endorsing gender-egalitarian ideals (Doucet, 2001; Mederer, 1993; Zimmerman et al., 2001). Some have hypothesized that mental labor is a source of pride or power, valued more highly than other forms of work (e.g., for the domestic power it confers, as a gender-confirming action that buffers the social stress of challenging dominant gender role ideologies in other areas of life; Mederer 1993; Treas & Tai, 2012). Some data have suggested that sharing mental labor with a spouse is more effective at reducing mothering-related stress than simply having the ability to delegate physical chores like diaper changing to a co-parent (Thorstad et al., 2006; Walzer, 1996). Mental labor may be experienced, paradoxically, as both empowering and burdensome, and to better understand the role of mental labor in the construction of family life and maternal identity, the phenomenology of mental labor needs to be empirically investigated.
In summary, mental labor is a significant component of family life that affects a range of family dynamics. Mental labor has also been described in diverse ways and terminologies. And, mental labor itself is a diverse and complex phenomenon that is not fully captured by any current definition or measure. Lacking construct clarification, definitions are inconsistent and each study uses its own measurement methods, often accentuating differences in conceptualization and making comparison between studies difficult. To support development of trustworthy theory, mental labor conceptualization needs to be more comprehensive and grounded in the lived experiences and concerns of those—generally mothers—who do this work. The current study was designed to provide construct clarification of this kind. The study was guided by a set of multiple research questions about mental labor phenomena and the social-cultural structures that influence the experience of mental labor (Robertson, 2017). The current article presents the findings directly related to two research questions focused on defining mental labor activities: What mental labor is performed by mothers of infants and elementary age children? Are there different forms of mental labor and, if so, how are these distinguished?
Method
Given the limitations of previous research, the appropriateness of qualitative methods for studying a historically under-recognized aspect of women’s experience, and the need for a deepened understanding of mental labor phenomena, we selected a phenomenological design (Moustakas, 1994). Prior research suggests that the invisible (i.e., socially unacknowledged) character of mental labor leads “mental laborers” to underestimate or discount their mental work; this poses a threat to self-report research (Bird & Ross, 1993; DeVault, 1991; Shelton & John, 1996). To overcome this challenge, we employed a focus group methodology, utilizing collaborative social reflection and mirroring as a tool for consciousness-raising. Evidence suggests that a well-facilitated focus group approach to phenomenological inquiry can produce greater spontaneity, curiosity, and openness to new perspectives on familiar experiences (Bradbury-Jones, Sambrook, & Irvine, 2009; Palmer, Larkin, de Visser, & Fadden, 2010).
Participants
We recruited 25 mothers living in Southern California via flyers, in-person invitations at community-based groups, and snowball sampling. Each recruit was assigned to participate in one of the seven focus group interviews, based on participant date/location preference. At the end of the group interview, each participant received a $15 café gift card. We used selection criteria consistent with previous research on mental labor phenomena. All participants were partnered mothers raising children in a two-parent home with an oldest child under age 13. Twenty-four of the 25 participants were parenting with a male partner and 1 with a female partner. All participants had three or fewer children (average of two children) with children between 3 months and 12 years (mean age of first child = approximately 5 years 7 months, SD = 2.93; see Table 1). Participant age ranged from 27 to 48 years (mean age = 34.92, SD = 4.59).
Developmental Stage of Participants’ Children by Focus Group.
Employment status varied (see Table 2): 11 reported working outside the home (44% total; 32% full time, 12% part time), 1 identified as working from home (4%), 2 reported being stay-at-home parents with an additional job title (8%; “missionary” and “homeschool coordinator”), and 11 self-identified as stay-at-home parents (44%). The self-identified ethnicity of the participants was predominantly European American (17; 68%); two participants identified as Latina and one as White/Hispanic; five self-identified, respectively, as African American, Armenian, Chinese American, Filipina, and Russian/Spanish. Eighty-four percent of participants reported a 4-year college degree or more. Participants were recruited from a non-clinical population. Although health and socio-economic status were not systematically assessed, groups represented a wide variety of experiences related to these factors.
Participant Employment by Focus Group.
Procedures
The first author moderated seven 120-minute focus group interviews, using a semi-structured focus group protocol developed for this purpose. A description of the evolution of the protocol over the course of the study and the final version of the semi-structured interview protocol are available in full at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0361684319825581. A research assistant acted as a silent process observer and note taker, documenting sequence of speakers and non-verbal communications. Immediately after the interviews, participants completed a demographic and feedback questionnaire (available in full as Supplemental Material here: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0361684319825581). After dismissing participants, the moderator and assistant debriefed together using semi-structured reflection process to encourage reflexivity, explore interpretive biases, and discuss procedural revisions.
Data Analysis
Data analysis was rooted in epistemological assumptions consistent with Heideggerian interpretive/hermeneutical phenomenology. The authors share Heidegger’s view that bracketing one’s positional set of assumptions is not possible, nor desirable; only through lived experience can useful interpretation and learning occur. Despite arguments that group interviews contaminate experiential reports, Palmer, Larkin, de Visser, and Fadden (2010) and Bradbury-Jones, Sambrook, and Irvine (2009) have argued that it is valid to extend this Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) perspective to the context of focus group discourse if additional procedures for acknowledging co-created meaning-making are used. Based on their recommendations, we considered the focus group (not individual participant contributions) the basic unit of analysis, reflecting our view that an individual’s contributions cannot be separated out from the context and influence of group conversation.
In IPA, interpretive integrity comes from awareness of meaning-making processes, commitment to considering multiple interpretations, transparency, moving back and forth between growing descriptions grounded in the participants’ own words and the researchers more abstracted synthesized account, and recognition that any analytic account will only ever be partial (Palmer et al., 2010; Smith & Eatough, 2007). We acknowledged developmental and social-cultural factors (e.g., class, age, gender, political climate, group affiliations) influencing focus group data and subsequent analysis. And we used quality assurance procedures that involved consideration of positionality (self-reflective journaling, post-interview debriefs), structured consideration of alternative interpretations (independent coding, peer review), and progressive refinement of procedures and findings in response to participant feedback (direct inquiry about preferences, anonymous feedback questionnaires, member check). Our positionality involves a feminist perspective, as reflected in our framing of mental labor as a women’s issue, identification of this construct as socially invisible due to systems of oppression, and belief that this invisibility ought to be challenged for the welfare of women workers and society as a whole. All the authors are middle-class, cisgender women and three of the four authors are parents. We frequently discussed how our gendered experience, intersecting identities, social roles, and family-related thinking influenced our analysis.
We created verbatim transcripts of each focus group for analysis. The first author designed an IPA protocol, following Smith and Osborn’s (2003) guidelines and using Palmer and colleagues’ (2010) recommendations for IPA with focus groups. To enhance methodological integrity, the process included four phases (Seale, 1999). In Phase 1, a team of three coders (the first and second author and an undergraduate research assistant) each independently coded and then collaboratively integrated tables of themes identified by each coder for each focus group. The authors discussed differences in interpretations until consensus was reached. In Phase 2, seven colleagues in a women’s issues research group individually read the focus group transcripts and provided peer review feedback in writing; during research group meetings, they suggested themes that had been missed and challenged themes that they perceived as ill-fitting or poorly distinguished. In Phase 3, the first author (in ongoing consultation with the other authors) integrated tables of themes and peer feedback into a single thematic hierarchy. In Phase 4, we emailed a written summary of findings to all participants, who were then invited to provide feedback. No participants responded; thus, this member check did not generate any new data. However, several mothers did email the first author with additional thoughts in the weeks following their focus group participation. These emailed comments were considered in the final data analysis process.
Results
The final table of themes (see Table 3) reflects the collaborative meaning-making of seven focus groups. Although stories and statements from particular group members (or dialogues between members) are used to illustrate themes, they have been interpreted within a conversational context and selected for their ability to represent the product of group, rather than individual, reflection. Each transcript excerpt is a verbatim quotation and is identified by its focus group source number (FG1 through FG7). When dialogue is quoted, individual speakers are identified with a unique code letter (e.g., “FG1.A” identifies Participant A from Focus Group 1). Given that the group is the basic unit of our analysis, participant numbers have been left out of single-speaker quotations to maintain emphasis on the co-created nature of group-level meaning making.
Content of Family-Related Mental Labor: Six Themes With Subthemes.
No new themes about mental labor content were produced in the final two focus groups, suggesting that a saturation point had been reached. Themes included in the final thematic hierarchy (presented below) were supported across all seven focus groups. That said, some were more explicit than others. Metaparenting, for example, was the theme least elaborated upon across groups, and in a few groups, its presence was subtle. In the few cases where a theme or subtheme was less prominent in some transcripts than others, we evaluated the significance of the proposed theme, hypothesized reasons for the theme having stronger data in some transcripts compared to others, and examined whether any of the authors or peer reviewers saw transcript evidence that contradicted the proposed theme. The first author sought consensus with other authors when disagreements and choices between alternative theme structures arose, then made the final decisions. Collaborative deliberation was guided by priorities to (1) represent participant claims in a way that was recognizable and congruent to participants; (2) balance thoroughness with parsimony; (3) maximize utility for potential, later measurement development; and (4) be consistent with preexisting literature.
A Definition of Mental Labor and Six Themes
Mental labor emerged as thinking performed for the sake of accomplishing family goals. First, mental labor is thinking work, which can occur independently and separate from physical or emotional task performance. Furthermore, mere thoughts about family-related subjects are not mental labor unless they serve a family-care function. Representative of how focus groups made this distinction, participants contrasted their partner’s family-related thoughts to their own. In the words of one mother: He thinks, he talks about [the family] a lot at work. I don’t think he thinks about the daily—I mean—he’s great, he’s available to help me all the time, but he doesn’t plan it. He doesn’t spend time thinking through it or scheduling it. (FG1)
Participants described a diverse set of mental processes and preoccupations that comprised their family-related thinking work. These thoughts shared a common orientation toward achieving and sustaining a desirable family life. The process of coding led to the identification of six clearly distinguishable and experientially relevant themes, or forms, of mental labor: (a) planning and strategizing, (b) monitoring and anticipating needs, (c) metaparenting, (d) knowing, (e) managerial thinking, and (f) self-regulating. These six forms of mental labor are often intertwined or co-occurring but also could be observed independently.
Planning and strategizing
The most prominent theme, strategic planning, arguably is required to make family life happen: “Thinking about it and planning for it doesn’t mean it does happen. There’s a lot that I think of and plan for and strategize that never goes through. But with lack of planning: nothing” (FG3). Four sub-themes emerged: time management, planning activities, developing how-to plans for family life, and contingency plans.
The sub-theme time management involves scheduling and organizing daily task accomplishments, so that everything can get done within given time constraints: “It’s just a lot of scheduling. That’s mostly what takes up my time is time management” (FG1). Transcripts contained numerous multiple-page-long stories narrating thoughts of this kind. Here is an excerpt from Focus Group 6: FG6.B: Right now, I take my son to preschool and it takes me about 20 minutes to drive there, preschool is only three hours long; so, I have a two-hour chunk in which to accomplish my things. So, I have to think how it’s going to take me 10 minutes to get to Target. I need to spend 35 there if I’m going to get to Costco when it opens at this time. Then being able to plot out, if you’re here and you have to get your kids to different things, well I know it’s going to take this much time, because before I get out the door I have to change my other daughter’s diaper, then he’ll have to go to the bathroom, and my oldest’s going to change her clothes in the middle of me changing the other one, so I have to change her again, and I need to know where everyone’s shoes are and…just every task comes with that question, “How long to actually do that thing?” FG6.C: And how much preplanning needs to go into getting out the door, and what can I do ahead of time, and all of that so, yeah.
Planning family activities is also mental-work intensive but is somewhat more focused and discrete than time management. As Focus Group 6 discussed: FG6.B: Yeah, every task comes with… FG6.C: A plan. FG6.B: A plan! Before the task, right? You just, there’s no just walking into the grocery store and like, “What should I make this week? I’ll just look at the aisles!”
Developing “how-to” plans for family life is a subtheme that was typically an even more discrete and focused manifestation of family-related planning. Mothers talked about giving focused attention to developing family procedures, child-rearing methods, or routines. During Focus Group 4’s discussion, one participant articulated it this way: I’ll spend a lot of time thinking about the method. For instance, our recent food thing: [describes intricacies of a plan for regulating what and how much food children eat] I spent a lot of time reading, then talking with friends, then talking it through with my husband, and after that extended time, we decided our method.
The sub-theme contingency plans reflects a more fluid form of planning that involved generating back-up plans. This was important, given the unpredictability of family life: FG3.C: From one day to the next sometimes, the kid changes. [FG3.D: Definitely]. It’s always adapting. [To D] Yeah. FG3.B: So we don’t just have a contingency plan. We have ten contingency plans.
Monitoring and anticipating needs
The next theme of mental labor that participants described refers to all the mental monitoring and anticipating effort required to assess family status and detect needs. Monitoring is a pervasive mental act involved in—and often a pre-requisite for—other forms of mental labor. For example, efficient meal planning is supported by the planner’s preceding work to monitor household food stores, available budget, and current family member preferences.
Mothers talked extensively about monitoring family resources and expectations of others: food, finances, insurance, vehicles, energy, grocery store hours, household property, and so forth. For example: “I’m thinking: Do I have all the ingredients? Do I need to go to the store?” (FG5), “Do we actually have enough money for that?” (FG4), “Am I going to have a car today?” (FG3), “Since we only have one car, having to keep track of does that car have gas?” (FG4), and “Do I have enough time for that?” (FG5). Mothers also reported monitoring the opinions and wishes of other stakeholders including partners, extended family, babysitters, and academic, social, or religious community: “I want to make sure his expectations of me being a stay-at-home-mom are met. So, I have his wishes in my mind too” (FG1).
Monitoring children—their safety, health, moods, developmental changes, and unfolding personality—was the form of monitoring participants focused on most. This subtheme was described as conscious, often vigilant, work: “You are constantly supervising, constantly on alert” (FG1), “Constantly monitoring, constantly watching” (FG5). It involves monitoring physical status but also “being in tune with your child’s emotions and needs” (FG6). This included interpreting children’s non-verbal cues and inferring their needs. If they had grade school age children, focus groups talked about monitoring emerging interests and their academic, social, and moral growth. With younger children, there was an intensity to the monitoring, more focused on routine bodily status (i.e., hunger, energy, bathroom needs). With toddlers, physical safety was a heightened concern, with language, judgment, and self-awareness lagging behind their ambulatory power: “My son can be mobile now, but he’s not fully mentally responsible enough for himself yet” (FG3). Until a child can perform it for themselves, mothers perform self-monitoring and regulatory functions on the child’s behalf: The other day he went to bed and was like, “I didn’t have any water at dinner.” Yikes! So, monitoring what he has already eaten and if he hasn’t had quite enough. He signs so he can say more if he’s hungry, but, sometimes he’s playing or not attentive. So, then it’s like: “Okay how much has he eaten?” thinking then, “Okay, do I have anything else?” (FG4) It’s the constant vigilance you have. You’re always on guard, always mindful of, where’s my child? What’s he eaten? How’s he sleeping? How’s he behaving? Stuff that might not necessarily turn into an action, but it’s always running whether or not you act on it. (FG6)
Metaparenting
The theme of metaparenting refers to the development of a parenting philosophy that then guided parental decision making. Metaparenting involves meta-reflective thoughts and intention setting, often focused on identification of values and committing to specific ideologies. Several participants talked about setting aside time to develop their parenting scheme with a partner: “We had time to plan, discuss, and know what and how we wanted to be parents” (FG5). Although metaparenting was not explicitly discussed in all focus groups, references to global, qualitative ideals governing parental strivings were implicit in stories from all seven groups: I value mirroring my son’s emotions to him, so that is going to require me being attentive to what he’s doing, and this means I am going to choose one activity over the other; if I didn’t value that, I would make different choices with my day. (FG4) We have lots of thought and ideas of what we hold to be very important and true. So, there are lots of questions we ask ourselves […] that then influences how we discipline and the activities we choose and how we do holidays. I think about holidays in advance in that way. Like, what is going to be our emphasis? (FG4)
Knowing
The knowing theme refers to the parental knowledge, information processing, and mnemonic activity that allowed mothers to acquire and recall relevant knowledge about the family system. As one participant puts it, “I’m carrying the lion’s share of mental thinking because I see it. I have more of that information to provide” (FG6). The quality of having specialized knowledge seemed to create and perpetuate the experience of being the family’s primary mental laborer. Several mothers described a comparatively high degree of family-knowledge-sharing between partners, parents, or children, and these participants seemed to experience somewhat greater role flexibility. Two sub-themes emerged, reflecting the acquisition and use of family knowledge.
Participants described learning about housekeeping and childcare: “It was learning from day one. Every day, something new, how to do it. How to feed, how to dress, how to—and then that stage would be over, then I’d have to learn a new stage” (FG5). Some learning work was concrete and explicit: mothers talked about sifting through online blogs, reading parenting books, attending parenting groups or classes, asking for advice from friends, or seeking counsel from their own mothers. Some learning work was more implicit, developed through trial-and-error and repeated exposure: “Being at home with your kids you have daily experience to know how much food it takes to fill his tummy” (FG4). This daily experience produced pattern recognition skills allowing parents to acquire understanding of family norms and needs.
It also takes active mental labor to remember, hold in mind learned knowledge, and keep track of material supplies. “There’s just a lot of remembering” (FG2) was a repeated refrain across groups. Mnemonic strategies allowed mothers to link information collected (i.e., via monitoring) and make it available for use when executing plans. To illustrate this point, one mother described the recall effort involved in executing a weekly rock climbing date with her partner: “It’s having to remember, there are these instructions for the [church] nursery worker, and the instructions for my parents, and all my son’s things…and I’ve got to remember to get our lunch out of the refrigerator before we leave, and our change of clothes. It’s a lot” (FG2). Leaving the house or breaking with routine could increase remembering-related demands, and groups talked about how this could make things that are supposed to be fun (vacations, “girls’ day out,” “date nights”) feel burdensome. References to the stress of forgetting were also woven throughout group narratives. Reliable recall played a vital role in mothers’ efforts to run the household smoothly.
Managerial thinking
Managerial thinking was about executive oversight and directorial decision making. It involved the leadership work of juggling priorities, balancing demands, solving problems, and directing others, so that goals get accomplished in a desirable way. This required thinking globally about the family system—past, present, and future—while simultaneously attending to household details with a keen understanding of cause and effect between all elements of the system. Such system-awareness was often evident in the seemingly menial thoughts mothers described as “always in my head” (FG5) and “in the back of my head” (FG4): [While we were talking tonight] I’m also like, okay [my children] ate pizza tonight. We don’t usually eat out, so their blood sugar is going to be spiked, so I wonder if [my husband] had them running out on the lawn to try and get them to calm down. Are they now home doing a nap? Because we ate out will they be too high strung to nap? (FG3)
Orchestrating was the higher order mental process of coordinating and balancing myriad, interdependent variables of family life. One group used a metaphor to describe this: It’s like I am this conductor. You’re running an orchestra and you have to have all the instruments that have to go right. They have to be working at the same pace and the flow so it’s not a noise, it’s a melody. (FG3) FG2.A: It’s a lot of thinking about, “Okay, this has happened now several times; I see a pattern; I don’t want this to continue; how do I change it?” And that takes a lot of mental energy. Because you have to notice it. Then put forth extra energy to do something about it. And not just to think about it, but have a plan to do something new. FG2.C: And then to stick to that plan! FG2.B:…And letting the husband know the plan, too.
Managerial thinking involves reflective practice or evaluating. Focus group discussion reflected the importance of periodically assessing the effectiveness of family routines and interactions: “I think a great deal about how I am affecting my kids. They’re mostly post-thoughts, after I do something or say something, I go: Okay. Now, did I handle that well? Did that hurt my daughter? Do I need to reconcile something or should I let that one go?” (FG1). Intentionally pausing to assess what’s working empowered positive change: It’s a very, very necessary part of parenting, because when you self-reflect or see examples of your parenting in your children, it’s the “ah-ha” moment, “Oh, I need to change some things.” Not necessarily “I’m a bad parent,” but, okay I probably should change the way I speak to them, or the way I engage them, or the way I approach them. (FG7)
Every focus group talked about the mental labor involved in managing task accomplishment, which meant ensuring family duties were fulfilled, especially the work to delegate and instruct others how to perform delegated tasks. The following is from a mother who identified herself as “primary breadwinner” with an involved, stay-at-home husband: For me it’s a lot of mentally trying to figure out responsibilities. So what are we doing tonight? Do we have anything going on? Do we have a sitter who is coming? Did we figure out a sitter? No, we need to figure out a sitter. Oh dang, what are we going to do now? Who is going to stay home? I should stay home because I’m gone all day. But I want to go to this thing and I don’t want to burden my husband. (FG3)
Groups described engaging in degrees of delegation. Sometimes just the physical labor was delegated: “If [my partner] is going to be home, then I’m thinking okay what can I give him? Maybe he can take my daughter to her dance lessons” (FG7). Sometimes managerial labor was also delegated: “There are certain things that I just punt to [my partner]. Like their music education. He’s in charge of that, so I don’t have to think about it” (FG2).
For our participants, delegation was often followed by instructional work. Mothers taught and explained household routines, material supplies, and idiosyncratic needs—to partners, grandparents, babysitters, teachers, and older children. Some instruction occurred once and then mothers relinquished responsibility. In other examples, instruction was provided in ongoing prompts and quality control checks: Does our son need clean clothes tomorrow? What’s he going to wear to school? It’s raining, all we have is shorts. My partner’s not thinking about it. He would just put him in a pair of shorts. So I ask him: Did you do this? Well did you get him this? It’s his share day. Oh. No? Well you’ve got to tell him to get his share toy. And pack it. (FG5)
Finance management was another mental labor activity subtheme that, according to participant accounts from six groups, involved managerial decisions, fluid reasoning, and puzzle solving: “Rearranging enough money, moving money around—paying bills, paying this, needing this, saving for this, oh can’t do that, well uh maybe if we…so much thinking” (FG5). While financial planning theoretically involves other mental labor processes (e.g., planning to design a budget, monitoring and remembering price comparisons, self-regulating to correct problematic spending habits), participants across groups focused on the managerial qualities of this work. Juggling changing variables was a particularly dominant characteristic: “Financially planning, ok, we’ve got all this saved to make sure we can do this through the summer [when my husband’s not teaching]. With rent going up, looking at a year ahead, and now we’re going to homeschool [my son] so we’re trying to finagle that” (FG3). While some participants mentioned long-term financial goals (e.g., children’s college), most participants focused on the mental load of day-to-day costs, providing insight into the felt pressures of limited cash flow and the vital role mental labor can play in making ends meet month-to-month while also paying for new clothes, medical procedures, car maintenance, visits to extended family, and so on.
Self-regulating
All seven groups described self-regulation as a component of family-related thinking. This form of mental labor is the cognitive work involved in managing one’s behaviors and maintaining one’s own health and equilibrium for the sake of the family. Focus Group 6 described the cyclical relationship between parental state of mind and family atmosphere: When my thought life is better, there’s not the negative chain spiral. So my behavior with my children is calmer, and their reaction to my behavior is calmer. If we can have the right thoughts, it has so much bearing on the peace and tranquility of your home. It’s yourself first. I mean, kids scream. But they scream less if you’re not screaming back.
Mental preparation was a common manifestation of self-regulatory mental labor, especially for working-outside-the-home mothers: In driving home, I’m trying to put aside work and say, “That will get dealt with tomorrow, I’m not at work.” Then shift my brain to, “I’m coming home.” It’s a mental preparation which looks like: “So what am I going to come home to?” It’s mentally hard to kick back into that gear and not have huge expectations they can never live up to. (FG3) All groups discussed in detail their cognitive regulating strategies for managing parental anxiety and perfectionism, another form of self-regulating mental work. One group discussed the mental labor involved in overcoming rigidity and impatience and gave this example: You create this mental map of what this is going to look like and then if you raise it up a level, and you say, “Ok this is going to hover over the entire day, but also live with the fact that this may not ever happen.” It’s at least all been thought through and I feel confident that if I need to fall back on a plan, that it’s sitting right there to grab from. (FG3) I now always have in my head: Okay, there’s going to be three things that I’m not going to have that I’m going to want when I’m there. And that is okay. So if: “Oh my gosh I forgot the sippy cup!!” It’s like: “That’s one of three!” That helps me say it’s okay. (FG2) Self-regulating may also involve choosing what’s best for a child instead of what’s most comfortable or instinctual for a parent. Guided by values and beliefs, self-regulation is the mental management of unhelpful instincts in the service of good parenting: “I want to give him what he wants, but I also need to know—to teach him [that] he’s not going to get whatever he wants—he needs to have limits” (FG5). She curbs her desire to give her son what he wants in order to give him what he needs. This form of self-regulation came up in five focus groups, and another set of four groups discussed extensively the self-regulation involved in overcoming unhelpful parenting patterns related to family of origin issues (e.g., being overly controlling or aggressive). This mental labor could be particularly demanding: It’s more work for me to follow through on something that I say to them or just to be consistent as opposed to letting it go. That’s when it is very much a job, because you’re thinking about how to problem solve, and the right way to deal with something, and you could easily just let it go but then you’ll never get an outcome you want. (FG5)
Invisibility, Worry, and Who Labors
All seven focus groups also discussed the invisibility of their mental labor and how this disproportionately affected them compared to male partners. In all seven groups, members initially struggled to grasp and articulate the mental dimension of their family experience; but then, once a co-created vocabulary was established within the focus group, members began expressing “ah ha” moments and energetically elaborated in depth about a wide range of mental activities. Participants reported that being introduced to the term “mental labor” in this way, invited them to explore mental parenting experiences with others. And it produced surprising insights that felt explanatory, validating, helpful for ongoing reflection, and useful for future conversations with partners and friends. This suggests that dispelling some of the invisibility of mental labor was something group members found beneficial. On the other hand, several groups explicitly reflected on the hidden nature of their cognitive managerial work and the struggles it causes (e.g., confusion about why they feel so mentally fatigued, guilt and shame for “overthinking,” feeling misunderstood by partners). Focus Group 4 reflected on how the outward-focused nature of maternal caregiving also makes mental labor harder to identify: “I feel like we don’t have a lot of time to self-reflect, as moms, about what we’re thinking. Like, our job is to be thinking about others” (FG4). In the groups (FG1, FG3, FG6, and FG7) that wondered together about the etiology of mental-labor-related gender differences, groups talked about the automatic impulse to assume responsibility, “as a mom,” for oversight of family life (FG1). The “automatic” quality of some forms of mental labor was endorsed by all seven focus groups and seemed to contribute to the invisibility of mental labor and suggest the power of implicit gender roles.
The definition and themes that emerged from our data also suggest that “worry”—identified by Walzer (1996) and Meier et al. (2006) as a form of mental work—is not inherently a form of mental labor. Rather, worry was only identified as mental labor to the degree that it served family care goals. In our data, worried rumination emerged as a manifestation of monitoring and anticipating forms of mental labor, which we describe as a form of hypervigilant attention that played a key role in protecting children and minimizing family life disruptions. This was an example of how our participants talked about worry that was directly related to accomplishing goals. But they also told stories in which worried concerns did not translate to family care and even, at times, got in the way of effective mental laboring. Participant stories also suggested that mothers and their partners may have misinterpreted maternal worry as pathological or irrational, especially if they were not aware of the mental labor demands a mother was experiencing or the dependence of the family system on her effective mental laboring.
It surprised both the authors and the participants to find that differences between working-outside-the-home and stay-at-home mothers (and even between “primary breadwinning” and “primary parent” mothers) were few, in terms of their experiential recognition of mental labor content themes. Furthermore, participating mothers all represented themselves as their family’s primary mental laborer, regardless of their partner’s level of involvement. Although the details of mental labor dynamics and areas of difference need to be investigated more deeply, our findings support the claim that mental labor is an important domain of mothers’ experience, regardless of family member employment status.
Discussion
In this study, we provided further evidence for the existence of a distinct mental-labor dimension of mothering that plays a critical role in family work. Our phenomenological analysis identified a wider range of mental labor activity than any prior study. This suggests that labor division studies are inadequate if they neglect to measure mental labor responsibilities in an empirically derived, comprehensive way.
Our analysis also produced a definition: Family-related mental labor is thinking performed for the sake of accomplishing family goals. This definition more fully accounts for the range of mental work involved in family care, describing what unifies the diverse collection of previously studied constructs. Situating mental labor under the larger umbrella of family work, our definition aligns well with accepted definitions of household labor as unpaid work that contributes to the well-being of family members and the maintenance of the home (Lee & Waite, 2005; Shelton & John, 1996). The language of “goals” can encompass the goal of caring for family (Mederer, 1993; Meier et al., 2006), meeting needs (Doucet, 2001), and production (Winkler & Ireland, 2009), around which previous conceptualizations of household management have oriented their definitions. We also believe that focusing on the means (thinking) and the function (family care) of mental labor, rather than the subject of those thoughts, makes the definition flexible enough to be consistent with process oriented and relational dimensions of the work. Although our definition is not limited to a specific list of tasks (e.g., preparing for the next day, scheduling a medical appointment), it encompasses the mental dimensions of these tasks. Our proposed definition—thinking activity performed for family goals—also distinguishes mental labor from other family work constructs, especially emotion work, which has been described as the performance of particular affect for the sake of work-related ends (Hochschild, 1983).
We identified six interacting but distinct forms of mental labor that are performed by women with young children: (a) planning and strategizing, (b) monitoring and anticipating needs, (c) metaparenting, (d) knowing, (e) managerial thinking, and (f) self-regulating. These six forms of mental labor are often intertwined or co-occurring but also could be observed independently. Furthermore, the thematic breakdown of six different forms of mental labor matches existing concepts in the literature (e.g., parental monitoring and knowledge constructs are similar to this study’s monitoring and knowing themes).
Philosophically, our definition of family-related mental labor challenges traditional views of family work. In the broadest sense, everyone does mental labor because everyone performs thinking work for those things over which they have responsibility. Many jobs require ownership over projects, tasks, or human welfare, and these jobs involve substantial mental labor (e.g., organization executives, directors of programs, classroom teachers, office managers). The complex mental work embedded in paid jobs is usually compensated and recognized with commensurate job titles (e.g., manager, supervisor, consultant). By contrast, domestic work is generally unlabeled and has often been characterized as mundane, menial, manual, and routinized (Bird & Ross, 1993; Treas & Tai, 2012). The current findings suggest that, though some housework has a routinized character, a vital portion of family care is devoted to the sort of dynamic, complex, knowledge-demanding, problem-solving and systems-management that any other director, manager, or leader must be devoted to.
Limitations and Direction for Future Research
Given the ideographic nature of phenomenological research, our data can provide insight into the nature of the phenomenon of domestic mental work, but it cannot be assumed that reported experiences are normative. However, our findings are consistent with previous studies, so it is likely that our research can deepen understanding of domestic mental labor experiences, especially for those who are culturally similar to our participant group. Overall, the data reflect the experience of highly educated, middle-class, primarily English speaking, heteronormative, partnered mothers raising one to three children as U.S. citizens in a two-parent home in Southern California. Most notably, the mental labor experiences of single mothers, immigrant mothers, mothers from a wider socioeconomic status range, mothers with different family constellations, and mothers who are gender or sexual minorities should be explored in future studies. Given that culture and education affect gender-role ideologies, the gendered division of mental labor reflected in this study is especially likely to be different across different demographic groups (Treas & Tai, 2012). For example, research suggests that gender gaps in division of family work are greater for White English speaking households than for indigenous couples in Australia with more egalitarian arrangements (Ting et al., 2015) or for Black Caribbean citizens of the UK who endorse greater role flexibility (Kan & Laurie, 2018). Since no fathers were included in the current study, our findings cannot illuminate gender differences.
Using the definition of mental labor presented in this article, researchers might explore what distinguishes effective from ineffective mental labor and the impact of various forms of mental labor on family life. Our findings also indicate that social-cultural contextual factors appear to affect the quantity, quality, and focus of mothers’ mental labor; researchers should consider and continue to investigate these variables (e.g., cultural values and ideologies, sociopolitical pressures, minority stress, availability of resources, family member health, individual and partners’ temperament). Investigating mental labor experiences with a more diverse participant group or in cross-national settings is an exciting next step. It would also be fruitful to run focus groups composed of fathers, couples (heteronormative couples, same-gender couples), non-nuclear families, or grandparents.
The construct clarification provided by this study may also help researchers create better assessment tools and quantitatively investigate the relations between mental labor dynamics and other variables (e.g., parenting behaviors, psychological characteristics, wellbeing). We also hope our description of family-related mental laboring will be useful in ongoing investigations about the role of mental work in family-work spillover, the construction of maternal identity, reproduction of gender role expectations, and gender differentiation after becoming a parent. Clinically, researchers might investigate ways to apply mental labor insights to clinical issues, including creating resources for managing mental labor-related stress and difficulty and for building more value-congruent or flexible division of labor arrangements.
Practice Implications
For our participants, mental labor related to family work was a domain of experience for which they had no shared vocabulary. Participants described the focus group interview as the first time they had been invited to reflect on the mental aspects of family responsibility. Thus, simply introducing and using the term “mental labor” may be an important step in consciousness-raising across many professional and personal interactions. In clinical work (especially with women who are parents), this is likely to be a form of psychoeducation that clients are less likely to encounter elsewhere. Given findings about invisibility, simply mirroring mental labor efforts and empathizing with its impact can be valuable. For mothers struggling with self-criticism and poor self-regard, recognition of mental labor may be especially normalizing and important for accurate self-evaluation.
Based on our participants’ positive response to discussing mental labor’s role in family dynamics, conversations about mental labor in the construction of family life may also be illuminating. Asking, “Who was the primary mental laborer in your family of origin?” and “How is mental labor divided in your current family system?” may be a useful starting point. Our findings about the different forms of mental labor activity suggest that mental labor plays a critical role in family life, reflecting a complex set of cognitive tasks, executive actions, and specialized knowledge that govern household operations and family welfare. Communicating about the existence and various manifestations of mental labor will likely help communities appreciate the value and skill involved in unpaid domestic work, which may help them resist reductionistic, patronizing stereotypes of the “overly-anxious preoccupied” mother.
Furthermore, our findings suggest that mental labor must be included in family work and division of labor research. Although it will be important to further study the phenomena of family-related mental labor performed by people of all genders and family roles (not just mothers), we offer our description of mental labor as a starting point for future researchers seeking to operationalize and measure family work more accurately.
We also encourage professionals to account for mental labor in clinical work, social and organizational policy, and educational programing. It may be beneficial to consider the role of mental labor in clinical conceptualizations and treatment plans, especially when working with parents who are stressed by, or dissatisfied with, family work arrangements: for example, helping mothers make more conscious decisions about what mental labor they perform and how they share it with others, or helping parenting teams learn to share the sense of responsibility and specialized knowledge that motivates and perpetuates mental labor specialization. Policy makers may find it useful to consider the mental labor demands on parents when making policy decisions about parental/family leave, flexible work arrangement, social support resources, and procedures for accessing those resources. Educators might enrich teaching content by including an introduction to mental labor in discussions of parenting and gender (e.g., new parent classes, parenting support groups, psychology of gender courses).
Conclusions
Our findings suggest that mental labor is a distinct component of family care (encompassing concepts such as household management, family life orchestration, parental monitoring and knowledge, and metaparenting) that can now be included in family work research, alongside other measures of domestic labor (e.g., physical tasks, time spent with children, emotion work). The definition and six forms of mental labor that we identified in our study may be used to create more accurate measurement tools and support more nuanced and consistent explorations of these phenomena. In clinical practice, social policy making, and education, as well as in our personal lives, even a cursory familiarity with family-related mental labor may improve our ability to understand the experience of family life, justly recognize the contributions of others, and provide services that better reflect the lived experience of those we serve.
Supplemental Material
Supplemental Material, 18-096_Final_Supplemental - Mothers and Mental Labor: A Phenomenological Focus Group Study of Family-Related Thinking Work
Supplemental Material, 18-096_Final_Supplemental for Mothers and Mental Labor: A Phenomenological Focus Group Study of Family-Related Thinking Work by Lindsey G. Robertson, Tamara L. Anderson, M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall and Christina Lee Kim in Psychology of Women Quarterly
Supplemental Material
Supplemental Material, Robertson_June2019_Mental_Labor_825581 - Mothers and Mental Labor: A Phenomenological Focus Group Study of Family-Related Thinking Work
Supplemental Material, Robertson_June2019_Mental_Labor_825581 for Mothers and Mental Labor: A Phenomenological Focus Group Study of Family-Related Thinking Work by Lindsey G. Robertson, Tamara L. Anderson, M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall and Christina Lee Kim in Psychology of Women Quarterly
Footnotes
Notes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
References
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