Terms like emotional labor, mental load and the second shift get thrown around willy nilly. What are we talking about when we use those words? We lay out the differences between the three types of labor and define the second shift in this post.

Finally!

It warms our hearts that a hobby horse we’ve been riding for the last 20 years has finally started to gain the attention it deserves.

We’re talking about the value of different kinds of housework! You may have seen the articles and popular comics that illustrate aspects of housework that are typically undervalued or ignored completely.

These articles have hit the spot for many people, illuminating and naming sources of simmering discontent in their own lives. At The House Shuffle, we want everybody to be able to name and properly value the skill and effort required to make these types of labor appear simple and easy. Visibility! Hooray!

Since these are new terms for a lot of people, and we use them a lot at The House Shuffle, it’s helpful to explicitly define them, so everyone is on the same page.

Let’s define the three different types of labor that together make up housework.

Managing the developmental and emotional needs of this crew looks easy at this particular moment, but mama knows that baby’s gonna be overtired and nap resistant if she doesn’t get him fed and in his crib, STAT! Always be planning around the needs of others, mama!

Emotional Labor

Heard of “soft skills?” That’s what we call emotional labor when it’s deployed professionally.

Emotional labor is the work that goes into building and maintaining relationships and managing other people’s feelings. It’s intellectual, strategic work that we’ve all been socialized to believe is performed by women, for free.

Examples of emotional labor are:

Noticing that grandma seems bored and lonely at the nursing home and thinking that some sudoku and crossword puzzle books would cheer her up and making a note to remind your kids to call her for a chat.
Planning your day’s activities so that your two year old doesn’t get overtired and dramatically lose their shit in the middle of the grocery store.
Observing that your 8 year old showed great athletic prowess but poor sportsmanship on the soccer field and coming up with a plan to teach them how to be a good winner.
Remembering the anniversary of a friend’s loss and making sure to send a text to let them know they are in your thoughts on the day.
Coordinating holiday plans with parents, step-parents and in-laws so that no one feels shortchanged or left out of the festivities. May require sacrificing your own merrymaking and holiday relaxation.

When Done Well, Emotional Labor May As Well Be Invisible

Emotional labor performed well appears effortless, intrinsic to a person’s (ahem… usually a woman’s) character, a natural ability, rather than well-honed skills developed over a lifetime.

It’s also the term that seems to be improperly used most regularly. A person hears it for the first time, it resonates, and suddenly everything is “EMOTIONAL LABOR!”

Emotional labor and regular old labor are intertwined and often difficult to separate. Making the distinction is important if we want to advance the idea that emotional labor and soft skills should be valued and compensated. Griping about emotional labor while cleaning a toilet or working on a business spreadsheet undercuts that argument. That’s just plain old labor.

Emotional labor. It’s real, it’s incredibly important, and its market value is somewhere around $0 at the moment. That needs to change.

A valiant attempt at managing mental load. TOO MANY TABS!

Mental Load - aka Cognitive Labor

Mental load, or cognitive labor, describes the noticing, planning, researching and remembering required to competently run a household. If emotional labor is all about feelings and relationships, mental load is all about logistics. Again, this is work that we’ve been socialized to expect women to perform without compensation or recognition.

This type of work is cognitively taxing. The juggling and strategizing required to ensure smooth household operations most often takes place in one’s head. The weight of this never ending to-do list can be a massive burden and hinder progress towards the carrier’s professional and personal goals. You can’t perform your best at work or fully relax when you’re busy being the brain for an entire household.

Examples of mental load are:

Keeping track of the contents the fridge, realizing you are out of carrots, and remembering to stop at the store to pick them up so the kids will have them for their lunches the next day.
Remembering that the car registration renews in May, so you need to make the appointment for the smog check in April, but you heard they are booked out 6 weeks so you actually need to call to make the appointment in March, then remembering to show up for the appointment, write the check for the registration, put it in an envelope with the renewal form you watched for in the mail and mail it on time after buying a new book of stamps at Costco because you get a few cents off when you buy them there instead of at the post office.
Noticing the small drip under the sink, researching a handyman, scheduling an appointment, finding out you need a plumber to actually make the repair, asking friends for plumber recommendations, calling a half dozen before finding one that can come out, and remembering to request the morning off so you are available to let them in the house to fix the drip.

A Heavy Mental Load Means Constantly Swimming Through a Swirling Sea of “First, I Need To…”

Mental load is what’s generated by all the preparation and planning required to successfully complete even “simple” tasks. It’s sometimes more visible than emotional labor, mostly because the load can be managed with tools like spreadsheets and apps and software, but much of the work still takes place behind the scenes, invisible to those who haven’t been socialized to see it.

Surprise! Every stock image for “house painter” was a man. Every one for “child care” was a woman. Socialized assumptions, everywhere!

Plain Old Labor

The third category of housework is just labor. It’s the final execution of tasks. This work is the simplest to perform, the easiest to outsource, and the most likely to be seen and credited. Unsurprisingly, it’s also the part of housework that men are most likely to perform.

We don’t want to discount the importance of execution. Someone has to do these jobs and execution can be skillful, arduous, and time consuming. Our point is only that it’s not the only work involved and the emotional and cognitive labor that go into preparing for successful execution should also be acknowledged and valued.

Examples of plain old labor are:

Getting up on a ladder, scraping and painting the house.
Completing a weekend “Honey Do” list.
Driving grandma to her doctor’s appointment.
Cooking dinner.

Each of Those Tasks Required Planning and Preparation

The brevity of those examples says it all. If your housework to-do list only consists of one-liners, who is doing the rest of the work?

The Second Shift

This term was popularized in the 1989 book by Arlie Russel Hochschild and still pops up from time to time. The second shift refers to the entirety of labor that must be performed before and after work to maintain home and family. It succinctly describes the situation many professional women find themselves in, completing a full workday and then coming home to complete their second shift of housework.

There have been some improvements over the last three decades in terms of partners sharing the second shift, but as the pandemic laid bare, we are nowhere near equitable sharing of the household burden as the status quo.

The Second Shift Is Why The House Shuffle Focuses on Household Systems First

Whether you are in a couple, have kids, roommates or live on your own, each of the three categories of housework need to get done and you’ll have a second shift of some length.

The first step towards creating a practical, comfortable home that works is making that second shift as light as possible for everyone in your household.

Creating an equitable division of labor shares housework fairly, relieving women of thinking of everything and caring about everybody and allowing men to fully enjoy the benefits of full participation in their home lives. Management tools minimize the mental load and optimized systems streamline execution. We’re after the best result, with the least ongoing effort.

The result of focusing on household systems first is a home that takes far less time and effort to maintain on an ongoing basis. From there we can move on to addressing the physical space of the home efficiently. This work isn’t a quick fix, but it does offer meaningful, lasting change. It addresses the root causes of most dysfunction so you don’t have to continually nibble around the edges of the problem.

The House Shuffle’s System Shift Process is almost ready!

Utilizing the Fair Play Method, this process will help you rebalance your division of labor and improve your household systems.

Learn more about the process and join the waitlist here or get in touch & chat over email.

Get in TOUCH & LET'S CHAT!

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What Do We Mean When We Talk About Housework?