Household Labor, Mental Load, and Why Fairness Still Fails Women

Thursday, December 18, 2025.

There is a sentimental belief in modern relationships that fairness will eventually sort itself out if both partners are decent people.

This belief has survived research, experience, and children.

A new study published in Psychology of Women Quarterly examines how household labor and decision-making power affect relationship satisfaction among women partnered with men versus women partnered with women.

The findings are clarifying. They are also not new.

Women partnered with men do more unpaid household labor.
Mothers partnered with men do much more.
And having a “voice” in decisions does nothing to improve their satisfaction.

So much for progress.

Gender Inequality in Household Labor in the United States

Domestic labor in the United States remains aggressively traditional. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, dishes—the maintenance of daily life—still defaults to women in heterosexual relationships, even when both partners work full time.

This is usually explained as preference. Or efficiency. Or the idea that someone is “just better at it,” which has proven remarkably durable for something so flimsy.

Research has long linked this imbalance to increased stress and lower relationship satisfaction for women. This study does not dispute that. It simply refuses to soften it.

“Doing Gender” and Why the System Keeps Running

Sociologists call this doing gender: the quiet repetition of what women and men are expected to do. The genius of the system is that no one has to enforce it.

Women perform care and maintenance because the role exists.
Men perform selective participation because the role allows it.

No villain. No meeting. No memo.
The script runs itself.

Household Labor in Same-Gender Relationships

Women partnered with women report a more equal division of household labor. This is not because they are more evolved. It is because the heterosexual script is missing.

Without a built-in storyline, chores must be discussed. Tasks are divided based on time, competence, and tolerance for mess—criteria that somehow feel radical only in heterosexual households.

Gender norms still appear. They simply don’t get automatic approval.

Parenthood and the Expansion of the Labor Gap

If inequality is present before children, parenthood finishes the job.

Mothers partnered with men reported the highest household labor burden of any group in the study—more than mothers partnered with women, more than childless women partnered with men, more than anyone.

Children do not create inequality.
They activate it.

Household Labor and Relationship Satisfaction

Across all groups, doing more household labor was associated with lower relationship satisfaction. This finding was impressively universal.

No one enjoys being the unpaid superintendent of domestic life.

Resentment does not need coaching.
It only needs consistency.

Decision-Making Power Is Not What It Sounds Like

Here is where the findings become unintentionally revealing.

Women partnered with men reported slightly more decision-making power than women partnered with women. This is often interpreted as influence. It is not.

Being the person who decides when things get handled, how problems are addressed, and what happens next is not power. It is assignment.

Management is not authority.
It is labor with nicer vocabulary.

Why Decision-Making Power Stops Working for Mothers Partnered With Men

For women without children, greater decision-making power was associated with higher relationship satisfaction. Agency feels good when it is not stapled to exhaustion.

For mothers partnered with men, decision-making power had no effect at all.

Once women are already carrying the bulk of childcare and household labor, “having a say” simply means being responsible when something fails. Power becomes liability. Choice becomes obligation.

Being in charge is not the same as being supported.

Mental Load vs. Emotional Labor

Mental load is often confused with emotional labor. They are related, but they are not the same.

Mental load runs the household.
Emotional labor runs the emotional climate.

In many relationships, the same person is expected to do both.
This study is about who runs the system.

What This Study Actually Shows

This research does not claim that doing more housework automatically makes women unhappy. It shows that default roles—not effort—erode satisfaction.

Same-gender couples are less likely to inherit those defaults. Heterosexual couples often reenact them faithfully while insisting they are modern.

Fairness does not appear organically.
It has to be engineered.

Therapist’s Note

In therapy, this problem rarely arrives labeled “division of labor.”

It arrives as fatigue, irritability, low desire, and the quiet sense of being alone inside a shared life.

When one person carries both execution and oversight, resentment is not a communication problem, it’s more of a cultural commentary.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Daminger, A. (2019). The cognitive dimension of household labor. American Sociological Review, 84(4), 609–633. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122419859007

Dours, N., & Eaton, A. A. (2025). Gender, power, and parenthood: Predictors of relationship satisfaction among women partnered with women vs. men. Psychology of Women Quarterly.

Hochschild, A. R. (1989). The second shift. Viking.