Mental load

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Mental Load (German about: mental capacity ) referred to German-speaking mainly the overall expenditure and corresponding burdens arising from household chores and child rearing. She takes up the ideas of the Cognitive Load Theory (CLT). In addition to the sum of the practical tasks, the mental load also includes the burden of everyday responsibility for organizing household and family, maintaining relationships and dealing with personal needs and sensitivities.

origin

Mental load has been used as a term for mental stress symptoms since the early 1970s and its connection with stress and the effects on vital parameters have been discussed in various professional groups . The current use of the term comes primarily from the eponymous “ feminist ” comic by the French illustrator Emma , which gained greater prominence through the British daily The Guardian . This discusses the unequal distribution of tasks and roles in heterosexual relationships, which, in addition to gender segregation on the labor market, also includes household tasks, care situations and soft factors such as knowledge of the social constellations of the children. The effort involved is therefore rarely noticed by both partners, which means that women suffer considerable losses in their leisure time. Responsible for the coordination of care work ( Care Work ) and employment ( paid work necessary) multi-tasking performance lead therefore to increased utilization, with the split attention effect can be compared.

Circles labeled "Mental Load", "Paid Work", "Care Work" form intersections
Overlapping workload from employment, care and coordination work

The vagueness of the concept of mental load is occasionally criticized and compared with the extensively used burnout syndrome .

Various self-tests on the Internet promise to provide an overview of your own weekly working hours and their balance in the relationship.

See also

literature

  • Emma (2018): Mental Load. A feminist comic . New York: Seven Stories Press. ISBN 978-1609809188 .
  • Eve Rodsky (2019): Share the mental, rebalance your relationship and transform your life . London: Quercus. ISBN 978-1529400182 .
  • Laura Fröhlich: The woman for life is not the girl for everything! Kösel, Munich 2020, ISBN 978-3-466-31146-0 .
  • Patricia Cammarata: Getting out of the mental load trap: How a fair division of labor succeeds in the family . Beltz, Weinheim 2020, ISBN 978-3-407-86632-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Patricia Cammarata: “Mental Load has two important aspects, namely this aspect of the invisible to-dos. In other words, everything that you don't actually discuss with each other, but which is always planned, considered and even implemented in the background. ”In: Simone Schlosser: Mental Load. How a fair division of labor in the family can succeed. Deutschlandfunk Kultur, March 2, 2020, accessed on April 3, 2020 .
  2. ^ G. Mulder: Mental Load and the Measurement of Heart Rate Variability . In: Ergonomics . tape 16 , no. 1 . Groningen 1973, p. 69-83 , doi : 10.1080 / 00140137308924483 .
  3. ^ AWK Gaillard: Comparing the concepts of mental load and stress . In: Ergonomics . tape 36 , no. 9 . Tilburg 1993, p. 991-1005 , doi : 10.1080 / 00140139308967972 .
  4. ↑ Emma: You should've asked. In: Emma. Politics, things that make you think, and recreational breaks. May 20, 2017, accessed March 12, 2020 .
  5. ↑ The gender wars of household chores. A feminist comic. In: The Guardian. May 26, 2017, accessed on March 12, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Dietmar Hobler, Christina Klenner, Svenja Pfahl, Peter Sopp, Alexandra Wagner: Who does unpaid work? Housework, raising children and care in a gender comparison. Current evaluations from the WSI GenderDataPortal. Report No. 35. In: Hans Böckler Foundation. Institute for Economic and Social Sciences (WSI), April 2017, accessed on March 12, 2020 .
  7. ^ Simone Schlosser: Mental Load. How a fair division of labor in the family can succeed. In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur. March 2, 2020, accessed March 12, 2020 .
  8. ^ Judith Fischer: Women Burnout. This is how we protect ourselves from “mental load”. In: Elle. Retrieved March 12, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Anna Eube: Overworked women. With "You just had to ask me" men enter a minefield. In: The world. Axel Springer SE, February 4, 2019, accessed on March 12, 2020 .
  10. ↑ Andrea Jansen: How much do I work? The bill: Care Work + Paid Work + Mental Load. In: let's be honest. by anyworkingmom (blog). Any Working Mom GmbH, October 1, 2018, accessed on March 12, 2020 .
  11. ↑ dasnuf: The BIG mental load test for fathers! In: The Nuf Advanced. Patricia Cammarata, March 7, 2020, accessed March 12, 2020 .