Reimagining Love is your destination for profound, enlightening discussions about love, family, intimacy, and everything in between—a podcast that gives you the opportunity to reimagine ourselves, our relationships, and our world. Hosted by renowned clinical psychologist, professor, and award-winning author Dr. Alexandra Solomon, featuring solo episodes for you to learn how to identify and understand the role you played in your Family of Origin (FOO), along with heartfelt conversations around relational self-awareness with notable guests from the worlds of therapy, academia, and pop culture.
You are empowered to honor and heal painful experiences from the past and to shift patterns so you can cultivate authentic and healthy relationships today.
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Reimagining Love is your destination for profound, enlightening discussions about love, family, intimacy, and everything in between—a podcast that gives you the opportunity to reimagine ourselves, our relationships, and our world. Hosted by renowned clinical psychologist, professor, and award-winning author Dr. Alexandra Solomon, featuring solo episodes for you to learn how to identify and understand the role you played in your Family of Origin (FOO), along with heartfelt conversations around relational self-awareness with notable guests from the worlds of therapy, academia, and pop culture.
You are empowered to honor and heal painful experiences from the past and to shift patterns so you can cultivate authentic and healthy relationships today.
Carrying the Mental Load: How Unequal Cognitive Labor Can Affect Your Relationship with Allison Daminger
Reimagining Love with Dr. Alexandra Solomon
1 hour 1 minute
3 days ago
Carrying the Mental Load: How Unequal Cognitive Labor Can Affect Your Relationship with Allison Daminger
In this conversation, you’ll hear Dr. Alexandra totally nerd-out with Dr. Allison Daminger about the division of work in couples, particularly in an often overlooked domain: the mental space. In her research, Daminger found that even when couples approximate parity around “time use”, there are still huge gaps in what she calls “mind use” or cognitive labor… even for modern couples who believe in what she calls the Myth of Mutuality, an equal partnership where both partners evenly share the load.
You will hear about the gendered disparities in cognitive labor in the home in a gentle, blame-free way. When it comes to gender roles in family life, we tend to overestimate the effects of individual differences and underestimate the effects of bigger social forces. So if the load is feeling unequal in your partnership, Daminger wants you to move away from guilt and blame and toward strategies that move you closer to your ideals.
In this episode, you’ll hear about:
What constitutes cognitive labor and why women tend to carry the lion’s share.
Experiences from couples in Allison’s research who successfully created shared systems for cognitive labor, and the approaches and conditions that made that possible.
The narratives couples use to justify how they divide labor, especially when trying to avoid recreating gendered patterns (while often recreating them anyway).
How to spot cognitive labor disparities in your own home and use that awareness to divide responsibilities more fairly based on skill rather than “personality” (i.e., gendered expectations).
The pressure that broader societal structures place on individual households, and how reframing the issue can support calls for systemic change.
How to start small and make meaningful shifts toward parity in cognitive labor.
Resources worth mentioning from the episode:
Dr. Allison Daminger’s book, What’s On Her Mind - The Mental Workload of Family Life: https://bookshop.org/p/books/what-s-on-her-mind-the-mental-workload-of-family-life-allison-daminger/585e2aa7eac0a0ea
Learn more about Dr. Allison Daminger and sign up for her newsletter The Daminger Dispatch: https://www.allisondaminger.com/
Continue the conversation with Dr. Alexandra Solomon:
Ask a question! Submit your relationship challenge: https://form.jotform.com/212295995939274
Order Dr. Alexandra’s book, Love Every Day: https://bookshop.org/p/books/love-every-day-365-relational-self-awareness-practices-to-help-your-relationship-heal-grow-and-thrive-alexandra-solomon/19970421?ean=9781683736530
Cultivate connection by subscribing to Dr. Alexandra’s newsletter: https://dralexandrasolomon.com/subscribe/
Learn more on IG: https://www.instagram.com/dr.alexandra.solomon/
Reimagining Love with Dr. Alexandra Solomon
Reimagining Love is your destination for profound, enlightening discussions about love, family, intimacy, and everything in between—a podcast that gives you the opportunity to reimagine ourselves, our relationships, and our world. Hosted by renowned clinical psychologist, professor, and award-winning author Dr. Alexandra Solomon, featuring solo episodes for you to learn how to identify and understand the role you played in your Family of Origin (FOO), along with heartfelt conversations around relational self-awareness with notable guests from the worlds of therapy, academia, and pop culture.
You are empowered to honor and heal painful experiences from the past and to shift patterns so you can cultivate authentic and healthy relationships today.
