ArticleArchives of women's mental health2025
Cognitive household labor: gender disparities and consequences for maternal mental health and wellbeing.
Article in Archives of women's mental health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The effects of perinatal depression and anxiety on memory, attention, and cognitive flexibility: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Archives of women's mental health · 2026Pooled it
- Activation parenting in mothers and fathers: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Infant mental health journal · 2026Pooled it
- Women's lived experiences of the built environment and maternal psychosocial well-being in urban slums and slum rehabilitation colonies: a qualitative study in Bhopal, India.Global health action · 2026Article
- Maternal control of children's daily toothbrushing: a cross-sectional study.European archives of paediatric dentistry : official journal of the European Academy of Paediatric Dentistry · 2026Article
- Family health as a mediator between work-family conflict and depression in working parents: a cross-sectional study.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Mental load in women and mothers: Causes of distress, personality traits, and psychopathology.PloS one · 2026Article
- Gendered domestic labor and family leadership: associations with work-family difficulty and expectations for daughters.Frontiers in sociology · 2026Article
- Women's mental health: current status and evolutionary perspectives.Evolutionary human sciences · 2026Review
- Depressive trajectories and their associations with chronic diseases among older adults: a national longitudinal cohort study from China.BMC geriatrics · 2025Article
- Exploring the connection between maternal mental health and partnership, parental role, and satisfaction with various aspects of life using pairfam data: a cross-sectional analysis.BMC women's health · 2025Article
- Factors Influencing Frequency of Depressive Experiences Among Married Working Women in South Korea.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Gender-specific secular trends and related factors of high perceived stress level among Korean older adults: a nation-wide serial cross-sectional study.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Gender differences in affective reactivity to COVID-related daily stressors in mood and anxiety disorders: A six-month intensive longitudinal study.PLOS mental health · 2025Article
- The Role of Virtual Care on Access to Mental Health Counseling or Therapy to Reduce Health Inequities in the United States: Considerations on Age, Race, and Education.Telemedicine reports · 2025Article
- Executive functioning in matrescence and implications for perinatal depression.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Review
- Health during Relationship Transitions: Policy Implications for Dating, New Parenthood, and Bereavement.Policy insights from the behavioral and brain sciences · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
purposeAlthough the division of unpaid household labor has been studied as a driver of global gender inequity, the cognitive dimension of household labor-planning, anticipating, and delegating household tasks-has received less empirical investigation. Cognitive household labor represents a form of invisible and often unacknowledged domestic work that has been challenging to measure.
methodsWithin 322 mothers of young children, we assessed the division of both cognitive ("planning") and physical ("execution") household labor within 30 common household tasks using a self-report measure.
resultsWe found that while mothers did more of the overall domestic labor than their partners, the division of cognitive labor was particularly gendered, such that women's share of cognitive labor was more disproportionate than physical household labor. We found that cognitive labor was associated with women's depression, stress, burnout, overall mental health, and relationship functioning.
conclusionsThis study is one of the first to investigate cognitive labor quantitatively, and the first to investigate cognitive and physical dimensions within the same household tasks. Understanding how cognitive labor affects mothers' mental wellbeing has important implications for both practice and policy.
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