Ladies, We Need To Talk - What you don_t know about the mental load with Leah Ruppanner

0:00Damien CarrickThis will had come about in the most suspicious circumstances you could possibly imagine. Who gets what when someone dies and who decides? The difficulty with undue influence often is proving it. Join me Damian Carrick for the Law Report special series on Wills over My Dead Body. The person felt like they had no option, but it's difficult to prove that. To hear, search for The Law Report and look out for Over My Dead Body. Find it on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:30Yumi StynesABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music, and more. In 2017, back when Ladies We Need To Talk was just a baby podcast, we spoke about the mental load with Leah Rupana. So some portion of your mental load may go to thinking about your career, some portion of it may go to thinking about your family, and some portion of it may be going to thinking about your personal life. And the difference is the balance across men and women.

0:59Yumi StynesAt the time, a new generation of women were discovering language that helped describe something that we'd felt for a long time, and the invisible labour that had always been dumped on women was finally getting ventilated. It was a real relief to hear it said out loud. But solving this riddle of the mental load was another question entirely. Well, that same layer has spent the almost 10 years since her appearance on this podcast trying to figure that out.

1:27Yumi StynesShe's a professor of sociology at the University of Melbourne and visiting professor at Vanderbilt University. She recently published her book, Drained, Reduce Your Mental Load to Do Less and Be More. Since we first spoke about it, our understanding of the mental load has evolved. It's not just list-making. It's the constant, unseen work of planning, worrying and remembering across the full spectrum of life.

1:55Leah RuppannerThe challenge and what Leah has written about in her new book is what to do about it. How can we learn what to hold on to, what to share, and most importantly, what to let go of? I'm Yumi Steins, ladies. We need to talk about redistributing the mental load with Leah Rupana. How did you decide who would do the mental load in your household? Often people would say, we didn't have any conversation about the mental load.

2:36Yumi StynesThis was something that just happened, but nothing ever just happens, right? Leah Rupana has spent the last five years working on a research project into the mental load. She spoke to people in the US and Australia about how it impacts their day-to-day lives. And not just women with kids, but child-free women, people caring for their aging parents and, importantly, men. It really is this emotional thinking work that we do to keep work, life and family running.

3:05Leah RuppannerIt's invisible and that you can't see it. It's boundaryless and that you bring it with you everywhere. And it's enduring. It's tied to the people you love the most, which means it's never ending. OK, so it's omnipresent. It's constant. And honestly, it's exhausting. But Leah is a solutions gal and wanted to take the conversation further and give women tools on how to sort out their mental load and share it around.

3:33Leah RuppannerTo get us started, Leah has broken down the mental load into eight different categories. So the first type is life organization. Now this is probably how we would most typically understand the mental load. And it's the emotional thinking work you need to do to keep everything in your life running, work and family running. Now, this could be something as simple as like, did I send that email at work? Do we have enough milk for the next day? Do we make sure our grocery lists are done? This is probably how we talked about the mental load 10 years ago, right? When we were on the podcast together. Like this is kind of that straightforward, is everything remembered, delegated, anticipated and monitored to make sure that it's being done.

4:18Yumi StynesIt's not just the never-ending jobs on our list. It's the micro-management that squeezes our brains. Did your kid remember their sports uniform? Has your partner booked his doctor's appointment? And what the hell are we having for dinner again? Even if you're not the one actioning the tasks, you're still managing the when and the where and how they're getting done and if they'll be done properly. The next one is emotional support. This is a mental load.

4:47Leah Ruppannerthinking of making sure everyone in our life is doing okay. A lot of mothers talked about this was a spidey sense that they carried, that they were looking at their family members across the table, their children, their partners, and just kind of monitoring, is that person okay? So that's that emotional support work. It could be if your friends call you and they're having a hard day and you were the person that is always there to make sure that they're okay.

5:13Yumi StynesThat care and attunement combined with your observation skills keep those around you emotionally supported. And for women it feels like there's a whole lot more of this emotional labour in our lives. We are expected to juggle multiple relationships and be emotionally available.

5:31Yumi StynesFrom late-night chats with your friend going through a divorce, to your kid's 8am meltdown, to your mother-in-law's constant requests for more photos of the grandkids, your emotional energy is an in-demand resource. The third category is something Leah calls relationship hygiene. How do we make sure we have all the relationships that we need in our lives to thrive? At work we just call this networking and we see it as very strategic, right? Who do I know?

5:58Leah Ruppannerto get me where I need to go. But at home, it's much more complicated. It's making sure grandma's invited to dinner. It's also maybe being friends with people you don't want to or you don't like so that your kids can have a good experience at school or a play date, right? Like befriending parents that, I don't know, if you're honest about it, you wouldn't really want to hang out with. So that's, you call that relationship hygiene. So that's sort of keeping the social wheels oiled.

6:27Yumi StynesExactly. And sometimes we keep them oiled just for ourselves, but sometimes we're responsible for keeping them oiled for everybody else in our lives. The fourth category on the list is all about when you have to make big life events feel super special. This mental load type is called magic making. Now this one is the most controversial. Do you like to do magic making? Do you like to do magic making? I'm curious. Is this about Christmas?

6:54Leah RuppannerAnd Easter and birthdays? Is magic making that? Yes. Yes, it is. I fucking hate that the most. Me too. Me too. This was the one that mothers in particular either loved to do or they loathed. Right. They were either like, I love this time of year. It's so special. I love the elf on the shelf. It's like, I love to create the magic. Or they were like.

7:18Yumi StynesWhat the fuck have I signed up for? Like, what is this about? It's so funny that you mentioned Elf on a Shelf because that's the one that I always think you've got to opt out. Moms, do not fucking go there. You will regret it for your entire life. I completely agree. I completely agree. So this is the magic making mental load. You either love it, you hate it.

7:39Leah Ruppannerand men very rarely carry it. They don't see it as useful work. They see it as overblown. They see it as the standards are higher and they see it as someone else in their life carrying on these traditions around this mental level. They will talk about doing little things like engaging with family, taking them on weekend trips. That's magic making for them, but not this big birthday Christmas stress fest.

8:07Leah RuppannerDo you want me to keep going? Yes, please. So we're up to number five, dream building. Okay, number five, dream building. This is the idea of are you using your emotional thinking work to help others fulfill their passions and ambitions? Now, this is one, when I did the interviews, I would hear from mothers how low their dreams dropped to the bottom of the list. They would talk about, you know, I did dream at one period of time, but actually then something happened.

8:35Leah RuppannerI had kids, everyone's needs became before mine. And I just have deactivated my dream building muscle. Yay, of course I'm thinking about my kids' dreams. They have a tuba lesson and they go to dance. And yes, I'm making sure my husband has everything he needs to achieve at work. And I'm making sure that my best friend who calls, I'm giving her good hype advice, but me, oh no, I've kind of...

8:57Leah Ruppannerforgotten my dreams. And the dads would talk about actually that their dreams were in service of the family. That if they dreamt bigger their family would have more and so they saw their dreams as something both strategic and useful. The mothers would talk about their dreams were at the expense of their family. This is one that feels really sad for me.

9:19Leah RuppannerCowed and overwhelmed by the mental load, so many women stop chasing their own dreams and start putting all their energy into everyone else's. So one of my goals is that we start to reignite women's dream muscles. We start to say, your dreams are just as valuable as anyone else's. In fact, in this moment in time, they may be even more valuable than anyone else's because I do not believe.

9:48Leah Ruppannerwe would be in the world we're in right now. If women had their dream muscles at 100%, if mothers weren't so preoccupied with whether someone was going to judge them based on the mess of their house, someone was going to make them feel less than because their kids show up a little ruffled at school. If we can take that energy and start to invest in our own dreams, what kind of world would we have? Let's get to number six individual upkeep.

10:16Leah RuppannerThis is keeping fit and healthy. This is that emotional thinking work you do to like, have I exercised? Did I read enough books? This is like, have I made that doctor's appointment? Have I gone to the dentist? It's hard to get a sweet spot on this for anybody because there's so much to do but we always feel like we're failing. Whether you're a mom or not.

10:36Yumi StynesLooking after yourself is often the first thing to fall off the to-do list. But looking after ourselves should be the number one priority. We can't pilot this thing if we're gasping for air. Remember, it's about putting on your own oxygen mask first. Then comes safety. This is protecting family and loved ones from danger. It could be as small as, like, did we lock the door at night? But it could be as big as,

11:03Leah RuppannerDo I feel safe as I move through the world? Am I living with an identity that actually puts me at greater risk for violence? And it's like, this is something that we all carry safety, but it looks different based on where we're at. And this was something that dads did a lot more of too. This is something that dads would say like, I usually tend to be in charge of the safety. And it's not just parents who carry the safety mental load. Leah found young women were feeling it too.

11:28Yumi StynesOkay, so I'm meeting a guy for a date tonight. I better text my friend my location. Check out the venue first. Make sure someone knows when I'm on my way home. These are all small things on their own, but it's the constant mental attention that leaves a lot of young women feeling overwhelmed. And last on our mental load checklist that came up for just about everyone was MetaCare. And this is the idea of what kind of world do I want to live in, right? What kind of world do we want to create?

11:56Leah RuppannerAm I a good parent right now? What does it look like in terms of global warming? But this is maybe where you're wasting your mental load energy, doom-scrolling, being informed about everything that's going on in the world. You're burning through your mental load energy because you're thinking about, this isn't the world I want to be in. This isn't the world I want to leave to my children. This isn't the world that is aligned with my values. And that is a mental load drain as well.

12:26Yumi StynesLeah's work doesn't stop at explaining the mental load and its eight different subtypes. As part of her research, she and her team created a really simple quiz to help people work out where their mental load is heaviest and, most importantly, how to ease it. It's called the light and lab assessment, and we've put a link in the show notes if you want to give it a go. My goal for this is that we all start to think about our mental loads much like we think about...

12:53Leah Ruppannerour blood pressure or our steps or our sleep scores. What I want you to start understanding is your baseline. What does it look like and where is it shifting and where is it going? Are you actually feeling like it's working you towards your goals? Are you feeling like you're burnt out? Are you feeling exhausted? Because the goal isn't to get rid of the mental load. You can't, but sometimes our mental load can be positive. It's like, where is your mental load going? Where is it going across these categories?

13:23Leah RuppannerWhen it goes to them, is it crediting you? Is it bringing you joy? Or is it debiting you? Are you giving your mental load to people that don't deserve it? Because I'm sorry, a lot of people don't deserve our energy. But we give it to them all the time, right? I'm asking you to start to be strategic, much like you are about your money and start to think about where you want to go and how to spend and align your mental load energy in that direction. Going deeper on this stuff can be really helpful because suddenly it's there in black and white.

13:54Yumi Stynesvalidating your overwhelm. But here's the thing, Leah says you also need to work out your core values at the same time so you can make better decisions when re-evaluating which parts of your mental load aren't serving you anymore.

14:07Yumi StynesIt's philosophical stuff because it means getting clarity on the principles that guide your decisions, shape your priorities and help you work out whether you're living the kind of life you actually want to live. And just start to get a list and start to figure out, okay, that one, you know, yep, no, yep, no, and then bump them up the list. But it is internal work, right, that you have to do. So that you have to sense check on that. And you do need a little bit of a quiet space, right, to...

14:36Yumi Stynesto start to get clear. Making time for that exercise can really pay off because then you've got a set of guiding values, things like family, kindness or fun, to help work out how to live ethically and joyfully. Leah says another good exercise is to really think about who you're focusing on in your life. In her book, she uses the example of a problematic colleague at work.

15:01Leah Ruppanneryou just spend way too much time just complaining about, but actually they get you know for it. Like they're not even your boss, they have no power over you, but there's just like rumination about this person. We'll call him Richard. I don't know. Or Sam. I don't know. Sam's kind of a nicer name though, really, right? I don't think I have a Richard or a Sam at my work, but go on. I think everybody else does. Of course, of course. And so the goal is to start to go.

15:30Leah RuppannerDoes this deserve my energy or should I cut this out of my thinking? Should I cut this person out? And so like get down to five just five five people That deserve your energy you can rotate people off the bench, right? You can have a you can have a second string Mm-hmm, but you got to get clear and then what that helps you to do is say no with purpose Say no with purpose because you know these are my five. These are my values. This is my goal and if that person doesn't come in on that That's a clear no for argument sake and to help our listeners understand What would you describe as one of your core values? Oh, I like to do good quality work and be kind and show up for the people that I love

16:16Leah RuppannerIf I say, okay, it's really important to me that if I say to you, I'm going to do something, I'm going to show up and I'm going to do what I've promised because that is an important value for me. But sometimes I take on too much work, right? Sometimes I don't show up in that way. But if I get clear on what's going on, right? If the answer is like, this isn't sitting well with me because I'm violating my values, I can have a little bit more of an honest conversation. I'm really sorry. Actually, it is important for me to show up.

16:45Leah Ruppannerbut I have too much on right now and I need a little bit of time, you can ask for what you need. We've been socialized to bury our needs, ignore them, put them to the side, pretend like they don't exist. And so it takes a little bit of work to actually figure out, what do I need? So I have my values, but now what do I need to ask of people? Sometimes it's time. I'm sorry, I thought I could do this, but I can't. Because otherwise you just ruminate, right? It's a drain.

17:14Yumi StynesSo now we've done our mental load audit. We understand our values and what and who we need to cut out. The next step is figuring out how to redistribute what's not serving us so we don't keep being so preoccupied with being good and helpful and reliable that we miss out on all the fun in life. Leah's research gave her insight into the social consequences for men versus women when it comes to taking on more of the mental load. We asked our responders this question.

17:42Yumi StynesHow did you decide who would do the mental load in your household? And often people would say, what, what? Like, we haven't talked about this. We didn't have any conversation about the mental load. This was something that just happened, but nothing ever just happens, right? And us women taking on more of the mental load stems from generations of gendered norms and roles and is reinforced again and again by society, Instagram, even your mother-in-law. Women are socialized from birth.

18:12Leah Ruppannerto be caring, thoughtful, empathetic, deferential, and kind. All of that actually makes it very difficult for you to say no when there's too much going on. It makes it difficult for you to put yourself first sometimes because you're not supposed to, you're supposed to be empathetic and put other people first. I also ask you to start thinking about these ideas of like, what kind of standards do we hold each other to?

18:37Leah RuppannerDo we hold women too or do we hold men too? And one of the things I say to you is we have this research project that has been around forever and people love it where we actually empirically show that women are judged more harshly based on the cleanliness or messiness of their house. Yes, I loved this in your book because it was so clear. The first thing we did was we asked men and women to rate the cleanliness and the messiness of the room.

19:01Leah RuppannerIf men cannot see the mess, which is often what we get told, they can't see the mess, they can't see the keys, they would look at that messy room and they would see it as clean, right? The first thing we do is like test this assumption. You will all be happy to know that statement that men are dirt blind is absolute bullshit, proven by science.

19:23Yumi StynesSo if men and women are equally capable of recognizing mess, what's going on? Leah says it's because there is a different set of social consequences if a woman is seen to be messy. And what we found was even if the room was relatively clean, and she'd be viewed as less competent, capable, hardworking, and likable. And so when women say, if I don't do this, if I have a messy house, if my kid isn't

19:49Leah Ruppannerperfect. If I don't show up in these ways, there's going to be a penalty for me. People are going to judge me. They're not going to see me as good. We have the science that shows yes, they will. And so how can we start to understand whether we care? How can we stop holding each other to these standards? These socialized gendered standards apply to men too. Men talk about if I take time away from work, I'm gonna be punished at work. And we did a research project where we showed that we had these great CVs and we gave women a gap and men a gap. The men with a gap, especially in tech jobs and men-dominated industries, man, they were not hired. They would not get callbacks. The algorithm didn't like them. So gender norms are bad for men and women alike, right? We all didn't think about women, but it's like, these are actually outdated social norms that are detrimental for you and for me for all of us.

20:41Leah RuppannerAnd we start to see them. Can we stop holding each other to them? Can we drop them? And then can we start living a little more honestly? Because man, our houses are messier now than ever before, but we are busier now than ever before. Can we live a little more honestly and just show up the way we need to and refocus in ways that are valuable? For there to be a mental load revolution, we're going to need buy-in from everybody.

21:11Yumi StynesAnd sorry to highlight the obvious here, but isn't it men that should be taking on more?

21:17Leah RuppannerMen can do the emotional support work as well. They can, and often they want to, but we need to be able to bring them in. It's like women need to emotionally support a little bit less, and men need to emotionally support a little bit more, and there needs to be a rebalance. Because what we hear across the research is men who are connected to their families who spend time in caregiving have a range of better outcomes. The kids do better, the parents do better, the partners do better, society does better, workplaces do better. And so how do we start to create opportunities for men to step into emotions?

21:46Yumi Stynessupport and care and let women off the hook in terms of that judgment and penalty a bit more. That is the rebalance we need right now. The thing I want to say to that though, Leah, is every woman who stepped back and said, I'm going to do a bit less of whatever housework, emotional support has stood back and observed nobody feeling that vacuum. And the well-being of, say, the household or the well-being of the workplace and everyone's emotions suffering as a consequence.

22:16Leah RuppannerI understand this response, right? A lot of women will say, if I don't do it, it all falls apart and it comes back to me anyway. It comes back 18 times bigger, right? What I'm asking in the book is for us to get a little bit more strategic. Maybe you don't drop all of it, right? Like maybe some pieces of it are essential for the family, but how do we get a clear rebalance? How do we understand when we're investing in these mental loads that perhaps are duplicative. How do we drop some of the mental load around social norms that actually don't make any sense anymore? And one of the things that I think will be a more productive way to move into these conversations is to have the conversation from the starting point of here's where I'm trying to go. Here are my goals. I've thought about this and here's what I need. I need more time. The goals can be as small as like every day I want to go for a walk or I want to get a little bit more sleep or I want to run for prime minister.

23:15Yumi StynesRather than trying to change these gendered norms and society at large, what about starting with those five people you chose to focus on in your life? Hey, even get them to do a mental load audit too. And hopefully those conversations start to lighten up our heavy mental loads.

23:33Leah RuppannerLet's get clear on our goals. Let's figure out who doesn't deserve our energy. Let's get clear on when social norms make everything heavier. How do we make sure that you get the rest, relaxation, resources, then make sure that even if you can't drop and delegate some of the mental load, you are taking care of you. So you can show up the next day with enough energy because there's kind of this range of things that are going on. We don't have a silver bullet, right? We need like a big game plan. Totally. And everyone needs to come together to build it.

24:01Leah RuppannerLeah, what's one thing that you hope women take away from the conversation that you and I are having? I hope women start to see that their mental load energy is not infinite. It's finite. They can't spend it as if it is constantly replenished. And because of that, they need to be super, super strategic in spending it in ways that move them forward, that are aligned with their goals, that create more joy, that create more excitement.

24:31Leah RuppannerAnd my goal is that at the end of this, I had a beautiful friend who said, your book is a love letter to women. And I hope that that's how you leave after that. And like you can take the next step because amazing stuff happens with one step that then becomes a second step.

24:47Yumi StynesThird, fourth, and then we look back and we don't even know how we ended up where we are. Wow. But it's all through our own hard work. Yes, as usual. Thank you so much, Professor Leah. You are articulating things that are going to change women's lives in your love letter to women. Thank you so much. Oh, I love you all. That's so great. Thank you so much for your time and your beautiful ball. You're welcome. This podcast was produced on the lands of the Gadigal, Moorina, and Durawal people.

25:17Yumi StynesLadies We Need To Talk is mixed by Anne-Marie De Bettencore. It's produced by Elsa Silberstein and Sarah Mashman. Our supervising producer is Emma Morris and our executive producer is Taymar Kranswick. This series was created by Claudine Ryan.