Burden in Your Brain and Body
Picture this scenario: You just got back from the vacation you planned, one week in Florida with your family (let’s just put all the planning, coordinating, and scheduling you did to make the trip happen in the first place on the back burner for now). It’s a busy Monday: you meal-planned on the drive home yesterday, made a grocery list to grab after work, and coordinated schedules and drivers for after-school practices. A last-minute work situation required a 5PM meeting and pushed your grocery stop to Tuesday. Now you have to brainstorm what you might be able to make when you get home without the groceries and see if you can get your mother-in-law to drop off your daughter at practice tomorrow so you can make it to the store instead.
This scenario highlights your cognitive labor, and it’s a job that women primarily take on in the home.
This cognitive labor does not come without a price. Cognitive labor translates to cognitive burden without acknowledgement of its existence, equitable division, and lack of structured tools or supports to manage it successfully.
We know cognitive labor is invisible to others but cognitive burden may be invisible to you in the way it impacts your health and wellness.
As the primary bearers of cognitive labor, women feel more rushed, overwhelmed, and mentally fatigued than men [1]. According to a study in the international forum Stress & Health, the long-term effects of carrying this burden have been associated with increased anxiety, psychological distress, and depression as well as poor cardiovascular health. [2]
Do you struggle to achieve consistent sleep, experience excessive weight gain, frequently feel “burned out”, or as if you are constantly fighting off a “cold”?
These are all symptoms that may be impacted by undesirable levels of cortisol in your body throughout the day.
Cortisol is a hormone released by your brain that affects nearly every organ and tissue in your body. It’s particularly important in regulating the body’s response to stress, controlling metabolism, suppressing inflammation, and balancing sleep-wake cycles according to the National Institutes of Health.
Cortisol typically peaks in the morning and declines throughout the day. Ideally, cortisol would experience a steep decline in the evenings as your body and mind begin to unwind from the day’s work. In our example, that would be right around the time that you realized you weren’t going to be able to make it to the grocery store that night and your scrambling dinner plans began.
A study published in the Journal of Family Psychology found that women experience higher cortisol levels in the evenings and experience a weaker recovery pattern in cortisol levels (aka cortisol takes longer to get out of your system) after completing a day’s “work” when compared to men. [4]
This suggests that while the home is likely a place for men to embrace leisure time and experience the desired decline in cortisol, the home is a place that perpetuates higher levels of cortisol for women in that their “work” continues far after the traditional working hours have ended. For example, the transportation juggling that required a change of plans and call to your mother-in-law for help.
The story at the beginning highlights only a fraction of the cognitive work you likely completed that day, and it was only ONE day. Carrying that amount of work without support over days, weeks, months, and years puts you at risk of living in the “chronic stress” category. A systematic review published in Brain and Behavior showed (surprise, surprise) that women are twice as likely to suffer from severe stress and anxiety as men. [5]
Your body’s response to acute stress is the “fight or flight” phenomenon. Your hormones and blood pressure change to accommodate for the need to escape that imminent danger of avoiding the car that just went left-of-center towards your SUV. However, your hormones and blood pressure also change in response to the constant stress you experience in meeting that deadline at work, persistently planning and prepping healthy meals for your family, and coordinating those after-school transportation nightmares.
Your cardiovascular system is biologically adapted to handle that level of stress for short periods of time, but not for hours, days, weeks, months or years. When your body is in “fight or flight” mode to so many sources of stimuli in your life, it puts increased stress on your blood vessels. This puts you at greater risk of developing cardiovascular disease, including high blood pressure, stroke, and heart attack. Guess what is the leading cause of death for women in the United States - drumroll please, it’s cardiovascular disease. Unfortunately, according to the CDC, only 56% of women are aware of this fact. [6]
Sure there may be other factors influencing our heart health, but this seems like a big one to keep in mind and one that we are uniquely positioned to control.
Another key area that is impacted by your invisible cognitive burden is that little thing called your “well-being”.
A recent study from Sex Roles showed that mothers perceive themselves as primarily responsible for their household management (ie organizing schedules, maintaining order) and children’s adjustment (ie positive experiences, emotional security). This responsibility, when carried in greater quantities than their partner, was associated with decreased relationship satisfaction and negative impacts on personal well-being. Women’s perceived health, happiness, acceptance, and comfort are at risk when they carry this cognitive burden alone. Imagine the way you were feeling at the end of that Monday and try to pretend that your well-being remained perfectly intact and positively directed (don’t worry, we have all been there). [7]
Your brain and body are beautiful, unique, and powerful. They deserve love, respect, and care from YOU and EVERYONE in your life. Whether you have realized it yet or not, your body does not like carrying this cognitive burden alone.
The first step is to give it a big HELLO and recognize that it’s in your life. Your acknowledgement is a great place to start because that’s one more step towards healing and positive change. So you did that today - congratulations!
The next step is to consider and discuss how this cognitive burden is shared in your household and advocate for a more equal division if that’s what you need. Maybe someone else could have helped you troubleshoot dinner options, called your mother-in-law, or arranged an alternative solution to grocery pick-up.
The last step is where we come in. We are working on a way to give you structured tools and supports to help you manage this burden with lower evening levels of cortisol, healthier blood vessels, and a happier state of mind.
Takeaways:
Cognitive burden can lead to negative long-term health effects including increased rates of anxiety, depression, and cardiovascular disease in women
Cortisol is an important stress hormone that often remains at unhealthy levels in the evening for women as they take on their household labor
Chronic stress puts women at greater risk for developing cardiovascular disease, which is the number one killer of women in the United States
Women that shoulder the primary responsibility of their household management and children’s emotional health experience negative impacts on their overall well-being
We want you to recognize the burden, understand the risks of carrying it alone, and stay tuned for a solution that we hope will lessen the impact of this issue on your health and wellness!
Sources:
[1] Rodsky, E. (2019). Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live). Random House Large Print.
[2] Wetherell, M. A., & Carter, K. (2013). The Multitasking Framework: The Effects of Increasing Workload on Acute Psychobiological Stress Reactivity. Stress and Health, 30(2), 103–109. https://doi.org/10.1002/smi.2496
[3] Thau, L., Gandhi, J., & Sharma, S. (2022, August 29). Physiology, Cortisol - StatPearls - NCBI Bookshelf. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK538239
[4] Saxbe, D. E., Repetti, R. L., & Graesch, A. P. (2011). Time spent in housework and leisure: Links with parents’ physiological recovery from work. Journal of Family Psychology, 25(2), 271–281. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023048
[5] Remes, O., Brayne, C., van der Linde, R., & Lafortune, L. (2016). A systematic review of reviews on the prevalence of anxiety disorders in adult populations. Brain and Behavior, 6(7), e00497. https://doi.org/10.1002/brb3.497
[6] Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023, February 21). Women and Heart Disease. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/women.htm
[7] Ciciolla, L., & Luthar, S. S. (2019). Invisible Household Labor and Ramifications for Adjustment: Mothers as Captains of Households. Sex Roles, 81(7–8), 467–486. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-018-1001-x
