Mental Load Resource Guide
Mental Load & Domestic Labor, and Weaponized Incompetence Resource Guide
If you've ever felt like you're managing everything in your household — remembering appointments, planning meals, noticing when the laundry needs to be done, coordinating schedules, and keeping track of everyone's needs — you're not alone. In fact, the average American household deals with domestic inequity!
Many people arrive here after realizing that the work of running a home isn’t shared equally. Maybe you’ve heard terms like mental load, domestic labor, care work, or weaponized incompetence, and you're trying to better understand what they mean and how they affect relationships and households.
This page is a curated collection of resources to help you explore those concepts more deeply. Whether you’re learning about them for the first time or looking for tools to help shift dynamics in your household, this guide will help you get started.
What Is the Mental Load?
The mental load refers to the invisible, ongoing work of managing a household. The mental load is the invisible labor of anticipating needs, planning, organizing, and remembering everything that keeps life running. It’s the monitoring, researching, and decision-making that often goes unnoticed. The mental load is the skilled work that domestic engineers do to facilitate life!
Examples of mental load include:
Keeping track of family schedules
Planning meals and grocery lists
Remembering birthdays and appointments
Noticing when household supplies run low
Coordinating childcare, school communication, or activities
Mental load often goes unnoticed until it’s left undone. For example, you may not realize someone was paying attention to the household’s toilet paper inventory, adding it to the grocery list, and ensuring the right brand was purchased. But if that work dosn’t happen, you’ll end up in a… very shitty situation. Over time, carrying the majority of this responsibility can lead to burnout, resentment, and relationship imbalances. Research has shown a correlation between inequity in cognitive labor within relationships and the bearer of the overwhelming burden experiencing increased symptoms of depression, stress, and decreased relationship satisfaction.
Dig into some research on mental load inequity here! Explore this report about domestic work inequality from the University of Pennsylvania.
What Counts as Domestic Labor?
Domestic labor refers to the work required to maintain a home and care for the people in it. This includes both physical tasks and organizational work.
Domestic labor can include things like:
Cooking and meal preparation
Cleaning and home maintenance
Laundry and household organization
Managing finances and bills
Coordinating childcare and transportation
Historically and culturally, domestic labor has often been undervalued. In some cases, it’s been treated as “natural” work, placing it in a separate category from work considered “real”. This work is often racialized and gendered and has been used to exploit and oppress people across the globe. It’s been written off in so many ways rather than labor that being properly valued as essential labor that requires time, skill, and effort.
Understanding domestic labor as real labor is an important step toward building more equitable households and societies.
What Is Care Work?
Care work is the labor involved in caring for the physical, emotional, and developmental needs of others. This can include caring for:
Children
Aging parents or relatives
Partners or family members
Ourselves!
Communities and social networks
Care work can be both paid and unpaid, but we are all touched by it. We give and receive care. Often, when it’s performed in the home, it’s uncompensated, and when it is paid, it’s generally underpaid.
Care work sustains families and communities. Yet it is often invisible, assumed, or unevenly distributed.
Recognizing care work helps people better understand the true scope of what it takes to support a household and the people within it.
What Is Weaponized Incompetence?
Weaponized incompetence happens when someone pretends not to know how to do a task, does it poorly on purpose, or repeatedly avoids learning it so that someone else will take over the responsibility.
You might hear phrases like:
“You’re just better at that than I am.”
“I don’t know how you want it done.”
“I’ll just mess it up.”
When these patterns happen repeatedly, they can shift responsibility back onto the person who is already carrying the mental load.
Weaponized incompetence isn’t always intentional, but its impact is real: it reinforces unequal labor and leaves one person responsible for both doing the work and managing it.
Why These Conversations Matter
When mental load, domestic labor, and care work are unevenly distributed, it can affect:
Relationship satisfaction
Individual burnout and stress
Time for rest and personal autonomy
Long-term household stability
These conversations are about the most essential work we do! This is the work that creates and maintains our lives. Having explicit conversations about fairness, autonomy, partnership, and the value we place on care can greatly improve our lives and our relationships.
Building more equitable households requires clarity, communication, and shared responsibility for both the visible tasks and the invisible work behind them.
Recommended reading
If you want to go deeper, my book No More Mediocre: A Call to Reimagine Our Relationships and Demand More explores how mental load, domestic labor, and care work shape our relationships—and what we can do to build something better. The book offers practical tools, real-life examples, and new ways to think about fairness, collaboration, and care at home.
You can get your copy of No More Mediocre and download the free discussion guide to help you reflect, start conversations, or explore these ideas with a partner, friend, or group.
Below you’ll find a curated list of resources that explore these topics in greater depth. These include articles, videos, podcasts, research, and tools designed to help individuals and partners better understand household labor and how to share it more equitably.
Relationships, Equity, and Communication
Books
Chen, Angela. Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex. Beacon Press, 2020.
Franco, Marisa G. Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends. Putnam, 2022.
Gottman, John, and Nan Silver. The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Harmony Books, 1999.
hooks, bell. All About Love: New Visions. William Morrow, 2000.
———. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. Washington Square Press, 2004.
Rodsky, Eve. Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live). Putnam, 2019.
Spade, Dean. Love in a F*cked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell Together. Algonquin Books, 2025.
Tawwab, Nedra Glover. Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself. TarcherPerigee, 2021.
Wong, Alice, ed. Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire. Vintage Books, 2024.
Online Resources
Fresh Starts Registry: https://www.freshstartsregistry.com
The Gottman Institute: https://www.gottman.com
A Guide to Relationship Anarchy: https://www.therelationshipanarchist.com/relationship-anarchy-guide
National Domestic Violence Hotline: https://www.thehotline.org
Domestic Labor, Care Work, and Capitalism
Books
Bhattacharya, Tithi, ed. Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression. Pluto Press, 2017.
Garbes, Angela. Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change. Harper Wave, 2022.
Hackman, Rose. Emotional Labor: The Invisible Work Shaping Our Lives and How to Claim Our Power. Flatiron Books, 2023.
hooks, bell. Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism. South End Press, 1981.
Jaffe, Sarah. Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone. Bold Type Books, 2021.
Nadasen, Premilla. Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. Haymarket Books, 2023.
Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi. Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018.
Essays
Nadasen, Premilla. “The Care Deficit.” Dissent, Fall 2016. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/care-deficit-hta-domestic-worker-organizing-history/.
Bhattacharya, Tithi. “How Not to Skip Class: Social Reproduction of Labor and the Global Working Class.” Viewpoint Magazine, October 31, 2015. https://viewpointmag.com/2015/10/31/how-not-to-skip-class-social-reproduction-of-labor-and-the-global-working-class/.
Organizations
CareForce: https://fairplaypolicy.org/careforce
Caring Across Generations: https://caringacross.org
More Perfect Union: https://perfectunion.us
National Domestic Workers Alliance: https://www.domesticworkers.org
Service Employees International Union: https://www.seiu.org
Raising the Next Generation
Books
Brown, Christia Spears. Parenting Beyond Pink and Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes. Ten Speed Press, 2014.
Conaboy, Chelsea. Mother Brain: How Neuroscience Is Rewriting the Story of Parenthood. Henry Holt and Co., 2022.
Madison, Megan, and Jessica Ralli, Jessica. We Care: A First Conversation About Justice. Illustrated by Sharee Miller. Rise × Penguin Workshop, 2022.
Schenwar, Maya, and Kim Wilson, eds. We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition. Haymarket Press, 2024.
Slice, Jessica. Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World. Beacon Press, 2025.
Sugarman-Li, Lori. Our Home: The Love, Work, and Heart of Family. Illustrated by María Perera. The Collective Book Studio, 2024.
Tamaki, Jillian. Our Little Kitchen: A Board Book. Groundwood Books, 2020.
Whippman, Ruth. BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity. Harmony, 2024.
Feminism and Social Justice
Books
Beck, Koa. White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind. Atria Books, 2021.
Callaci, Emily. Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor. Seal Press, 2025.
hooks, bell. Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. South End Press, 2000.
Kendall, Mikki. Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot. Viking, 2020.
Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Crossing Press, 1984.
Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi. The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022.
Vergès, Françoise. A Decolonial Feminism. Pluto Press, 2021.
Ward, Jane. The Tragedy of Heterosexuality. New York University Press, 2020.
Online Resources
(divorcing) White Supremacy Culture: https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info
Toi Marie: https://www.toimarie.com/
Organizations
Disability Visibility Project: https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com
Equimundo: https://www.equimundo.org
Community and Future Visioning
Books
Birdsong, Mia. How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community. Balance, 2020.
Hayes, Kelly, and Mariame Kaba. Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care. Haymarket Books, 2023.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions, 2013.
Klinenberg, Eric. Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life. Crown, 2019.
Krawec, Patty. Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future. Broadleaf Books, 2022.
Lucido Johnson, Sophie. Kin: The Future of Family. Atria Books, 2025.
Solnit, Rebecca. Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities. Nation Books, 2004.
Spade, Dean. Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next). Verso Books, 2020.
Organizations
Next River: https://www.nextriver.org
New Economy Coalition: https://neweconomy.net
Project NIA: https://project-nia.org
