What is cognitive labor in relationships?

Cognitive labor, also known as the third shift, is a sociological and feminist concept describing the invisible mental work involved in planning, organizing, scheduling, managing, and worrying about family and relationships. This burden falls disproportionately on women, requiring them to manage daily life while hindering their opportunities, health, and happiness. Making this invisible mental work explicit and visible is recommended as a way to balance it.

What we know

• Cognitive labor, or the third shift, is a sociological and feminist concept that refers to the invisible mental work performed by many women in families and relationships. [1, 2]
• The distribution of cognitive labor is disproportionately heavy for women, emphasizing the costs of planning, organizing, scheduling, managing, and worrying beyond physical execution. [2]
• Handling the majority of cognitive labor acts as a burden that can prevent women from achieving greater health, happiness, and pursuing external opportunities. [2]
• A recommended approach to balancing cognitive labor in relationships is to make the work more explicit and visible. [2]

Where to go next

• compared withHow does emotional labor differ from cognitive labor?
• the bigger pictureWhat is Talcott Parsons' action theory in sociology?
• how it workedWhat mental processes define human cognition?
• how we knowHow do sociologists define and categorize emotions?
• what followedHow can making domestic labor visible change relationship dynamics?
• an unexpected connectionHow does family management connect to computational theories of the mind?While cognitive labor deals with the domestic organization of a household, general cognition involves computational models of how information flows and rules are executed, bridging domestic burdens with cognitive science.

Sources

• [1]cognitive labor (Wikidata Q130348200) · CC0 1.0
• [2]Cognitive labor · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [3]Cognition · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [4]Emotion · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [5]Action theory (sociology) · CC BY-SA 4.0

Your path

1. How did mathematical notation evolve over time?
2. /What happened during the Proterozoic eon?
3. /What is cognitive labor in relationships?