The Hidden Burden: How mental load impacts working mothers' well-being

Working mothers often feel as if they carry two full-time jobs: one in the office and another in their heads. They arrive at meetings with spreadsheets and slide decks, and by early afternoon their minds are juggling dinner plans, school calendars, dentist appointments and the quiet dread of something forgotten. What that experience reveals is an invisible, relentless burden of cognitive work that research now shows has real implications for women’s mental health and well-being.

The term experts use to describe this invisible work is mental load, the thought-intensive labour of planning, anticipating, organising and monitoring family life behind the scenes. A major new study led by Dr Ana Catalano Weeks of the University of Bath and Professor Leah Ruppanner of the University of Melbourne finds that mothers shoulder roughly seven out of every 10 household mental-load tasks, regardless of their income, career success or how much physical housework they do. Weeks explains that “even as women gain economic power, they remain responsible for anticipating and coordinating household needs, tasks that are largely invisible and difficult to delegate.” This pattern persists even when fathers report greater involvement, revealing a gap between perception and lived experience that sustains the imbalance.

That imbalance matters because mental load isn’t just another to-do list; it has measurable effects on psychological well-being. A pan-European survey reported in The Guardian in early 2026 shows that seven out of 10 British mothers describe themselves as “overloaded,” with nearly half reporting anxiety or depression. Prof Alain Gregoire, a perinatal psychiatrist quoted in the coverage, notes that “much of the suffering maternal mental ill-health causes goes undetected,” in part because mothers interact frequently with health services without sufficient mental health support being offered. This, he says, leaves many women coping alone as the mental load mounts.

The toll these cognitive demands take doesn’t just show up in casual stress. People magazine later reported on a large U.S. study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showing a significant decline in mothers’ self-rated mental health over recent years. The authors found that from 2016 to 2023, the share of mothers rating their mental health as ‘fair/poor’ increased by over 60 per cent, a shift that was far larger compared to fathers over the same period. The study’s authors cautioned that this pattern highlights a growing public health concern that intersects with, and is compounded by, the unrelenting mental load many mothers carry.

Psychologists who work directly with families see the phenomenon reflected in everyday life. In a 2025 Parents magazine survey, psychologist Caitlin Slavens explains that “many moms are the default planner, emotional load-bearer, and peacekeeper in their families.” She adds that this pattern shows up even in holiday activities that are meant to offer mothers a break. “This lines up with what I see every day in my work with mothers,” Slavens says, because mothers’ organisational roles simply extend to every facet of family life.

It’s not hard to see why psychological scientists emphasise that this work is more than trivial. Organising family logistics requires not only remembering appointments and deadlines, but constantly scanning for future needs, evaluating options, making decisions and monitoring outcomes. This “cognitive household labour” is demanding precisely because it happens in the background, without explicit boundaries. Claire Daminger, a scholar whose work helped define cognitive labour in academic research, characterises it as the work of “anticipating needs; identifying options for meeting those needs; deciding among the options; and monitoring results,” all of which can wear on the nervous system when sustained over years.

The mental health effects are also shaped by culture, expectations and workplace structures. Many organisations still operate as if employees have no significant caregiving duties outside work, which means that a phone call from school or a childcare disruption generates the kind of stress that ricochets through both personal and professional spheres. Reports on maternal mental health decline suggest that this interplay between home and work intensifies feelings of worthlessness, helplessness and burnout.

Beyond statistics, social research points to a broader emotional landscape. A 2025 analysis from the Make Mothers Matter campaign shows that more than two-thirds of mothers across Europe feel mentally overloaded, and that this psychological strain frequently co-exists with anxiety, depression and exhaustion. The report emphasises that this isn’t a private struggle but a societal one, shaped by limited workplace flexibility, inadequate parental leave and persistently traditional caregiving expectations.

For some mothers, the cumulative effect is not just stress but burnout, a state of emotional depletion, detachment and reduced sense of accomplishment that psychologists warn can have long-term consequences for mental health. As one UK parenting specialist put it in reporting on burnout patterns, “Burnout is not a personal failing but a natural response to prolonged life stressors,” particularly when those stressors include invisible, unshared cognitive labour.

Part of the challenge lies in recognition. Mental load is easy to overlook because it lacks a clear start or finish, and because it often masquerades as ordinary responsibility. As Slavens notes, mothers can feel guilty for acknowledging overwhelm because they fear appearing weak or ungrateful. That internalised expectation of competence itself becomes a psychological burden.

Addressing the mental load therefore requires structural changes at multiple levels. Workplaces need policies that acknowledge caregiving as part of life, not an exception to be managed quietly. Some companies have started normalising predictable caregiving interruptions and offering more flexible schedules, but progress remains uneven. On the family front, equitable distribution of cognitive responsibilities, not just physical tasks, is essential. When both partners share ownership of calendars, appointments and long-range planning, the invisible labour becomes visible and negotiable.

There are also cultural shifts underway. As awareness grows, more mothers are pushing back against norms that equate love with self-sacrifice. The visibility of these conversations in media ansd research alike suggests a generation of women less willing to internalise ecosystemic burdens without support. Slavens believes this recognition is the first step towards change: “When people start talking about cognitive labour as real work, that’s where redistribution begins.”

What this really means is acknowledging that mental load is not an individual flaw to be fixed with better routines. It is a predictable consequence of social expectations and structural design that intersects with women’s mental health in profound ways. Recognising it — naming it, measuring it, sharing it — is the necessary groundwork before any lasting improvements in well-being can occur.