Briefly Noted: Another Reason Men Avoid the Mental Load

I agree with Louise Perry’s argument: much of women’s mental load is made up of tasks that are both low-status and low-ownership for men. Low-status because they’re culturally coded as “women’s work” and low-ownership because, when left undone, the social blame usually falls on women. That’s why telling women to “just do less” rarely works.

But having been the primary caregiver for my now-16-year-old boys, I’d add another layer: when men do step into this labor, they often enter social worlds where they’re outsiders. At the playground, on the soccer snack list, at birthday parties, even at the pediatrician’s office — the informal networks are built by and for women, where men are tolerated but not fully included. You can understand the norms and even code-switch into female language, but the belonging never quite comes.

From a male perspective, that’s a triple whammy: you’re moving into a world already marked as low-status, you don’t really belong there, and you’re stuck on the lowest rung. That combination doesn’t excuse opting out, but it helps explain why redistribution is so stubbornly hard.