Balancing mental & physical labor in the home
Creating more balanced homes by showing couples how household tasks tend to fall on women and take a toll on their health—and offering simple ways partners can split housework more fairly.
USC Completed 2024
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Partners
We set out to understand how dividing household responsibilities shapes health and well-being at home.
Partnering with the creators of Fair Play, we tested their card-based system with couples to see how physical chores and the mental load associated with them get split. The results proved mothers consistently carry more of both, and that imbalance is tied to higher stress and lower relationship satisfaction.
This study is one of the first to quantify the impact of invisible household labor on women’s mental health. Our findings suggest that the Fair Play Method can help improve the division of mental and physical labor within households and lead to better health and well-being for moms.
Meet the project team
Doug Messer
Project Manager
Darby Saxbe
Lead Researcher
Professor of Psychology
Dornsife Center for the Changing Family
Research team
Lizzie Aviv
Research Assistant
USC Dornsife Center for the Changing Family
Partners
Eve Rodsky
Founder & New York Times Bestselling Author
Fair Play
Jenn Younker
Chief Operating Officer
Fair Play Policy Institute
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