Allison Daminger was in graduate school when she learned that men and women use their time differently: On average, men spend more time on paid work, and women spend more time on unpaid work.
“I remember wondering whether the time-use numbers were telling the full story,” says Daminger, who is now an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “What about differences in how men and women use their mind on their family’s behalf?”
In other words, what about the invisible, hard-to-measure work of planning, considering, researching and deciding? In “What’s on Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life,” a new book releasing on Sept. 9, Daminger investigates how couples split the taxing and time-consuming work of making decisions. She conducted 172 interviews with members of same- and different-gender couples — asking them to keep “decision diaries” to track choices they made or considered for their family throughout the day — to reveal who in each couple shouldered most of those often-unseen efforts…