Exposing the Mental Load of invisible labor with Laura Danger
October 4, 2023
Laura’s social media following highlights how much her work resonates with individuals, with her TikTok having 574.2K Followers and her Instagram having 167K Followers, it’s clear that her work is making a statement many are ready to embrace.
About Laura Danger
Laura is a Licensed Educator, Certified Fair Play Facilitator, Certified Life Coach and Creator who has been teaching and facilitating in Chicago for over 12 years. She has advanced endorsements in the areas of English as a Second Language and Learning Disabilities. Her mission is to influence social change in a way that empowers individuals to value care, connection, and community. She is an educator, community advocate and a millennial parent using her platform to empower overwhelmed caregivers to value their own time and the priceless care labor they provide. She believes we don’t have to compromise our values and live mediocre lives. She is impassioned, silly and sincere and bring equal doses of ambition and realism to her work. She has been interviewed by HuffPost, InStyle as well as numerous podcasts and is also a co-host of her own podcast Time to Lean.
Links & Resources
Website for Laura Danger: www.thatdarnchat.com
Follow Laura on Social Media
Check out her Podcast that she co-hosts: Time to Lean on Apple or Spotify.
Follow Along With The Episode Transcript
Dr. Lotte [00:00:00] Welcome to Dr. Lotte: Science with Soul, the podcast that transcends the boundaries between science and spirituality. I'm Dr. Lotte, your host, Physician, Medical and Psychic Medium, Ancestral Healer, Keynote Speaker, and Award Winning Author of Med School After Menopause The Journey of My Soul. This podcast finds its roots in my own extraordinary life experiences through my personal odyssey. I have discovered our profound connection within a divine tapestry of existence. I have traversed the realms of illness, healing and transformation, propelled by two Near-Death Out-of-Body Experiences that bestowed upon me the extraordinary gifts of clairvoyance, clairaudience, and clairsentience. Guided by this sacred calling, I embraced the pursuit of medical school at the age of 54. Prepare to be uplifted, transformed, and awakened to create a path to healing your own life physically, emotionally and spiritually by bridging the gap between science and soul.
Dr. Lotte [00:01:20] Welcome to Dr. Lotte Science With Soul. I'm Dr. Lotte and the host of this podcast. Today, I'm really excited to introduce Laura to you all. So Laura Danger is a Licensed Educator, Certified Fair Play Facilitator, Certified Life Coach and Creator who has been teaching and facilitating in Chicago for over 12 years. She has advanced endorsements in the areas of English as a second language and learning disabilities. Her mission is to influence social change in a way that empowers individuals to value care, connection and community. She is an educator, community advocates and a millennial parent using her platform to empower overwhelmed caregivers to value their own time and the priceless care labor they provide. She believes we don't have to compromise our values and live mediocre lives. She is impassioned, silly and sincere and bring equal doses of ambition and realism to her work. She has been interviewed by HuffPost, InStyle, as well as numerous podcasts and is also a co-host of her own podcast, Time to Lean. So welcome, Laura. It's such an honor to have you as a guest today.
Laura Danger [00:02:42] I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much.
Dr. Lotte [00:02:45] And I'm going to mention right now that you have a huge following on both TikTok and Instagram. You know, we're talking hundreds of thousands of people following her work. And you can find that at @thatdarnchat. And we will also put this and I will reiterate this later at the at the end of this interview, but she does some great work and I can't wait to have her share some of it with you today. So the first thing I would like you to share with the listeners is can you tell them a little bit about the Fair Play Method?
Laura Danger [00:03:26] Yes. So I am you know, I'm all of those things that you mentioned as part of my day job. I help develop curriculum and I facilitate groups and individual and couple work in the Fair Play Method. So the Fair Play Method. It's a system that was developed by the author, Eve Rodsky. It is very research based. It's basically a communication framework for talking about domestic labor and trying to find more equitable division of domestic labor that doesn't rely on one person delegating. I feel like for so long and I hear this from a lot of people, they'll go to couples counseling or they'll look up online and it's like ten tips and tricks, how to communicate, make a list, speak more nicely. There's all of this continued reliance on one person being the manager at home. And so Fairplay is this method, there's book, there's a deck of cards, and you are addressing the emotional and mental load when you actually communicate about domestic labor. So I don't know how far you want to go into it, but that's the basics.
Dr. Lotte [00:04:46] Right. So that when you communicate the mental load and an emotional labor, what does that mean for people? What is that? The mental load and emotional labor when you're talking about the division of labor in the house.
Laura Danger [00:05:02] So when you're talking about doing chores, what happens a lot of times is one person will say, I need your help, or how can I help you out? Just give me a list and I'm happy to be of service. And you might do that with things like the dishes or taking the trash out or getting groceries and someone will do the actual last part the following through of the task, and in Fairplay, we break all tasks down into three parts. There's the conception, the planning and the execution. So going to the store and picking up the groceries. So that is, I don't know, could take an hour, could take 45 minutes. That is the execution piece. That is sometimes the smallest part, the simplest part of the task. And then there's the conception, which is knowing you're out of groceries, knowing you're out of groceries, knowing that it needs to happen. There's the planning piece that's the middle. That's what's the food preference? What's our budget? How old is the stuff in the back of the fridge? Dietary restrictions, dietary priorities, all of those pieces. Getting the rhythm down in your family, knowing when to go to places. That's a huge that's what we call the mental load. Now you combine all three parts, then you are fully responsible for, you know, in this case, the groceries. Now that's the mental load. But the other piece that I want to bring in and I want to give a shout out to Rose Hackman, who wrote the book Emotional Labor. There is this emotional labor, which is I need to provide care and concern and thought and safety for my family by providing these things in a caring and in a way that meets our family's needs. And there is the emotional labor of how do I bring other people in while also maintaining a positive home and relationship environment which is not nothing, there's a lot to that.
Dr. Lotte [00:07:22] Yes. There is absolutely so much planning, and like you said, going to the grocery store that's the easy part. But it's all that planning, you know? Who is going where? Who needs a snack on the way? Who has extracurricular activities this week? And planning all of that and knowing what to do at each step along the way. And so what do you typically see that this workload typically falls on the women or typically falls on the men?
Laura Danger [00:07:53] Well, there's a lot of data. It's been well researched and like all things in our world, it's been well researched in straight relationships. But our that's a the dominant cultural norm is this framework, the specific roles and often times it does fall on women, especially, like I said, in those cis gendered heterosexual partnerships. It's it doesn't even matter who's earning more. It doesn't matter who's working outside of the home consistently, women are doing 2 to 3 times the amount of domestic labor. And oftentimes that is not quantifying the mental time and it's not taking into account the weight, the mental and emotional weight and the toll that that takes. One thing that I like to think about or like to bring up is. When you are the more reliable one physically, emotionally, mentally reliable one in the partnership, you lack flexibility. So a lot of times women will end up taking more flexible jobs when they have children. They will turn down opportunities because they have to be or they feel pressured to be or for whatever reason, are becoming a primary parent or primary domestic engineer.
Dr. Lotte [00:09:18] And so when they're trying to divide their labor, you talk about something called a weaponized incompetence and you give an example of what that is?
Laura Danger [00:09:31] So I'm sure you've seen a joke or you've seen a video. It's often presented as a joke. In our culture, this idea, the one the example that I like to give is the how to never how to never get asked to do the dishes again. And oftentimes this is a video or a joke or a story or in a sitcom, and a wife will ask for help. Hey, can you help me with the dishes? And her husband will get up and go to the sink and say, where's the dish soap? How do I do this? Or leave, you know, crusty egg and cheese on the plate or load the dishwasher. So silly, so ridiculously that it is annoying that she's got to redo it. And often times in these scenarios and the viral videos and the sitcoms, the guy will turn around and wink at the camera, knows fully, fully what he is doing. And what ends up happening in those scenarios is somebody is asking for help. The other person is doing such a bad job that it either causes harm, or is just so annoying that it is easier for the other person is a less effort for the other person, whether it's emotionally, physically or mentally, that they're not going to ask again. They're going to do it on their own. So they lose trust.
Dr. Lotte [00:11:03] Now that's a very good point. Or they just do sloppy dishes and then. Yeah, the person has to redo it so they can take anything and turn it around. And so it becomes a weaponized incompetence, or they're pretending to be incompetent. And there's no willingness to learn that task and to be of help. That's the bottom line.
Laura Danger [00:11:27] Right.
Dr. Lotte [00:11:28] And they're trying to get out of it. There's also the Nag Paradox. Talk a little bit about that?
Laura Danger [00:11:37] So the nag paradox we all know so well, and it comes down to when one person says, "Just tell me what to do", and then turns around and says, "Don't tell me what to do". And it's a lose lose situation. And I don't want to blame either party in this situation. But the power dynamic and the energy dynamic present in when one person is directing the other. No one wants to feel nagged. No one wants to feel like a nag. And this this nag paradox, the idea of nit picking. You're being too particular, your standards are too high. This is all so common. And at its core, where the term nag comes from or nit picking comes from, is the fact that we treat domestic labor as if it is frivolous. You know, you get upset over nothing, you get upset over nothing. But. On the flip side, when I tell you to do something, you're getting upset, too. If I'm if I am upset at you and you are upset at me, we're just going to go in this cycle over and over. Everybody is upset over something that we treat as frivolous. If we would instead, take it seriously. Be explicit and clear, have a full open conversation about the time and energy and standards and values in there. You do away with that nag paradox.
Dr. Lotte [00:13:14] So for listeners that let's say they're in middle aged, they're in their fifties now and they realize that they've been doing everything their whole marriage. What advice do you have to them? Because can they teach that old dog new tricks or is that almost impossible? What is your take on that?
Laura Danger [00:13:38] So there is really interesting research on this. I hate to say it, but when you acknowledge that you might not be satisfied with something or when in expectation it's not meeting it, when something is not meeting your expectation, you're unhappier. I mean, it seems really simple, but a lot of times people middle aged or older will be will report, there's data that says that they report being more satisfied with the exact same division of labor as younger people. Because the expectation was not necessarily there, whereas younger generations are signing up for, hey, we are, this is a dual career, like no one's surviving on one one income at this point. We're all going into it expecting dual income. So if we are expected to do the same work outside of the home, we expect it inside of the home. So there is a big there is a generational divide happening here. You can absolutely teach an old dog new tricks 100%. And this is this is where that interesting research comes in. If you are willing to engage in a conversation. If you are willing to be influenced and have a good faith effort, it doesn't even matter if the division changes. One person can still do 90 and the other person can still do ten. What it is, is being clear. So when your expectation and understanding aligns with the reality, that's where relationship satisfaction comes from. So if you can look at it and say, "Hey, I'm I'm still going to do 90%. Why don't you do dishes? from the conception to the execution. One thing. And I will. We will hold you will hold yourself accountable. I will trust you to do it. I will get out of your hair. I'm never going to bother you because we set a standard. We're going to do it. Just one task. It's like a spark of, Oh, wow. I see. I feel seen. I feel heard. This is aligning with my expectations". It can drastically change how you relate to each other.
Dr. Lotte [00:15:59] Yeah, that's that's great advice. You talked about the the book and the cards in the beginning. Is that something that can help people if they get that?
Laura Danger [00:16:10] I would highly recommend it. Again, I didn't write it. I don't make a buck if you buy it, I think it's great. You can you can start a bunch of different ways if you're interested. If you are interested in starting with the Fair Play book, you can get it from the library. It's an audio. It's on audio. There is also a Fair Play documentary. So if you're a visual learner, you could sit down and watch the movie and it talks about the mental load. Eve Rodsky has a podcast also. But the book is very straightforward. It's very clear. I do not recommend getting the cards without the book. That is my number one piece of advice. If you don't have the language to communicate about the task, don't start there. Everybody I've talked to, it's been a disaster, myself included.
Dr. Lotte [00:17:12] But that's good advice to definitely get the book and then get the cards to go along with it. Now, you mentioned before, you know, TV shows and punchlines and things in movies. What are your thoughts on how we've made women's frustrations, the punchline of jokes in film and in our society?
Laura Danger [00:17:35] Sighs. This is my, this makes me, this is where I get very impassioned. There is this comedian, I'm not going to I'm not going to shout her out because she's just one in a million there. This has been a long running joke. But she opens her set every night with, Hey, it's a girls night out. She speaks to a mostly female crowd, "Hey, it's girls night out. How many of you have gotten a text from your husbands in the last, you know, since you got here?" and then she will go around and call on people in the crowd to read the ridiculous text messages they've gotten. "Hey, what do I feed the kids for dinner?" "Hey, do you know where the kid went?" One of them is like "I lost the kid". Simple questions. "What time do they go to bed?" "Do I need to wash them?" All of these things and they laugh and they laugh and the crowd goes wild every time. Whereas what's really going on is those women do not have the autonomy to step away from their families for an hour, without their mental energy being drawn in. That pisses me off. That makes me very upset when I leave the house and if I'm getting texts, "how do I do this? How do I do this?" I'm feeling interrupted, I don't have the same access to relaxation. These people in the crowd I mean, I understand why they laugh. I am not here to blame anybody for coping the way they're going to cope. I wish that they felt permission to not treat their frustration lightly. And that's what it does. This culture of there's a skit from Mary Tyler Moore, it's like an old one, husband walks in and she's upset about something and he's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Might as well go back to work." He, like, backs away slowly. And it's always this, Oh, women are so emotional and hysterical and they're so upset about everything and nagging and, it just allows for us to dismiss the reality of, yes, women are more stressed out. I wonder why.
Dr. Lotte [00:19:53] Absolutely. Laughter. No, that's such a good point. You know, because it's it it turns around the table. So when those men I mean, there's someone you can wrap up with narcissism as well. That whole, how many of these men are narcissists and they can't handle and do anything on their own and but that is such a good point, because when we see it on social media, when we see it on TV shows, it becomes an acceptance in a different way. This is we laugh at this and we just keep stuffing down our emotions and the life just goes on the way it was. And it doesn't create any change because we're still joking about it. It's still laughable. Like many things about women, like you said, women are nagging, right? That's what you get a lot. Or women are too emotional, they're too needy and this and that. But the truth is that they're just overworked. And people and they're not being listened to. So, um. Now, I've seen your videos online where you talked about how society has convinced women that their needs are too much. So what would you like to share with the women listening to this episode today?
Laura Danger [00:21:20] Oh, so many things. I think maybe I'll take it back to what I said about, the emotional labor of maintaining comfort, that is a very that the pressure of doing that in a relationship is always placed on is it often placed on women. And the impact of that is if a marriage or a relationship does fall apart. She's blamed for not being able to make it work or change the environment. But that also often demands that she not have boundaries, push past her own boundaries or capacity. And anybody who has ever done work on boundaries, Nedra Glover Tawwab is one of my favorites. Boundaries are about maintaining and creating sustainable relationships. So often, we're told being self-sacrificing is a way to love. Honoring your capacity is the way to create real long term love, where you're showing up authentically and where you're letting people love you. So your needs are not too much, communicating them, being clear about them, is a gift to the people around you.
Dr. Lotte [00:22:39] No, that's that's excellent advice. Would you say that men are capable of care? Men's contributions are often simple "helping out" tasks or saying, "Well, I provide for the family financially", and that's where it ends. Now, do you have any thoughts on that?
Laura Danger [00:23:02] I do. I have a lot of thoughts on that. So Chelsea Conaboy who wrote Mother Brain recently, wonderful book, compiled all of this data about how our brains change when we become parents. And this isn't necessarily a parenting thing, but it just comes down to the fact that our brains are malleable and wonderful at learning. And so just like anything, domestic work and care work is learned skill, and the more you expose yourself and learn and put in that good faith effort, the better. Now, the benefit there, again, there's lots of data on this there's benefits of men who take parental leave, long term benefits to their relationships, to their wives careers, and to their bonds, longer lasting bonds with their children. But also just rethinking this idea of showing up in a very rigid way. We want to move past the idea that you are only as valuable as you are productive or through work, and instead consider that there is providing emotional safety and physical security you can provide and show up in all of these ways. Money's replaceable. Money comes and goes, jobs come and go, but you're needed and necessary as a person to be present and emotionally there in your family.
Dr. Lotte [00:24:41] And if we talk about the children now, many children are raised being taught traditional gender roles that are outdated. For example, little girls are being taught to be good cleaners, pick up around the house, learn to cook, and essentially they're learning house management skills. While many little boys might be raised with much lesser degree of household education, do you think the way we uphold these norms contributes to what we've talked about today?
Laura Danger [00:25:16] A very interesting one. One of my favorite pieces of data that is just mind blowing is that in surveys of teenagers between the age of 15 and 17 by then boys are boys have one additional hour a day of leisure time compared to girls. And in that time, girls are doing things like helping around the house, grocery shopping and community service. So, yes, absolutely, that difference continues to carry. And I think that even when boys are helping out around the house, when they're growing up, they're still being taught that they're helpers and it's not necessarily their responsibility. So bringing in the principles of Fair Play and empowering, regardless of gender, any child to understand the mental and emotional load. Priceless. So priceless.
Dr. Lotte [00:26:20] Now you have children yourself, right?
Laura Danger [00:26:24] I do. I have a seven and four year old.
Dr. Lotte [00:26:26] And at what age do you are they different sex or?
Laura Danger [00:26:30] Girls, two girls.
Dr. Lotte [00:26:31] Two girls. So at what age would you suggest that people start teaching their kids about the division of labor and how do they implement that in their house if they now listen to this and say, Wow. I have two kids under ten. I do 90% of the work in my house. Where do I even start?
Laura Danger [00:26:53] So I would say I wished that we had more, I wish that we had more options of examples of men as primary caregivers and leading the charge in domestic work on TV and movies and things like that. But I think that this is a really interesting conversation. If you are a household where there is a mom and a dad, to make sure that dad understands what kind of example and those implicit lessons that they pick up. One thing that I think is really helpful, it doesn't matter how old or young your child is but I call it a think aloud basically as you go being really explicit about the type of labor you're doing. So just an example, I have a seven and a four year old and we had a birthday party coming up and my husband and I have been pretty out loud about, "hey, I'm responding to this e-mail", "I am going to take a look at the map and see how long it's going to take to get there". Let's consider things like how old they are, what their family is like when we get a gift. So not just magically, you know, the shampoo fairy way where you're like, "Hey, we're out of shampoo!" and then the shampoo shows up. If you are verbalizing and thinking aloud as you do things, your children begin to notice that stuff, including nowadays, so many of us sit on our computers while everybody's on their tablets or whatever, doing research in admin work for your household and it looks like you're just playing on your computer, but you know, you're scheduling, booking, doing bills. If you can verbalize and talk about those sorts of things and as it goes, it's great. And as your kids get older, instead of giving them a list on a Sunday to clean, you start giving them you sit down and you lay out ahead of time here's what it looks like to clean your room. Now you take that responsibility. You are now fully responsible for it and start to teach them the the CPE part, the understanding, the whole task and being responsible for it part, even just in small, small things, they're fully responsible.
Dr. Lotte [00:29:13] And when your kids are teenagers, what do you hope to see them doing to contribute to the house?
Laura Danger [00:29:24] Oh, in my own home. This is a good one. I'm hoping that they will be another functioning member the same way that my husband and I are fully responsible for different things. We it we assign certain tasks to ourselves or to each other, we collaborate on that and then we trade. As capacity changes, a big project comes up or, you know, someone's sick. I'm hoping that my kids will be involved in those conversations and be practicing communication on that with us. That's that's my biggest hope, and my husband and I talk about this all the time. I just hope they don't feel, my biggest thing is we have such an emphasis on finding a romantic partnership in the nuclear family. I'm hoping my kids just want to have a good life and like me, have a home and a family that really reflects what they actually want. And I hope they can verbalize that.
Dr. Lotte [00:30:31] Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. You're also the. Yeah. I hope they, you know, the romantic relationships and all that once they get to high school and you know, people want to be liked they want to have a partner, they want to have a boyfriend or girlfriend. And, you know, they're teenagers and they're growing up and learning to stand on their own feet. What advice do you have to the parents of teenagers in terms of learning how to select a partner that is going to be the person that shows up for them and not stepping into a relationship where maybe their daughter will then be doing 90% of the housework. But now she also has a dream of becoming something and working and having her own life path. What advice do you have or what advice would you give your kids when they get to that age in terms of learning how to find out about other people and the division of labor?
Laura Danger [00:31:35] I would say nobody has to be perfect going into a relationship, but knowing your needs and being able to communicate about your needs and interests and desires. I think that personally is the most important thing I've been with my husband for a very long time, and we've grown a lot and changed a lot and I don't think we have I don't think either of us had those communication skills going in. And I do hope that again, to I hope to de-emphasize the need for their loving relationships to look a certain way and instead to be upfront about you know, I hope they don't find someone who is not curious. Find someone who's curious and wants to learn and grow. So you don't have they don't have to have the right answer if you say, what does fair look like in your household? If they say, I don't know, that's great! That's a great answer. I'm not sure. Let's talk about it. That's so I hope that they can be curious about themselves and also prioritize curiosity over just like settling that word.
Dr. Lotte [00:32:56] And if you could give advice to people that are listening, that are realizing now how much of the household chores they're actually the person in charge of most of it, what advice do you have to them?
Laura Danger [00:33:15] I would say the number one piece of advice I have is that it's not too much to want to talk about domestic labor. It's not frivolous. It's not silly. It's not. You're not nagging to feel upset about doing more than your fair share of domestic labor. The number one thing I can't tell you what is right for you. There are a million factors as to why you might divide your things the way you divide them. But explicit communication is key. And yeah, I guess it's it's just it's okay. It's okay to be upset about this stuff if full permission if you need it for me to want to make a change. And that's okay.
Dr. Lotte [00:34:07] I love it. And if people do teach any classes or or what is the best way to, can they work with you? Do you have a website?
Laura Danger [00:34:16] Yes. So I periodically take coaching clients on. And so if you go to my website and sign up for my newsletter, that's where I keep, keep the information and up to date on if I'm available or not. But I do workshops working on an on demand workshop so you can download it and listen or watch. I have resources that you can download that go along with the Fair Play stuff. And on my podcast with my co-host Krystal the Time to Lead podcast, we take questions and we talk about trending topics and documentaries and Tik Tok videos that go viral, and we talk about the dynamics and how we can apply them to our own lives.
Dr. Lotte [00:34:59] That's great and I will put that link in the podcast notes as well. So it's the website is That Darn Chat, which is the same name that you have on Instagram and TikTok. So I want to thank you so much for taking the time to be a guest on the show today. It's been a pleasure to have you.
Laura Danger [00:35:19] Thank you so much. It's been super fun.
Dr. Lotte [00:35:23] As we conclude this episode, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude for your presence within our community. If you haven't yet, make sure to subscribe. Leave a review and share this podcast with friends and family. Subscribe to my newsletter in the show notes and receive new podcast episodes delivered right to your inbox. If you resonate with the interconnectedness of mind, body and soul and are motivated to embark on a journey of personal healing, I invite you to connect with me at DrLotte.com. Together, we can pave a path towards transformative healing in your own life.