Data
Mental Load Statistics: 36 Key Figures for 2026
In short : Mental load is still carried mostly by women. In France, women spend on average 4 h 01 a day on domestic work versus 2 h 13 for men (Insee), and 55% of employed women in a couple say they carry most of the family load, versus 18% of men (Ifop, 2025).
Domestic time, cognitive labor, surveys, parental burnout, school: mental load figures, sourced and dated, for France, Europe and the world.
By YF · updated
How should these figures be read?
This page brings together 36 figures on mental load and domestic and parenting work, each checked against its source on 30 September 2026 and linked to it. It is updated every quarter.
Two reading rules. A survey says what people report, not what they do; a time-use survey measures time spent. And every figure holds for its own scope: one country, one population, one year. Scopes are given as written by each source.
Who does the domestic work in France?
| Figure | Scope | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| In 2010, women spent on average 4 h 01 a day on domestic work, men 2 h 13. | Metropolitan France, aged 15-60 excluding students and retirees (time-use survey) | 2012 | Insee, Regards sur la parité 2012, dossier Ricroch |
| Men's domestic time has not changed in 25 years (2 h 07 in 1986, 2 h 13 in 2010) while women's fell by an hour; the gap narrowed by 40%, mostly because women do less. | Same as above | 2012 | Insee, Regards sur la parité 2012 |
| Women perform 64% of all domestic work hours (72% of core tasks: cooking, cleaning, laundry, physical childcare). | France, people aged 11+ | 2012 | Insee Première n° 1423 (D. Roy) |
| A mother living in a couple spends 34 hours a week on domestic work, about as much as a father in the same situation spends in paid work (33 hours). | France, women in a couple with child(ren) under 25; intermediate scope | 2012 | Insee Première n° 1423 |
| Mothers spend 46 minutes a day on physical childcare, fathers 16 minutes. | Metropolitan France, aged 15-60 with at least one child in the household | 2012 | Insee, Regards sur la parité 2012 (fig. 7) |
| Couple with two children aged 3+: 4 h 23 of domestic time a day for the woman, 2 h 16 for the man. With one child under 3: 5 h 29 vs 3 h 09. | Same as above, by family configuration | 2012 | Insee, Regards sur la parité 2012 (fig. 2) |
What about Europe and the world?
| Figure | Scope | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| In the EU, 59% of women do housework (cooking, cleaning, laundry) every day, compared with 33% of men. | EU-27, aged 16-74, EIGE CARE survey | 2025 | EIGE, Gender Equality Index 2025 |
| Among couples with children the gap is widest: 67% of women do housework daily vs 33% of men. | EU-27, aged 16-74 | 2025 | EIGE, Gender Equality Index 2025 (fig. 24) |
| In France, 61% of women do housework every day, compared with 40% of men. | France, aged 16-74 | 2025 | EIGE, fiche pays France 2025 |
| In the EU, 41% of women provide more than 35 hours a week of informal care to children aged 0-11, vs 20% of men (France: 21% vs 13%). | EU-27 and France, aged 16-74 | 2025 | EIGE, Gender Equality Index 2025 (tableau 12) + fiche France |
| Worldwide, women perform 76.2% of unpaid care work, 3.2 times more time than men: 4 h 25 a day vs 1 h 23. | 64 countries (66.9% of the working-age population), time-use surveys | 2018 | OIT (ILO), Care Work and Care Jobs for the Future of Decent Work, résumé exécutif |
| Globally, women spend 2.5 times as many hours a day on unpaid care and domestic work as men. | World (SDG indicator 5.4.1) | 2024 | ONU Femmes / UN DESA, Gender Snapshot 2024 |
| In the UK, women do on average 60% more unpaid work than men: 26 hours a week vs 16. | United Kingdom, HETUS 2015 | 2016 | ONS, Women shoulder the responsibility of unpaid work |
Who thinks, plans and anticipates?
| Figure | Scope | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 88% of mothers say they are mostly the one organizing the family's schedules; 76% maintaining routines and order; 74% assigning household tasks. | United States, 393 married or partnered mothers of minors, mostly upper-middle class (64.9% employed) — not representative | 2019 | Ciciolla L. & Luthar S., Sex Roles 81:467-486 |
| 78% of mothers say they are mainly the one who knows the children's teachers and school staff; 64% the one who keeps watch over the children's emotions. | Same as above | Ciciolla & Luthar 2019 | |
| Mothers report handling 71% of household mental load tasks; fathers report 45%. | United States, 3,000 parents (survey; each parent reports their own share, hence a total over 100%) | 2024 | Weeks A.C. & Ruppanner L., Journal of Marriage and Family 87(3):966-989 |
| On daily mental tasks, mothers report handling 79%, fathers 37%. Fathers focus on episodic tasks (finances, repairs: 65%, mothers 53%). | Same as above | Weeks & Ruppanner 2024 | |
| Mothers report on average 67% more household management tasks than fathers (13.72 vs 8.2), and high earnings do not reduce their mental load. | United States, 2,133 parents in different-sex couples | 2025 | Weeks, Kowalewska & Ruppanner, Socius 11 |
| A systematic review of 31 studies: women perform the larger share of mental labor, especially for childcare, and bear more of its negative effects (stress, satisfaction, career). | 31 peer-reviewed articles, mostly US and Europe | 2023 | Reich-Stiebert N., Froehlich L. & Voltmer J.-B., Sex Roles 88:475-494 |
| Mothers and fathers think about family matters equally often, but these thoughts harm emotional well-being only in mothers. | United States, dual-earner families, 402 mothers and 291 fathers (experience sampling, 27,772 signals) | 2014 | Offer S., Sociological Forum 29(4):916-936 |
| 64% of partnered mothers say they do more than their partner in managing children's schedules and activities (53% of fathers say the mother does more). | United States, 1,807 parents of children under 18 (couples base: n = 1,276) | 2015 | Pew Research Center, Raising Kids and Running a Household |
| Even when both parents work full time, 54% of parents say the mother does more to manage children's schedules; 6% say the father. | United States, dual full-time earner couples (n = 531) | 2015 | Pew Research Center 2015 |
| In couples where both parents work full time, 52% say the mom does more parenting tasks than the dad; 39% say they are shared equally. | United States, 2,242 employed parents | 2026 | Pew Research Center, For Working Parents, the Boundary Between Work and Family Is Often Bl |
What French people report
| Figure | Scope | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 65% of employed women in a couple say the daily family load rests mainly on them; 4% on their partner. | France, 1,000 employed women (66% in a couple) — self-reported | 2024 | Ifop pour News RSE, Enquête sur la charge mentale des femmes salariées |
| In 2025, 55% of employed women in a couple say the family load rests mainly on them, vs 18% of employed men (65% of women in 2024). | France, 2,003 employees (1,002 women, 1,001 men), 66% in a couple — self-reported | 2025 | Ifop pour News RSE, baromètre vague 2 |
| Among employed parents, 81% of women report a high mental load for following their children's schooling, vs 66% of men. | Same as above (base: employees with children, 41%) | Ifop pour News RSE 2025 | |
| 73% of French women in a couple say they do more housework than their partner; 48% say they argue about it (42% in 2005). | France, 1,004 women in a couple (out of 5,026 European women) — self-reported | 2019 | Ifop pour Consolab, L'inégale répartition des tâches ménagères |
| Two in three women in a couple (66%) say they did more than their partner to organize the summer holidays. | France, 1,099 people in a couple (out of 1,503 aged 18+) — self-reported | 2022 | Ifop pour Voyage avec Nous |
| 77% of women say they have too many things to think about; 63% of women feel more affected by mental load, vs 36% of men. | France, 1,002 people aged 18+ (501 women, 501 men) — self-reported | 2018 | Ipsos pour O2 Care Services |
| 64% of French people feel that if they did not think of everything, some chores would never get done at home; 72% of women and 74% in households with a minor child. | France, 1,050 people aged 18+ — self-reported | 2026 | OpinionWay pour LG |
| 74% of working parents struggled at least once in the past 12 months to meet family responsibilities because of time spent at work (34% several times a month). | France, 2,583 parents of at least one child under 20 — self-reported | 2026 | Unaf, Baromètre des familles 2026 (OpinionWay) |
How common is parental burnout?
| Figure | Scope | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 34% of mothers of young children feel concerned by parental burnout: 20% say they have experienced it, 14% that they are going through it. 40% think they could experience it one day. | France, 1,002 mothers of children aged 0-7, aged 24-45, online — self-assessment, not a clinical scale | 2022 | Ifop pour Malo, Étude sur le burn-out maternel |
| In a 42-country study, parental burnout prevalence ranges from 0% to 8.1% by country and is higher in individualistic cultures. | 42 countries, 17,409 parents (71% mothers), PBA scale, threshold 92 | 2021 | Roskam I., Mikolajczak M. et al., Affective Science 2:58-79 |
| In France, 5.5% of surveyed parents met the parental burnout threshold (5.3% weighted by sex). | France, 1,357 parents (81.4% mothers), convenience sample (PACA, Île-de-France), PBA scale | 2021 | Roskam et al. 2021, tableau 1 |
School and children's health: who gets called?
| Figure | Scope | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| In 2022, 83% of appointments booked on Doctolib for a minor were booked by women; 85% for pediatricians. | France, appointments booked on Doctolib (platform data, not a survey) | 2026 | Doctolib, page “S'occuper de votre enfant à deux” |
| When a school has to call one of two parents back, it calls the mother first 1.4 times more often than the father (59% vs 41% of calls), with no availability information given. | United States, field experiment, 80,071 school principals | 2023 | Buzard K., Gee L. K. & Stoddard O., Who You Gonna Call? Gender Inequality in External Dema |
| Even when the couple signals that the father is more available, the mother still gets 26% of the calls. | Same as above | Buzard, Gee & Stoddard 2023 |
Single parents, fathers, same-sex couples
| Figure | Scope | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| In 2020, one in four families with at least one minor child was a single-parent family (2.0 million); 82% are headed by a mother (18% by a father). | France excluding Mayotte, census | 2021 | Insee Focus n° 249 |
| In 2023, 23% of minor children lived in a single-parent family, 19 in 23 of them with their mother. | France excluding Mayotte, annual census surveys | 2025 | Insee Première n° 2032 |
| 71% of eligible fathers take paternity leave, vs 93% of eligible mothers taking maternity leave. | France, childcare arrangements survey | 2023 | Drees, Études et Résultats n° 1275 |
| In same-sex couples, especially female couples, domestic work is shared more evenly than in different-sex couples, all else equal. | France, over 7,500 couples (same-sex couples over-sampled) | 2026 | Ined, Population & Sociétés n° 647 (Meslay, Rault, Solaz) |
What do these figures miss?
Most of them measure time spent doing. Yet mental load sits mainly in what comes before and after the task: anticipating it, researching options, deciding, checking. That is what sociologist Allison Daminger described in 2019, and what few surveys put numbers on.
Mental Loadless's Mental Load Index measures exactly those phases, household by household. An anonymous collective barometer will only be published once the threshold of 10 households per category is reached; in the meantime, the 12-question test gives an individual estimate.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of women carry the mental load?
It depends on the question asked. In France in 2025, 55% of employed women in a couple said the family load rests mainly on them, versus 18% of employed men (Ifop for News RSE). In 2024, the figure for women was 65%. These are self-reports, not measurements.
How much time do women spend on housework?
According to Insee's time-use survey, women in France spent on average 4 h 01 a day on domestic work in 2010, men 2 h 13. The gap narrowed by 40% since 1986, mainly because the time women spent went down.
How common is parental burnout?
In a study across 42 countries, measured parental burnout prevalence ranged from 0% to 8.1% depending on the country; in France, 5.5% of the parents surveyed met the threshold (Roskam et al., 2021). Self-report surveys give higher figures, which measure something different.
How often are these figures updated?
Every quarter. Each figure is re-read in its primary source, with its scope and year; a figure that cannot be checked is not published. The date of the last update is shown at the top of the page.
Sources
- Insee (2012). Regards sur la parité — 2010 time-use survey.
- EIGE (2025). Gender Equality Index 2025.
- Ifop for News RSE (2025). Employee mental load barometer, wave 2.
- Weeks, A. C. & Ruppanner, L. (2024). Journal of Marriage and Family — University of Bath announcement.
- Roskam, I., Mikolajczak, M. et al. (2021). Parental burnout around the globe. Affective Science.