Mental Load Test — The Invisible Work at Home, Free 20 Questions

The term mental load (charge mentale) was first used in 1984 by French sociologist Monique Haicault to describe having to keep managing the household in your head even while your body is at work. It became known worldwide in 2017, when a comic by the French cartoonist Emma spread widely.

American sociologist Allison Daminger (2019) divided the cognitive labor of running a household into four steps — anticipating needs, identifying options, deciding and monitoring — and found that in different-gender couples women tended to do more of this work, especially its least visible parts. Dean and colleagues (2022) added the emotional labor of looking after family members' feelings and needs, and noted that this load is invisible, boundaryless and never finished.

Soundary's mental load test has 20 original items written around the concepts in this research. It covers five areas with four items each — anticipating, researching and deciding, monitoring and following up, emotional care, and always being switched on — and in each area one item is worded in the opposite direction to catch a habit of simply agreeing.

You get a score from 0 to 100 for each area and an overall average shown as a light, moderate or heavy load. These bands are not population norms; they are a guide for conversation. If you and the people you live with each take the test and compare area scores side by side, it becomes easier to talk about who is carrying which invisible work.

Start by writing down everything you keep track of in your head. Simply making the invisible visible changes the conversation. Then, rather than asking for help one task at a time, hand over a whole area — for example medical appointments, household supplies or holiday preparations — from noticing, through deciding, to following up.

This test is a reference tool for reflecting on how household roles are shared, not a diagnosis. If exhaustion lasts more than a few weeks or your sleep and mood suffer, try the burnout or stress test as well and talk to a professional if needed.