This is an IHeart podcast.

Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of IHeart Radio.

Good morning. This is Laura.

Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.

Today's tip is that appreciation helps, even when you can't.

In situations where work is unequally shared, acknowledging that and expressing sincere thanks

can make everyone happier.

Long term, it might be better to work out a different distribution of labor. But more immediately, appreciation helps even if someone isn't helping

as much as others. So there has been a lot written and discussed about the division of household labor.

There are the obvious chores like cooking or cleaning, and many people do try to share those.

But then there is also the mental effort involved in knowing what's coming up,

seeing what needs to be done, managing a schedule and social relationships, and so forth. For instance, if a couple has

two kids, and each is invited to a birthday party on Saturday, each parent may take one kid.

It looks like they are evenly splitting this work. But maybe only one parent received the invitations.

Knew that these children were good friends of their kids.

Reworked the Saturday schedule so both parties could be attended.

Talked with each of the kids about what the birthday children would like and bought the presents.

Figured out wrapping in cards.

Filled out the waivers for the bouncy house places,

made sure the other parent knew where to go and win, and took the present, and so forth.

There was the obvious work, but also a lot of invisible mental work.

A recent guest, Alison Damanger, studied how this mental work is split in various sorts of couples.

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