The Invisible Job

How Sharing Home and Parental Responsibilities Leads to Happier Lives

By: Paula Fyans

Narrated by: Paula Fyans

Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

Are you spinning multiple plates at once? Mother, wife, employee, cook, cleaner, project manager, taxi driver, homeschool teacher? If it’s actually possible for women to have it all, as society assures us it is, then why do we feel like we are failing? 

All over the world, women shoulder most of the responsibilities of parenting and managing a home, even when both partners are in paid employment. The better they do this job, the more invisible it becomes. 

Many people understand neither the scale of this enormous job nor its value to the family. Failure to both recognize and value the Invisible Job is at the heart of today’s gender imbalance. 

The process through which women take on the Invisible Job is so ingrained in our conditioning that we barely notice it happening or even appreciate what it involves, especially the endless and thankless mental load of project-managing the family’s responsibilities. 

In this eye-opening book, Paula Fyans takes a look at what the Invisible Job actually entails and examines how to prevent and address imbalance for these responsibilities in your own relationship, as well as in society as a whole. 

The Invisible Job is essential listening for everyone, whether you are already struggling with it yourself, about to encounter it for the first time, or oblivious to the workload your partner is carrying. Paula Fyans has experienced the Invisible Job firsthand as a mother working full-time in an international career in pharma and as a stay-at-home mother. 

Using her scientific background, the book combines extensive global research with insights from interviews with women across the UK and Ireland on their personal experience of the Invisible Job.

©2021 Paula Fyans (P)2022 Paula Fyans

Useful read

spotlight on challenges of parenting in our current world and practical ways to deal with these, with facts and research behind the what’s and why’s; identified with much of what the author talks about; a good read for those about to embark on their parenting journey to enable planning and preparation for some busy times; useful suggestions for employers who could lead policy changes to support their employees better and make for a better society

Highly highly recommended!

Read this before you have kids! Gift it to your pregnant friends! O that this book had existed 20 years ago…This topic is universal and the value in this book is in reading it and considering the issue of equality at home BEFORE “the pattern evolves” and before you slip in to taking on that “mental load” that comes with being the family project manager. Highly highly recommended!

The book encourages debate and breaking paradigms!

I strongly recommend this book!
The author, Paula Fyans, uses her scientific background to present and quantify in an enjoyable way, including her own experience, the household chores and care work.
Her research shows that women are still in charge of the major part of this unpaid work. This fact brings them an economic drawback, and often resulting in personal frustration and in a stressed situation with their partners.
What surprised me was the fact that Paula includes a flexibility factor to the domestic tasks, which represents, in addition to the time required, a relevant burden to the mental load. Furthermore, the better this job is done, the more it becomes invisible.
I completely agree with her that the failure on measuring, valuing and fairly sharing the invisible job is at the heart of today's gender imbalance.