The mental load in separated families

Objective: This paper asks how evolving contact and gendered working lives, identities, conflict parental relationships influence cognitive labour in separated families.
 Background: The fact that the often-invisible work of planning, researching, executing decisions concerning children household maintenance is borne by women/mothers, receives growing research attention, yet, bulk this focuses on division mental load intact families. Given high prevalence families with levels father contact, more needed to understand divided parents residing separate households.
 Method: draws 31 semi-structured interviews parents, including 7 former couples. Interviews were sampled from a nationally representative longitudinal survey, Understanding Society, professionally transcribed thematically analysed Nvivo.
 Results: Analysing reveals both continuity change following separation. For some families, identities lives continue justify an unequal load, even when spend large amounts time solely fathers. In others, can reduce communication between either increasing fathers through parallel parenting or decreasing it are excluded decision-making altogether. Finally, separation present turning point where re-evaluated, be negotiated anew.
 Conclusion: We provide new evidence remains among those practicing relatively "modern" family form shared care post-separation, while highlighting possibilities for variation change.