Assumptions about gender roles quietly shape the load

Only women can be pregnant, give birth and breastfeed. Everything else — cooking, laundry, sick-day pickups — is shareable, and where you draw that line decides the burden.

Pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding are medically hers alone. Everything else — cooking, laundry, the school run, the trip to the doctor on a sick day — is shareable. Leave that line undrawn and the double shift, paid work by day and domestic work by night, settles onto one person by default.