From doing laundry to washing the dishes: unpaid work is bad for our mental health

‘The 2018 American Time Use Survey found that women ages 25-34 spend eight hours per day on unpaid work, versus men’s 3.9 hours.’ Photograph: LightField Studios Inc./Alamy

I’ve been agonizing over how to respond to an email for the last 48 hours.

It doesn’t involve a medical issue, a work deadline, some horrifying piece of news, a kids-back-to-school task that requires unearthing the dreaded label-maker or logging into some byzantine online portal – all of which are represented in full force in my inbox. Just a completely anodyne suggestion, from a colleague of a college friend who’s eager to talk about a project she’s working on, and whom I’m eager to meet.