When Gratitude is B*******

Gratitude. It's touted as the solution for so many of the ills of modern living. And the promise is a good one: more contentment, more mindfulness of the good things (and good relationships) in our lives. Sounds wonderful, right? Except when it's used as a way to paper over our legitimate complaints, unfairness and bias, or disparities in the mental load. There's a whole industry built on gratitude practices. But in this episode, we look at where it also becomes a tool of patriarchal control and self-gaslighting. A way of telling women to "put a lid on it." This episode pulls from sociology and game theory, to help us think about fairness, power, and the mental load.    What You'll Learn: When Gratitude practices are and are NOT useful How not to use gratitude as a gaslighting technique Gratitude vs. Checking your privilege The stunning data that suggests this is a question of power differentials   Featured in this Episode: Should Women Be Grateful for Help at Home? BBC, July 2021. Game theory: Ultimatum game explanation and average results Americans' Time at Paid, Household, and Childcare Work 1965-2011, Pew Research Center "Gender Differences in Perceived Domestic Task Equity" Young, Wallace and Polachek; Journal of Family Issues, 2015. Perceived Equity in the Gender Division of Household Labor, Braun; Journal of Marriage and Family, 2008. For more information, visit The Mental Offload.