The visible work is easy to name. You get the kids up and out the door in the morning, shuttle them around, tidy the house, cook dinner, and get the kids to bed. On the surface, it looks tiring but manageable. It’s quantifiable and can trigger the brain’s reward system. You might get a little paycheck in the form of some dopamine or praise when your work is noticed and appreciated.
What is Invisible Work?
The invisible work doesn’t come with a paycheck. It also doesn’t tax your body like the visible work does. It comes at a higher cost as it uses up your brain’s resources… the same ones that are needed for self-regulation. Some examples of the invisible work of caregiving include:
• Repetition – The cycle of doing physical work that is quickly or easily undone leads to repetitive work that doesn’t trigger the brain’s reward system.
• Sensory load – There’s screaming and crying to listen to, poop and puke to smell and touch, food and toys to see all over, and the feeling of your hair being pulled and your body being climbed upon. Caregiving taxes the sensory system, which is the system that is also used for self-regulation.
• The loss of bodily autonomy – feeding, soothing, and co-regulation often lead to feeling like your body is not your own or that it doesn’t get enough “downtime” to recover.
Family System Maintenance
A huge chunk of invisible work is in “family system maintenance”, which needs to be predictable enough to keep the system going yet flexible enough to pivot for life’s curveballs. Family system maintenance is the cumulative process of trial and error that streamlines things like getting ready for school in the morning, managing extracurricular activities, navigating meltdowns, and winding down in the evening in preparation for bedtime.
Think of family system maintenance as a program that uses up a lot of your computer’s processing power and drains the battery super fast. This work is always running in the background while simultaneously being updated in real-time, which can make it hard to share the work. It’s too much data to pass along at once, especially when your child’s needs don’t allow for much flexibility or deviation. Many caregivers feel like the system is too fragile or tenuous to hand off to someone else. The stakes are too high when a meltdown can lead to hours of dysregulation.
Family system maintenance can become overwhelming when your own nervous system is necessary for helping your child regulate. Monitoring your child’s mood shifts, anticipating triggers, scanning environments for sensory overload, translating social dynamics, holding boundaries while staying regulated, and carrying long-term worries about your child’s future can all keep the stress response partially activated all the time.
At the end of the day...
The invisible work of caregiving is at the heart of caregiver burnout. It is the sum of work that isn’t rewarded with dopamine. It is the scaffolding of the family system that doesn’t translate well into a blueprint or a roadmap. It is the chronic activation of the brain’s stress response that triggers stress hormones and challenges your ability to truly rest and recover.
Delight in This
I’ve spoken with many caregivers over the years who have felt alone in their invisible work. My hope is that this blog creates an opportunity for families to talk about it without triggering feelings of guilt or shame. An opportunity to create space for empathy for the caregivers who struggle with self-regulation because their nervous systems are constantly overwhelmed. An opportunity to bring implicit family systems into the light, where the burden of maintaining them can be named and then shared.
