MissPerceived

When employers demand that people return to the office full-time, who pays the biggest price?
In this episode of MissPerceived, Professor Leah Ruppanner responds to a listener whose partner is being called back into the office — and whose family is already feeling the consequences. Leah explores what the research says about remote and flexible work, why it became essential for so many mothers’ employment during the pandemic, and why return-to-office mandates risk pushing women out of the workforce again.
But flexibility is not a simple fix. Leah unpacks the flexibility paradox: working from home can help women stay employed and manage caregiving, but it can also stretch the workday into early mornings, late nights, and an exhausting always-on cycle of paid work, parenting, housework, and guilt.
She also explains the unequal career trade-offs families make. Too often, women make career compromises “for the family,” while men are encouraged to accelerate their careers as breadwinners — even when both parents genuinely want more time with their children. The result is a gendered mental load, unequal long-term earnings, and a system that asks mothers to hold work and family together at once.
Chapters:
00:00 A listener asks: What happens when a partner is called back to the office?
01:30 Why return-to-office mandates can hurt women’s careers
02:20 Before COVID, men had greater access to remote and flexible work
03:00 The pandemic’s “exposure effect” — proving work could happen outside the office
04:39 How flexible work helped mothers remain employed
06:44 Why working from home is essential — and why it is not enough
07:30 The flexibility paradox: a resource that expands the workday
09:06 Remote work, maternal guilt, and never being able to clock out
10:00 The career trade-offs women make “for the family”
11:25 Why men and women often make different work decisions for the same family
13:44 Flexible work helps dads care more — without sacrificing their careers
14:30 Class differences in who can access flexibility and who faces job disruption
15:30 The gendered mental load of holding work and family together
Research Mentioned:
📘 For the Family: How Class, Gender, and the Family Shape Women’s Work by Sarah Damaske
📚 Research by Professor Heejung Chung on the “flexibility paradox”
📊 Research by Leah Ruppanner, Kristin Landevar, Katie Collins, William Scarborough, Lauren Ryan, and Brendan Churchill on flexible work, caregiving, and employment
📘 Drained: Reduce Your Mental Load to Do Less and Be More by Professor Leah Ruppanner
Stay Connected with Leah:
Instagram: @prof.leahruppanner
Instagram: @lightenlab
TikTok: @prof.leahruppanner
Website: https://www.leahruppanner.com
Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe now: /@missperceivedpodcast
Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does a strengths-based approach actually mean — and when does it become another way of asking people to solve impossible problems alone?
In this episode of MissPerceived, Professor Leah Ruppanner responds to a listener’s thoughtful question about why her work focuses so much on structural barriers, inequality, and the systems that make life heavier. Leah explains the value of identifying your strengths, resources, resilience, and community support — but also why strength alone cannot fix unaffordable childcare, inaccessible healthcare, discrimination, or a broken labor market.
Through research on LGBTQIA+ families, the Mental Load Audit, and the sociological tension between structure and agency, Leah explores how we can use our existing strengths while still demanding collective solutions. You are powerful, resilient, and capable — but you were never meant to carry structural problems by yourself.
Chapters:
00:00 A listener asks: Where is the strengths-based approach?
01:30 What “strengths-based” actually means
02:23 Strengths-based vs. deficit-based thinking
03:00 The Mental Load Audit as a practical strengths-based tool
04:46 LGBTQIA+ families, shared experience, and community as a resource
07:06 The problem with “just try harder”
08:00 Why individual resilience can’t solve structural inequality
09:19 Structure and agency: what is yours to carry — and what is not?
10:00 Asking for help, sharing the burden, and building coalitions
11:42 Why lived experience is valuable research and knowledge
12:30 How we change systems without carrying the whole world alone
Resources Mentioned:
📘 Drained: Reduce Your Mental Load to Do Less and Be More
🧠 Free Mental Load Assessment — Lighten Lab
📱 Follow along on Instagram for research insights and mental-load tools
Stay Connected with Leah:
Instagram: @prof.leahruppanner
Instagram: @lightenlab
TikTok: @prof.leahruppanner
Website: https://www.leahruppanner.com
Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe now: /@missperceivedpodcast
About MissPerceived:
MissPerceived is a weekly podcast hosted by Professor Leah Ruppanner, sociologist and author of Drained. Each week, Leah explores the gender myths and social systems shaping our lives — from mental load and caregiving to work, relationships, and identity. No PhD required. Just come hang out.
#MissPerceived #MentalLoad #StrengthsBasedApproach #Sociology #Drained #ProfLeahRuppanner #SocialChange
Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Are you using AI at work — or quietly avoiding it? In this episode of MissPerceived, Leah digs into new research showing that women are about 25% less likely than men to adopt generative AI tools in their jobs. She explains what that means for careers, organizations, and the “brain” of AI itself, and why low female adoption could make AI less accurate for women’s experiences worldwide.
Leah walks through findings from Harvard Business School on global gender gaps in AI use, explores how unsupervised learning means our data is literally training the AI brain, and shows what happens when most of that data comes from men and from rich, English‑speaking countries. She also unpacks the mental load behind women’s hesitation: environmental worries, ethics, stereotypes that say women who use AI are “less competent,” and the pressure to prove your worth without help. Finally, she shares her own experience using AI, why it sometimes feels like “beautiful nonsense,” and asks what kind of future of work we actually want.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction — are you using AI at work?
01:30 Future of Work Lab: automation vs. AI (what’s the difference?)
02:17 Harvard Business School findings: women 25% less likely to use AI tools
04:36 How your data trains the AI brain — and what happens when women are missing
06:56 Global gaps: rich countries, English speakers, and who AI really “sees”
07:30 Career consequences when women don’t adopt AI at the same rate
08:00 Organizational losses when only some workers use AI
08:50 Environmental and ethical worries as part of women’s mental load
09:16 Code for Good Now study: women seen as less competent when they use AI
11:45 Occupational sorting: why some jobs see more AI than others
12:30 Leah’s own experience: when AI makes her brain “lazy”
13:51 Generational differences: Millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha and tech skepticism
14:30 What kind of future of work do we actually want — and who gets to shape it?
Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When someone you love gets a cancer diagnosis, you want to say the right thing — but often, what comes out does the opposite. In this very personal episode of MissPerceived, Professor Leah Ruppanner steps away from the research for a moment to talk about her own recent diagnosis of breast cancer, and the wildly inappropriate (but often well‑intentioned) things people say in response. She shares the five big “please don’t”s she keeps hearing — plus what actually helps when someone is living through cancer or another serious chronic illness.
This isn’t about shaming anyone. Leah talks about the times she’s said these exact things to friends, why they come from fear and grief, and how we can all do better at holding space, dumping love in instead of out, and making it easier (not harder) for the person at the center of the storm.
Chapters:
00:00 Why this episode is different — Leah’s breast cancer diagnosis
02:28 Don’t tell me about someone else’s cancer story (especially the worst‑case ones)
04:36 Why other people’s stories shift the spotlight away from the person who’s sick
05:30 Don’t ask “what stage is it?” or quiz my screening history
06:59 The hidden message in “when was your last mammogram?”
09:22 When my diagnosis triggers your own fear: sharing your medical history
11:25 “I have a good feeling, you’ll be fine” — why that shuts down real feelings
13:46 Questioning medical advice when you’re not the oncologist
16:03 What actually helps: holding space, listening, asking what’s needed
18:14 Learning to slow down, receive care, and feel the collective love
What to say instead (Leah’s script you can steal):

“This sucks. I’m so sorry you’re going through this.”
“What do you need right now?”
“How can I help?”
“You don’t have to respond, but I’m thinking of you and I love you.”
“I can call anytime — you don’t have to pick up.”
Resources Mentioned:
📘 Drained: Reduce Your Mental Load to Do Less and Be More
🧠 More on the mental load and chronic illness in other MissPerceived episodes
Stay Connected with Leah:
Instagram: @prof.leahruppanner
TikTok: @prof.leahruppanner
Email: getcrafty@audiocrafty.com
Website: https://www.leahruppanner.com
Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Are you secretly preparing your kids for downward mobility? In this episode of MissPerceived, Professor Leah Ruppanner asks a huge question many parents are quietly wrestling with: is upward mobility dead, and what does that mean for how we raise our children? Drawing on Annette Lareau’s classic research on concerted cultivation and natural growth, Leah unpacks how different parenting styles map onto class, opportunity, and mental load — and why so many parents feel stuck between dreaming big for their kids and just trying to make ends meet.
She explores why upper‑middle‑class parenting can feel like relentless investment and optimization, how working‑class and poor parents create more freedom and magic in kids’ everyday lives, and what newer research shows about what all parents think “good parenting” should look like. Most importantly, she asks whether constantly raising the bar is helping our children, or just burning everyone out in a system no individual family can out‑parent.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction — is upward mobility dead?
01:30 Preparing kids for downward mobility: what parents are saying
02:27 Mental load, money stress, and families who are just making ends meet
03:00 Annette Lareau’s research: concerted cultivation vs. natural growth
04:46 What concerted cultivation looks like in everyday family life
07:04 Natural growth: rules for safety, freedom for play, kids’ worlds without adults
09:30 The upsides and downsides of each parenting style
10:30 Patrick Ishizuka’s studies: what all parents agree is “good parenting”
11:52 Why mothers hold themselves to harsher standards than fathers
13:23 The pressure to invest in everything — and why you can’t out‑parent billionaires
14:11 How to bring more fun, freedom, and lower stakes back into childhood
15:29 What works in your culture and family? Leah wants to hear from you
Resources Mentioned:
📘 Drained: Reduce Your Mental Load to Do Less and Be More
Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.