MissPerceived

Have you ever heard the term "lifecrafting"? It comes from a new piece of research out of UCL — and it describes something you might already be doing without knowing it: using your mental energy to deliberately think through the why behind your decisions and craft the life you want over time. In this episode of MissPerceived, Professor Leah Ruppanner digs into this fascinating concept, connects it to her own research on the mental load, and then asks the harder question: is lifecrafting actually available to everyone — or is it a privilege reserved for those with the most resources? And why are young people booing at commencement speeches?
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction — what is lifecrafting?
01:00 The UCL research: Frampton, Gould & Cox on lifecrafting and the mental load
01:45 How lifecrafting connects to Leah's "Meta Medicare" mental load type
02:18 Do you lifecraft? And has it gotten harder over time?
03:00 Why we encourage lifecrafting in young people — and why it's now backfiring
03:30 The commencement speech backlash: why students are booing
04:44 Structural forces that crush lifecrafting: inflation, AI, broken care systems
05:30 The gendered problem: women lifecraft for others, men lifecraft for themselves
06:00 Is lifecrafting only possible for the rich?
07:06 Individual agency vs. structural headwinds — a sociology superpower moment
08:00 Conclusion: lifecrafting is unequally distributed by income, gender, and age
09:27 Who is responsible for opening up lifecrafting to all?
10:00 What happens when young people stop seeing a future worth crafting?
11:00 Lifecrafting vs. dream building — how the concepts differ

Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner
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Leah posted one question on Instagram — "What do you hold to a higher standard in your household than anyone else?" — and got 26,000 views and 200 comments. The answer that came through louder than anything else? The clutter. The piles. The stuff that just sits there while everyone walks past it pretending it doesn't exist. In this episode of MissPerceived, Professor Leah Ruppanner unpacks why household clutter is so emotionally activating, why it's a mental load issue hiding in plain sight, and what the research (and your comments) reveal about who's really responsible for making it disappear.
Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner
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A listener emailed Leah with a question straight from the middle of a relationship argument: what's the difference between equality and equity and which one should we actually be striving for? In this episode of MissPerceived, Professor Leah Ruppanner breaks down one of sociology's most important distinctions and brings it all the way home, literally. From time-use research and the mental load to leisure time, burnout, and the economy of gratitude, Leah explains why your relationship probably needs both equality and equity, why getting stuck in only one is a trap, and why giving endlessly to everyone else while putting yourself last isn't equity: it's gaslighting yourself.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction — a listener question sparks the episode
01:00 What is equality? Access, time use, and equal divisions of labor
03:00 Time-based equality in relationships — tracking who does what
04:08 Why time as a measure of productivity is becoming less useful in the AI age
06:21 The mental load and equality — what Drained adds to the picture
07:30 What is equity? Giving more to those who need more
08:39 The economy of gratitude — how households naturally use equity
09:30 Why mothers get stuck in the equity mindset and burn out
10:53 Equity without equality is gaslighting — and it needs to stop
11:30 How to undulate between equity and equality in your relationship
12:30 Kate Mangino: relationships balance out over time — but only if you're conscious of it
13:23 Brian Page and Modern Husbands: equal leisure time as a key equality measure
14:30 The beautiful cycle: inequality → equity → equality → repeat
15:29 Share your experience — Leah wants to hear what's working for you
Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner
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Do men actually feel guilt — or does it just look different? In this episode of MissPerceived, Professor Leah Ruppanner dives into one of her most viral Instagram moments and the research that sparked it: the striking difference between how men and women experience guilt in family life. Drawing on Marianne Cooper's landmark studies, Leah unpacks a concept called "upscaling" — why when life gets uncertain, many mothers respond by raising the bar, seeking control, and comparing themselves to others, all of which leads to more guilt, not less. If you've ever felt like you can't stop optimizing, can't lower your standards, and can't stop looking sideways at what other people are doing — this episode is for you.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction — guilt, Instagram fame, and a viral post
01:00 Do men feel guilt? What the research and the comments say
02:18 How men transition guilt into action — and why breadwinner norms neutralize it
04:35 Why women don't get the same guilt negation — and why that's a problem
05:30 Is guilt even a useful emotion? What it's actually signaling
06:54 Marianne Cooper's research: upscaling vs. downscaling under pressure
08:00 The optimization trap — why highly educated mothers burn through mental load energy
09:16 Three strategies mothers use when upscaling: raise the bar, seek control, compare
11:36 Food, motherhood guilt, and the pressure of home-cooked organic meals
13:00 Why "solely responsible" became the default — and how we got here
14:30 Social media as the ultimate social comparison machine
16:09 What Drained says: good is good enough, and social comparison is the thief of joy
18:27 Guilt as a signal vs. guilt as a trap — and how to tell the difference
Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner
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You were told to lean in. Work harder, say yes, show up, do more — and you'd be rewarded. But what if leaning in actually created a trap? In this episode of MissPerceived, Professor Leah unpacks one of the most important shifts she's hearing about in interviews and research conversations around the world: the lean-in generation has quietly become the leaned-on generation. From office housework to being the unofficial encyclopedia of the workplace, Leah breaks down how women's competence, compliance, and care are being exploited — and what it's going to take to make that invisible labor finally visible.
Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.