Globally Grounded: Episode 8
🎧 TUNE IN on Apple + Spotify (or wherever you listen to podcasts).
In this episode of Globally Grounded, Kyra unpacks the modern “second shift”: the extra hours of unpaid or invisible labor that millions of people take on. From single parents in the U.S. to informal workers in Kenya to families in Brazil juggling multiple jobs, she explores what the data reveals about burnout, gender dynamics, and economic pressure. And she makes the case that the real problem isn’t motivation or mindset, it’s the way our systems are designed.
Episode Takeaways
The “second shift” isn’t just a home-life issue, it’s also an economic one. Arlie Hochschild’s original idea focused on unpaid household labor, but today millions of people are living two versions of the second shift: the invisible caregiving load and the need to work a second job to make ends meet.
Burnout isn’t necessarily a corporate problem, it’s a capacity problem. Across countries and income levels, burnout appears wherever responsibility chronically exceeds human capacity. For many people working 56–65 hours a week, the issue isn’t screen time or boundaries…it’s a total lack of recovery.
Global patterns show that policy and culture shape exhaustion. Nordic countries reduce second-shift strain through childcare, predictable scheduling, and leave. Meanwhile, cultures with long-hour norms (Japan, South Korea) or high informal labor (Latin America, Africa) amplify the load.
Women carry a disproportionate share of both second shifts. From the U.S. to Brazil to Kenya, women consistently take on more unpaid care work and are increasingly represented among multi-job workers. Many are running the household second shift and the economic second shift simultaneously.
Recovery time—not balance—is the real foundation of well-being. You can’t self-care your way out of a 65-hour week. Time, predictability, and redistribution matter far more than personal habits. The most resilient cultures protect recovery hours intentionally, and that’s the lesson worth bringing into our homes, workplaces, and policies.
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