Two homes and a baby: How politicians Josh Burns and Georgie Purcell manage the juggle

There are bigger domestic battles than who does the cooking, who cleans the toilet, and who’s stuck doing the laundry. A prime struggle in any relationship is this: who makes the magic? Who remembers the birthdays? Who bakes the birthday cakes, gets the gifts and wraps them? Whose job is it to be cheerfully resilient when the birthday baby starts sobbing from exhaustion before the candles are even lit? Who plans for the future?

One young mum – a description she loves – set out to find the answer and to turn down the conflict. She was the perfect person for the job. Leah Ruppanner, 45, is a professor of sociology at the University of Melbourne, soon to be a visiting professor at Harvard, and the author of Drained. Her book is a manual for anyone who wants to lighten the mental load.

So what exactly is the mental load? As a sociologist, Ruppanner had spent more than 20 years looking at the division of domestic tasks, but even in households where housework appeared pretty equal, the women were still stressed to the max. “I thought, you know I can’t keep just documenting housework time and childcare time … there’s something else we’re missing and what we’re missing is this kind of invisible thinking work. Emotional thinking.”

It’s the keeping track of the family juggle, anticipating when things might go wrong, planning with everyone’s hopes and dreams in mind. Crazy hair day at school? Sure. Bought the Manic Panic and made sure it’s washable. It’s about constant availability and sustained commitment to all the details. Everything, everywhere, all at once – and not forgetting the permission note for the excursion.

Meet two very different couples. Josh Burns, 39, and Georgie Purcell, 33, are both politicians. He’s federal Labor, she’s Animal Justice in the Victorian Legislative Council and facing an election later this year. They’d known each other for a while but hard-launched their relationship in mid-2024. Their daughter, Lilah, was born last December. Burns’ seven-year-old daughter from his first marriage, Tia, lives with them half the time – between the home they own in Kyneton, north-west of Melbourne, and their rental in St Kilda.

“Each week, we run a schedule that sees us travelling between the two houses based on work and family arrangements, and Josh obviously also goes to Canberra,” says Purcell, explaining their juggle. “We have a lot of animals as well, so the mental load and logistics in our relationship are significantly exacerbated by our lifestyles and living arrangements.”

So, who does what and when? “I’m probably more of the runner of