The busiest years in a couple's life are when both partners are building careers and raising young children.

It takes many different types of work to keep a household running: the physical tasks, such as cooking, cleaning and laundry; the mental tasks, like coordinating schedules and managing finances; and the social-emotional tasks of keeping tabs on everyone's wants and needs.

If a task isn't your job or a leisure activity, it goes into one of these "buckets" of household work. One of the most contentious issues during this stage of life is the question of who carries the most buckets -- or the heaviest ones.

Sharing household chores was in the top three highest-ranking issues necessary for a successful marriage, according to a 2007 Pew Research Poll. (The first two were faithfulness and good sex.)

In the past half-century, the majority of mothers have moved into the paid labor force. The labor force participation of women with children under the age of 18 has risen to 70 percent. And mothers are the primary breadwinners in 40 percent of households with children, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data.

Now more than ever, the distribution of household labor is an issue of fairness and respect.

In a 2015 Pew Survey, more than half of the working partners in two-parent households said they split household chores equally. But nearly half also said working mothers do more in handling children's schedules and activities, which requires significant effort before children can drive or manage their own time.

And there's a gender gap in how mothers and fathers describe their household's distribution of labor.

"Mothers in two-parent households, regardless of work status, are more likely to report that they do more on each of the items tested in the survey than fathers are to say their spouse or partner does more. For their part, fathers are generally more likely than mothers to say that these responsibilities are shared about equally," the report found.

One mother I talked to expressed that very sentiment regarding her own family situation.

"I think in his perspective I do 60 to 65 percent of the work, when in reality, I do 90 percent," she said. "And I'm being very conservative with that 90 percent."

The so-called "invisible work" can often fall to women by default. Part of that may be because the gender-chore gap hasn't changed much in more than a decade. Bloomberg reported last year that the Bureau of Labor Statistics' annual Time Use Survey reveals that the percentage of men and women who are involved in household activities -- defined as housework, cooking, cleaning up after cooking, and generally taking care of the household -- has barely moved since 2003, when the bureau began tracking Americans' day-to-day activities.

Everyone wants to be appreciated and recognized for the contributions and effort put forth in their home life. If left unchecked, an unfair division of labor breeds resentment and alienation between spouses. It can erode intimacy and the sense of being supported as an equal. If one person is constantly feeling overwhelmed or tired, a redistribution of responsibility may be in order.

Part of the solution is raising awareness of all the tasks that require labor -- whether mental, physical or emotional -- in raising a family and managing a household.

To that end, try creating a comprehensive list of all the various tasks it takes to run your household. (I compiled one such list for my local paper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which is available online. Another good list to work from is Alexandra Bradner's from her 2013 piece in The Atlantic, also online.) Then sit down with your spouse and determine who typically handles what -- and where things might need to shift.

Perhaps one person prefers to take primary charge of an area, such as school communication or vacation planning. Maybe one spouse wasn't aware of the way certain tasks pile up into stressful mental clutter, and can work to alleviate that. Perhaps one partner needs to try not to criticize the way certain tasks get done in the future.

These may be difficult conversations, but they are necessary to the overall long-term happiness of the family.

When it comes to modern parenting, mothers are the necessity of invention.

There is an avalanche of smartphone apps created by parents designed to make child-rearing easier, more efficient or more fun.

Out of the 2 million apps available in the leading app stores, thousands target the demographic of busy parents -- especially moms, who make many of the household purchasing decisions.

Some of the more interesting ones were also created by moms who had run into a parenting challenge they wanted to solve for themselves.

For example: One Texas mom was tired of her teen ignoring her texts and calls. So she developed Ignore No More -- an app that remotely shuts down a child's phone until he or she calls the parent for a passcode to unlock it. Another mom created ParentBlocked, which allows parents to block a teen's texting capabilities while they're driving.

Three St. Louis-area moms recently took on the proliferation of expensive extracurricular activities for children. Many parents are familiar with the frustration that arises when a child expresses great enthusiasm for a sport or activity, but then loses interest before the season or semester has ended. These three moms have launched a site that allows children to try a variety of activities and lessons for a flat fee of $99 per month.

The idea surfaced when they reconnected at a mutual friend's birthday party last year. They were all working professionals in pivotal points in their corporate careers, and all looking to make a change. They formed a company a month later.

They are launching Kidzxplor.com in August, as a way to make scheduling kids' activities easier and cheaper overall. A child can take classes or lessons from about 40 different providers without having to make a months-long commitment to any of them. While only in the St. Louis area for now, the founders are hoping to expand Kidzxplor to other markets soon.

The idea is modeled after ClassPass, a fitness startup that gives members access to a variety of fitness studios and classes for a month-to-month fee. Angela Sandler, one of the Kidzxplor founders, asked why parents couldn't schedule their kids' activities the way she could sign up for fitness classes on her phone.

The women turned that idea into reality.

Another one of the founders, Stephanie Saur, is an attorney and mother of two daughters in grade school. She said she didn't realize how much money was going out the door on her daughters' extracurriculars until she got a monthly statement for their music lessons. By joining Kidzxplor, customers pay $99 per month for the first child and $59 for siblings, and their children can take an unlimited number of classes, such as gymnastics, swimming or dance, from any of the providers. It operates on a month-to-month basis without any long-term commitment.

"Parents are strapped time-wise and strapped financially," Sandler said. The entrepreneurs are betting that a solution that made sense in their lives will be valuable to other parents, as well.

Given the rise of digital parenting, it may prove a smart strategy.

There are apps to track your newborn's every bowel movement and nap, ones that turn your phone into a baby monitor, others that keep track of kids' activities and organize family schedules. You can get recipe ideas based on what's in your fridge and pantry, keep track of a chore chart or potty train via phone. You can hunt for babysitters, find coupons, track your teens, locate nearby playgrounds, archive your kids' artwork and store family medical information using a phone app.

It's the double-edged sword of new tech: It takes time to help us save time.

And app developers are hoping to turn parental convenience into a profitable business model.

It's become a verb.

Families that Pokemon together, stick together. The massively popular phone app "Pokemon Go" has lured herds of young people from their rooms, where they were glued to their screens, into the great outdoors, where they are glued to their screens.

In many cases, they're allowing their parents to join the hunt.

The PokeCraze can be perplexing for those who missed the earlier Pokemon era, circa the late '90s, and downright scary for the tech-reluctant. "Why are people getting into car accidents and falling off cliffs playing a video game?" they might wonder.

And how can you tell the difference between a zombielike human playing "Pokemon Go" and a zombielike human texting, surfing or tweeting?

I turned to my resident experts, an 11-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl, to explain this viral phenomenon to their clueless parents, aunt and uncle. None of the adults would know the difference between a Charmander or Bulbasaur if one kicked them in the Pokeballs.

These were actual questions posed by the adults, half of whom can decipher and write complex legal documents. (Disclaimer: The writer is not among that half.)

The lesson began inauspiciously.

Adult: So, are you a Pokemon?

Child: No. You are a trainer who catches Pokemon.

Adult: How does the game know where everything is?

Child: There's a GPS-enabled map.

Adult: So, you want the Pokemon to know you are at the park? You want the Japanese programmers who developed the game to know everything you're doing?

Child: There are 21 million people playing Pokemon.

Adult: Do you have Pokemon in your house? Show me how to catch one.

Child: They spawn randomly in the real world. I have to wait for them to show up on the phone screen.

Adult: Where is the start button?

Child: It starts when you press the app.

Adult: What's the object of the game? How do you win?

Child: You catch all the Pokemon. There's no such thing as "winning."

Adult: Are they like your soldiers?

Child (puts head down in his hands): Oh my god.

The tutorial went downhill from there.

Still, it resembled reports of other similar conversations happening around the country. One woman said her mother still believes there's a real-life prize to collect at the "end of the game."

Another said she thought it was a trap used by criminals to lure and rob people. (That has happened, but it's not the intended use.)

That's not to say that plenty of adults haven't caught the Pokemon bug. One player said it tapped into some kind of OCD impulse he has about collecting things. Well, imaginary animated creatures are even cheaper than souvenir magnets, and less frightening than Annalee dolls.

I wanted to know how I would be able to distinguish the "Pokemon Go" people running into poles from the texters doing the same.

My teenager explained that the players have distinct characteristics. They hold the phone like an artist's palette in their palms while they walk, instead of directly up to their faces. They aren't looking down constantly. They will stop at random places and look around. While riding a bike, they may be holding the phone upside-down in a power-saving mode, she said.

But the biggest giveaway is that you can see the game on their phone screen.

You might also overhear Pokemon players speaking a distinct Poke-dialect, discussing the various creatures and their powers. You might spot a player by their distinctive plumage, such as a bright yellow T-shirt with a nonthreatening cartoon face on it.

You may have seen stories about people playing the game in inappropriate locations, such as the Holocaust Museum, a national cemetery or other such memorials. It's perfectly acceptable to give these people dirty looks. If I knew how, I'd share instructions on how to set all their captured Pokemon free.

There may be untapped potential in the game's ability to drive behavior.

One of the adults receiving the Pokemon crash course in my home wanted to know if she could hide Pokemon in her child's backpack to encourage him to study.

"That's totally not how it works," the child said.