What does demandingness mean?
Demandingness is a noun describing the quality of being demanding — that is, the extent to which a person, task, role, or situation places exacting requirements on someone's time, effort, patience, or resources. It can refer either to interpersonal pressure, as when a manager's demandingness strains their team, or to inherent difficulty, as in the demandingness of a rigorous curriculum. The word belongs chiefly to formal and academic registers: it appears frequently in psychology, where "parental demandingness" denotes the expectations and control parents exercise (one axis of the influential Baumrind typology of parenting styles), and in moral philosophy, where writers discuss the demandingness of ethical theories — how much they require of agents. In everyday conversation, English speakers more often rephrase with "demanding" directly, so encountering "demandingness" signals careful, analytical prose.
nounThe quality of being demanding; the degree to which a person, task, or situation makes exacting or burdensome demands on others or on one's resources.
- The quality or state of making excessive or exacting demands on others.
- The degree of difficulty, effort, or resources required by a task, role, or situation.
"The demandingness of the training schedule left little time for anything else."
"Critics noted the demandingness of the role, which required six hours of rehearsal daily."
"Researchers measured the demandingness of caregiving by tracking hours spent and stress reported."
Almost never used in the plural; the word functions as an uncountable mass noun in virtually all contexts.
"The study compared the demandingnesses of several caregiving roles."
In developmental psychology, "parental demandingness" is half of the classic formula for parenting styles — paired with responsiveness, it defines what it means to be authoritative, authoritarian, or permissive.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of demandingness
Demandingness derives from "demanding," the present participle of "demand," plus the noun-forming suffix "-ness." "Demand" entered Middle English in the late medieval period from Old French "demander," ultimately from Latin "demandare," meaning to entrust or charge, formed from "de-" plus "mandare" (to commit, order). The same Latin root gives English "command," "mandate," and "mandatory," all sharing the sense of an authoritative order or charge.
How demandingness is actually used
Formal to academic in register; rare in everyday speech, where phrases like "how demanding something is" are more natural. Common in psychology (especially "parental demandingness") and in discussions of work, education, and ethics.
Easily confused with demandingness
"Demand" refers to an act or instance of asking for something insistently, while "demandingness" is the abstract quality of being demanding.