Christmas morning…. The house is decorated, the stockings are prepared, the gifts are wrapped and set out, and the house is well-stocked with goodies. Your son excitedly tears through wrapping paper to find that gift that he’s wanted since yesterday, because kids always tell their mothers what they really want for Christmas after their mothers think they are done with Christmas shopping.
Then it happens….Your husband, your child’s father, is surprised. Surprised because he did not know what was under that wrapping paper. As you are very well aware, he didn’t wrap it to begin with.
Truth be told, he may have put the tree out and hung lights, but that all happened in one afternoon. But the preparation you as the mother made happened over the course of at least a month.
Thus mental load. There is no denying that most fathers participate in family care from a labor standpoint, but here’s where it gets tricky. Mothers are often burdened with not just labor but the thought process it takes to complete a task from planning and organization to completing the task.
Mental Load: From Start to Finish
Take preparing a meal for an example. Some women become frustrated when their husbands don’t acknowledge the process. It’s not always particularly helpful for their husbands to just cook a meal. There are many moving parts to the process.
First, there is meal-planning. Then there’s checking the cabinets for the ingredients. There is preparing a grocery list. There is the grocery shopping. There is squeezing in the time to prepare the meal around everyone’s work, school and extra-curricular schedules.
Then you have the actual cooking. Of course family meal time is followed by cleaning up the table and doing the dishes.
But, I Cooked!
Many times women find themselves frustrated when their husbands say “See! I cooked dinner. Didn’t that help?”
It minimizes all of the behind-the-scenes mental efforts the woman made to get it to that point. She doesn’t feel validated for the mental load that she has been carrying. It’s invisible and unacknowledged.
Complete Task Responsibility Vs. Divided Tasks -How Is the Mental Load Lightened in Your Relationship?
Some couples choose to take into account the mental efforts. They give the complete task to one person and then another complete task start to finish to the other person.
For example, maybe the wife wants to be the food preparer daily (noticing, planning, and completing) while the husband does the laundry tasks daily (noticing, planning, and completing.)
Others choose to split the components of the task between the two of them. For example, she may meal plan and grocery shop while he cooks and cleans up. Something to that effect.
I Don’t Get Paid for This
The purpose of this article is to highlight the unseen work and the toll it takes on women. Many women find themselves constantly juggling multiple schedules, burning the road up with driving to and from work, picking the kids up from school, orthodontist appointments, soccer and so on.
For all of this to happen, she has to constantly be time-aware and manage kids while doing so. Throw in some ADHD, health issues, and/or perimenopause and she will feel burnout.
By the end of the day she has little left in the tank, literally and figuratively. There is no way to quantify her efforts, she doesn’t get paid for it. But if it doesn’t happen…
The “Perfect” Woman – How Western Culture Adds to the Mental Load
Western culture places the brunt of caregiving tasks to women. Economically, many families cannot afford for women not to work. It’s as if women are expected to be Betty Homemaker and pull in enough income to create a living for her family.
On top of it all, messaging from social media and our culture at large expect perfection. Many women have internalized extreme expectations and develop eating disorders, depression and anxiety disorders, burnout, and/or chronic pain/illnesses.
Many women feel like the project manager of their homes. They are the keepers of everyone’s schedules, plan and organize the logistics of events and and then carries through with the event.
There’s a difference between this and “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.” Being told what to do means that you only have to do the physical labor.
But I Want it Done Right! – Learned Helplessness & Weaponized Incompetence
Overcoming this pervasive operating system requires willingness of both husbands and wives to take a frank look at responsibilities. Ask yourselves this question: “If I were hospitalized for a month, or if I were to die, how would our family operate?”
There would have to be a shift in responsibilities. Careful though! Many women become controlling with their households. They have a “If I don’t do it, it won’t be right attitude.” They may be right, but they need to be careful not to enable learned helplessness in family members or fall for manipulations of weaponized incompetence.
Learned helplessness is when someone has been conditioned by others to not take initiative and do things. Weaponized incompetence is when someone says they will do something and then does it poorly so they don’t get asked to do it again.
Grace, Grace, Grace!
Mental load is an incredibly nuanced topic. The goal of this article is not to point fingers at men and say ‘do better.’ Instead, it’s to start conversations that lead to real sustainable results.
It’s time that couples recognize and appreciate each other’s contributions and move forward working as a team. Sacrifices may need to be made. Expectations may need to be lowered.
Your Kids May be Able to Take on Some of the Work
In the sixteen years that I’ve counseled mothers, I’ve noticed some self-sabotaging patterns. One is not teaching children how to do tasks, instead opting to do it themselves because it takes less time.
Another common pattern, is not expecting the children to help in cleaning and tasks because of their school work and extracurricular activities. This sets them up for behaving as though they are immune to cleaning the house because they “have just too much to do.”
It does not teach time management. It also teaches them to count on someone else to pull their weight (not a helpful thing when they grow up).
But My Family is Different…Mental Loads Vary
Every family is different and have very different needs. Work schedules are usually not the same. Health issues differ. We each have our own strengths and weaknesses.
To determine a schedule of responsibilities, it requires both spouses being willing and quite possibly vulnerable. If you come to an impasse, therapy may help to you to grow under-developed communication skills, cope with an unwilling partner or in the case of couples therapy, create a safe space for airing grievances.
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