Is the "Mental Load" exaggerated.

Did you do the magic? I find that the hardest. Being the sodding tooth fairy, having the money in the house writing a little letter, setting an alarm and creeping into a bedroom at 4am because they were so excited they wouldn't sleep.

But also the stock taking. The mental load of walking around the house and having to think "we will need toilet paper next week, we need shampoo this week, the bathroom could do with mould spray, better add that to the shopping list and the task list for next week" etc etc. I swear my dh walks around the same house with a noise like "ddddddddd" in his head instead of the shit I have to go through to keep the house running.

Everything can be easy if you half-ass it sufficiently.

I think ultimately you just don't care as much as your wife about anything/everything. Maybe she could be less anxious and maybe you could see 60% is pretty shit.

You seem to be basically saying - the mental load isn’t that big if you just don’t do it.

And yes, that’s true. If you don’t care how good your holiday is, if you aren’t that concerned about what you eat, if it doesn’t bother you if the house isn’t tidy or if the kids don’t get to all their friends’ birthday parties, get their teeth checked when they should, etc. If it doesn’t worry you that you don’t have strong links with other local parents or with family, if you’re happy to throw money at stuff, paying higher costs because you forgot to pay things on time, or because you cant be arsed researching or organizing things well, then yes, a heavy mental load is self induced.

But the point is, kids do better if they have strong social networks around them, if they eat well, if they have all the stuff they need when they need it. And most adults do better if they have a healthy diet and their home life is calmer.

So yes, you’ve avoided as high a mental load, but at a cost to your kids and spouse (compared to how things were before). And also, by the sounds of it, a financial cost - though that may well be balanced by higher earnings that your wife is now making.

On the other hand, a stressed parent who is feeling the burden of too high a mental load is also paying a price and will have a negative affect on the family, possibly wiping out the good they do. Hence the constant complaints about partners not sharing the load. Unfortunately women tend to get much more social pressure to meet higher expectations in terms of mental load than men do, so they get stressed trying to meet it and also stressed not meeting it.

Your wife could manage the mental
Load from abroad because it is mental .

It wasn't the same standard my wife kept...but it was perfectly acceptable.

To you. It was perfectly acceptable to you.

My H didn't see the need to vacuum while I was recovering from a C-section because it was perfectly acceptable to him. I asked him to do it several times and he didn't. I did it myself. I split my stitches and had to be glued back together. He didn't care that it made me uncomfortable because to him it was acceptable.

My H would never wipe a light switch, bannister, doorframe, skirting board ect. He chooses not to see the dirt. The same way he chose not to hear the children crying in the night when they woke hourly.

You don’t understand the mental load, like most men.
It’s not about things getting done it’s about every other little thing that goes on in the background.

The fact that you think presents are "a 5 minute job on Amazon" says it all...

Most of us like to put a little thought and love into it...

100% agree the people protesting are just trying to justify their importance. Or part time SAHM position.

What a lucky woman she is 🙄

I managed all of them on top of a full time job and I find organising the kids far easier than managing my boss, my team and senior management. The amount of emails and messages I get from work is 100x more than school.

You think 'dropping the rope' when it comes to passport renewal is no big deal? Really? You need to do it plenty in advance if you dont want adverse consequences, it's definitely an important thing to be aware of.

Similarly, my husband booked a flight and didn't use his full first name on the booking, so it didn't match his passport. He didn't know that would be a problem. That's an example of mental load

YABU op. Bathed, fed dc in a clean and basically tidy house is the bare minimum.

What about hwk supervision?

Book bags and reading.
Parents evenings?
Extra-curricular activities like swimming lessons.
Parties and birthdays?
Sorting outgrown clothes and buying new ones in the correct size, sourcing uniform and sports kit and school materials
Dental & doctor appts and eye tests.
Hair-cuts and nit prevention.
Household budget.
House and garden maintenance.

Banking and insurance.
Utilities.
Family visits and maintaining relationships with gps.
Cars/bicycles.
Holidays such as Christmas and Easter.
Weekly shop.
Meal planning.
Batch cooking.
Recycling
Decluttering

Tbh a man who does a half-arsed job is deeply unattractive to a woman and a real turn-off.

yeah, OP, you have a slap-dash approach and it shows. Buck your ideas up

I actually agree with you and I think it's unfair you are getting a lot of flak in the thread. A lot of mental load is just people aren't being organised or creating work for themselves. Dealing with household admin is very simple. There's nothing like office politics and deadlines and performance management.

I manage to book holidays, the kids and my doctors, dental appointments, hair cuts, boiler service, insurance, and christmas gifts on top of a full time job. I even do all my home accounts with double entry account software because I like to generate financial reports for home.

This!!!!

Am I being unreasonable to think that much of the stress of the “mental load” comes from pressures we put on ourselves, and that with the right mindset, it doesn’t have to be anywhere near as overwhelming?

i think it’s more about the pressure society places on women.

The housework doesn't even figure in mental load for me, it's keeping dozens of balls in the air at home and at work. All the things you have to remember and be organised about.

Well it's not really a mental load if you don't care about the actual 'load'... right?

Absolutely what I was going to stay. If you’re just as on top of dentist appointments, school plays, birthday parties (and gift buying) your own families birthdays and Xmas celebrations etc as your wife is by the time your child is six I’ll concede the mental load isn’t as real as you think it is.

i have lower standards than my DP in some things. Hes tidier than me. Cleanliness about the same.

This ^.

I don't think you have the faintest clue what "mental load" is, @whatnow123. I am willing to bet that your wife carries a lot of that as well as her work. 'Mental load' is more about planning, organising, thinking ahead, being prepared. Knowing which child likes what and which doesn't. Knowing when everyone's birthday is and getting card/present to the recipient in time.

Do you go shopping solo for the kids' uniforms? Do you know what size their current pair of shoes is? Are you the one who orders the oil (if appropriate, just an example). Can you remember unprompted which days are PE days, or sports days, or school plays, and have the correct gear washed and ready to go?

I don't think you are organised enough for all of that personally.

If anything, the mental load is understated.

Kindly, I would suggest that it’s male privilege that allows you to ‘get away’ with this. Part of the mental load is that if a woman ran the household like this it would be looked on a lot less favourably. So, while mental load might be somewhat self induced, it is also ingrained into us by unequal societal expectations.

Maybe your wife is stressed because, regardless of you spearheading this new chilled lifestyle, she will be the one who is judged on it.

Your biggest mistake was letting everyone know your a man OP, you will just get a pile on, which is mostly what’s happening.

But I agree with you, I think so many make a big deal out of it, micro managing things that don’t need to be and doing things that don’t need to be done, it’s not that bloody hard. The term life admin is a load of bollocks and usually 80% of the stuff on these lists (I’ve seen them posted on past threads) are either things that hardly crop up (passport renewal) or things that could just be dropped (in-laws wedding anniversary cards etc) just drop the rope!