What is the "mental load"

Exactly. Nobody's saying that these tasks are rocket science or that it's unreasonable to expect them all to be achieved (by someone!), or that we are not 'just getting on with them'. It just takes up quite a lot of bandwidth to not just do them, but to be in charge of them all getting done (even the ones you don't do yourself but are somehow still in charge of reminding others to do them). They are often very unevenly distributed.

True, remembering things is adulting 101!
But the “mental load” is more like running a full-time logistics startup out of your brain, one that never closes, has zero staff, and whose clients are your family, colleagues, and occasionally your boss.
It’s not the remembering, it’s the never being allowed to forget. You’ve probably managed a huge amount on your own, which takes real strength.
The “mental load” isn’t about capability, it’s about distribution.
Most women aren’t saying “I can’t handle it,” they’re saying “I’m handling it all — and it’s invisible.” It’s the difference between doing tasks and carrying the mental responsibility for them 24/7. That's why I am looking to make this load visible on wonex that puts together and calculate your mental load to give data driven insights. Making this load visible!

I see lots of times on MN the suggestion to women posters is "just dont do it" and the theory is the man who hasn't been sharing the load, will start doing it. That doesnt necessarily work. After years of searching for, buying, wrapping all presents for our DC i asked DH to deal with 1 child's christmas list. A week before Christmas he had bought nothing.....so I bought the items, because the potential result of me doing nothing, was that one child might well have nothing to open on Christmas day!

Perfect example. OH came in (mostly jokingly) moaning that he got 1 email from DD’s school yesterday . One!! In about 9 years! I got 7 on the same day.

He does do plenty of other stuff so it’s not actually an issue and I found it quite funny and told him to suck it up or I’m forwarding all the other emails to him too.

For married couples I’d say it starts at the wedding planning (if before kids) - no - the decision to get married/ buy a home/kids etc - basically growing up and planning for the future

Yeah this

But if she didn’t, nothing would ever get done

I don’t know how you put up with it. I just had a holiday with a male friend. I researched, booked everything. Walked around with phone in hand to look at maps, made sure we got timings right for trains, never felt quite relaxed as was always anticipating our next move. All he had to do was wake up at the appointed time each day and be told what the day’s itinerary was. What luxury! He was bemused when I refused to go out one day as I needed a day off from tour guiding.

I’m single without DC so am used to doing all my own admin etc, but can see how infuriating an uneven ‘mental load’ would be just from that one holiday.

Where did I say I was forced into it?

But you dont have to do it you are choosing too

It would seem, however, that you're not mentally equipped to get a point that's been explained to you umpteen dozen times.
You don't have a partner, so there's no possibility of an imbalance in sharing the load when it comes to the planning and maintenance of running a household and caring for kids. So of course it doesn't affect you and isn't an issue. Why do you struggle to understand such a simple concept if you're such a mental giant?
Are you piss taking or are you really that clueless about this?

Be does pretty much do all of Christmas, which I loathe, thank god.

Tell us you're a man without telling us you're a man.

The point is that men often won't deal with these things, forcing their spouses to take them on single-handed. Otherwise they never get resolved.

Someone made the point earlier that their mental load started in maternity leave..I think this is relevant as UK paternity leave really is dismal. Parenting is still seen by many as a woman's role and all the mental load that goes with this. If men had more paternity leave and were more involved from the start would this improve?

Exactly. The point of this thread was for the OP to play superior. She's not really looking for insight and has ignored it when people explain that the problem is not the load itself, but the fact that most men are not carrying their half of the responsibility for adulting.

Are you OK with that?
Have you tried to change things?
Does he pull his weight in other areas?

I remember landing at an airport for our trip over last Christmas and as the plane is parking up the Dad turns to the Mum and says something along the lines of “so what’s the first we’ve booked for today”. The noise she came out with 😳 honestly I knew how she felt in that moment after planning and booking every trip

Or "i need Millicent (nice stereotyping of "posh" there btw) to ballet because five other girls in her class are doing it and she's begged me and I don't want to let her down so I have to figure out if we can afford it, for it in, secure a space, go.on a waiting list". Or "I need the house to not be healthy hazard and have that broken floor tile fixed and the boiler needs servicing". Grow up.

We're on holiday at the moment. Aside from us both deciding on a destination (Japan), I did the research, booked everything, sorted flights and itinerary, researched the places we'd be stopping, bought currency etc.
He just turns up at the airport with his passport.
This is every trip we've ever done.

I think it is summed up quite neatly by your partner looking stunned about how shit your pension is because you had to work part-time, because you 'worked' around their super special role, which meant that they were out of the country at short notice and couldn't possibly cover weekends because they needed a break/didn't really do small people.

My DS was in a sports team several years ago. They asked for a parent volunteer to sort out teams/fixtures. I'd done it before and knew it was a ballache. DH suggested we do it "together."
i dont know why i agreed. What happened was i created a whatsapp group, emailed other clubs, arranged dates, booked space for the match, sorted out teams, found out address of away club.....and DH would drive DS and maybe a team mate there....(after id given him the address and found out how long it took to get there) and then I would submit the results to the club.

Its a handy term to describe the invisible work required to ensure life runs smoothly for yourself anyone you're responsible for, and anyone you shouldn't really be responsible for, but who has manipulated you into it by opting out themselves. It's been given a term because otherwise it gets discounted as a contribution, as its not something you can see being done. So the person who physically goes to the shop with the list is credited with 'doing the shopping', while the person who has planned the meals, knows what is already in and what needs buying, has worked out the budget, and written the list, is not. Mental load recognises their contribution.

I will say that the mental load can be reduced or more fairly split if the other person is willing to step up. In our case, I still do the majority butI can cope becuase 1) DH has taken on at least some of it 2) he takes on a larger proportion of the doing and c) when he screws up he no longer attempts to make it my fault! This is a HUGE one and is something I see a lot. Men either blaming women because they were in the wrong place/missed something OR men throwing their hands up and going, "Oh, I can never get anythingright because she's so demanding" about stupid things like being expected to remember a dance class time, what's needed for the dance class, and how long it will take to get to the dance class!

Case in point to show how things have improved on this at our house. we (I) buy DCat's food in bulk. We have a container that is kept in the cupboard and we top up from the big bag into the more accessible container as needed. I did it shortly before we went on holiday and remember thinking, "next time I fill this I'll need to order more cat food after". So on Friday, when I went to find the cat food to refill, I was surprised to discover there was none.

It turned out the container had got lower at some point and DH had filled it up to use up the last of the big bag. great. But it did NOT occur to him to buy more cat food or even to mention it to me, as the person who usually buys the cat food. Not once. Not when he emptied the big bag. Not on any of the occassions he would have fed the cat and seen the container getting lower and lower. Nope. He just didn't think about it.

In the past, he would have been defensive etc. This time, he said sorry and then offered to make a big detour after work the following day to a shop that has a 50% chance of seeling what we need.

(As an aside how often do you even have to buy school uniforms and trainers etc? Surely that's not exactly an everyday task?)

The mental load is knowing that you bought trainers 3 months ago, so DC is likely to outgrow them in the next 3 months, so registering it in your brain that this will be around Christmas time, then at Christmas time remembering that DC now likely needs new trainers. (And not forgetting that in amongst all the other stuff going on around that time of year).
Not relying on DC saying "my trainers are too tight" because the damage to their feet has already started at that point.

The mental load is holding stuff in your head - remembering, anticipating, planning. Not the actual buying of trainers.