AIBU to feel overwhelmed by the family mental load and childcare?

@Fiftyandme
He does the majority of the cleaning, all of the house maintenance and the household admin. As well as paying 70% of the family costs.

Agreed. Two adults involved in organising after school club is a recipe for a situation of double bookings, missed pick ups and miscommunication. I think jobs need to be clear and not having you both doing it at the same time. For example I manage after school clubs and activities, but DH is responsible for the school lunch bookings, I get DD ready in the morning, DH takes her to school, etc etc.

It is difficult, because when it’s things that would directly affect the children, it matters more than something like forgetting to send Aunty Doris a birthday card. People often say ‘oh just lower your standards’ but it’s hard to do that when it means your children miss out, and there’s only so much of your standards that can be lowered, really.

My DH is good at splitting the day to day care with DD - drop offs and pick ups, bedtimes, plus stuff like cooking, washing up, grocery shopping. We both had fairly flexible jobs which helped (mine more than his) and I worked four days a week, not full time. I usually deal with child related admin because I knew that DH is very much a ‘leave it to the last minute’ person, and I didn’t want to risk DD missing out on something she enjoyed such as dance class because DH hadn’t signed her up for the next term by the deadline, for example. I am the opposite of DH and honestly a bit of a control freak (we balance each other out), and it’s easier for me to remember and do it myself than constantly remind him and stress about it. He was like this when I met him, so I knew what I was getting into!

I booked afterschool club and holiday club because I knew that places were booked quickly, and as I had the more ‘flexible’ job, it would be me who’d have to deal with the repercussions of no after school care or holiday club. Likewise I did DD’s school applications because I didn’t want to miss the deadline. There was a thread on here a few years ago where the OP’s husband was responsible for their secondary school application, and forgot about it - I think she didn’t find out until the offer day 😮

It’s a common problem, as you can see!

You need to start letting balks drop. And allowing your kids to be disappointed in the for father when the ball drop.

you both work full time - you shouldn’t be doing the majority of the unpaid shot work all if the time.

divvy up the jobs, give him the list (and when he gets angry calmly explain you tried to talk with him but he angrily dismissed you and played the big ‘I pay more and I gave v important job’ card so now you’ve spilt up the jobs and those jobs are now his responsibility. And then let the resulting shit show happen and make it abundantly clear to those who end up let down that these were his responsibility

and then walk off and enjoy your free time

yes it does tend to be one person and yes that tends to be the one with the lowest hours or more flexibility

and I think for a lot of things - having one person is simpler - one person doing doctors and another doing school will get messy. You will inevitably book the appointment at the same time as the special assembly. Even meal planning cooking and shopping - the person who knows that DD doesn’t have gym this week but does have a party on the Friday night and needs an early tea on Monday will manage better than the person who isn’t responsible for all the household management

at the end of the day you both need to have the same amount of proper free time though maybes focus on that long term - make sure you both get a break and do something for yourselves. We each would have an hour and a half to go to the gym a few times a week. Space to breath

short term - perhaps trying to have a weekend where each of you gets a full day off to recharge because it IS exhausting. if there is money it’s easier - because the one left with the kids can pay to go somewhere and even buy lunch out to make it easier for them to manage

if you could afford to go down to 4 days that would make it so much easier. A cleaner would cost less but might help. Online shopping might help - once a month for bulk items, tins and frozen , so that you can just pick up the fruit and vegetables and meat

and cut back whatever you can - good enough not insta ready

I think 2 parents working full time and 2 young children is just super super hard work. Both parents need to do so much.

I only knew 3 families who did this (others had one parent either part time or sahp) and they outsourced so much. Cleaners, Nannie’s, gardeners etc

it does sound like he does pull his weight already, but it’s understandable you’re knackered, so I think the idea to sit down together and make a list, with hours needed, and divide it up is a good one.

every family has a different ‘mental load with kids’ time required, so ignore the posters above who don’t possess the imagination to work that out, my personal situation was that I worked mine out to be an hour a day sorting just kids stuff out. So include whatever yours is in your list.

To be honest it sounds like he’s trying and doing a fair bit too. After school clubs don’t require both of you thinking about it, it’s not that taxing. Have you got a cleaner?

So he pays 70% of your household expenditure, all the house maintenance and admin and a lot of the cleaning and bath and bedtime when he is home?
That seems very reasonable and hands on to me.

Im afraid that what you are describing is quite normal. He sounds like he is doing quite a lot and generally a man wont have that kind of initiativeabout an after school club. Stop dwelling on this idea of its not fair, I do more than him because etc...it will fester and make you even more miserable. Focus on finding some practical ways to deal with these "normal" facts of family life.

I know this doesn’t help you OP but I have been on my own since the DCs were 3 and 0 - now teens - so have always done everything you mention on my own.

I have found it exhausting obviously but not having any expectation from another person has lessened both the physical and mental exhaustion.

No resentment as there is no one else around to do any of this stuff anyway and also there is no ‘ oh I thought you were going to do that’ type situations.

I am not suggesting that you split up of course but I am saying that i understand and I hear you.

I honestly think it doesn’t matter who is doing more or who is right. It sounds like you are both at max capacity. I am in the same position and the solution is I work part time. This is not achieveable for every family, and it is a sacrifice for the part timer in terms of career and finances. However I truly believe it’s the only way to achieve any kind of balance for our relationship and our kids.

In the midst of family life it's easy to become overwhelmed.
I come with the benefit of hindsight.
In your list above, other than food/ cooking laundry and homework (and the demands of that will lessen as they get older) the jobs are sporadic and not really time consuming in the greater scheme of things.
You say your DH does 70% of the cleaning and house admin (paying bills, presumably that includes switching suppliers setting up direct debits, insurance, banking , arranging MOT etc)
To be honest it doesn't sound hugely uneven in terms of time.
What about the jobs you haven't mentioned? Who does the gardening and house maintenance? Who deals with the car maintenance? If you deal with that too then it's definitely unfair.
You imply that you have a flexible job working from home. Doesn't it make sense that you do the jobs that have to be done during the day (medical appointments)? Could he be home for parents teacher meetings or would it be difficult with work? If it was an important medical appointment/ school meeting would he be there?
Which of the jobs would you like him to take on? Would taking on that job be realistic? Could he be home at an appropriate time to do the homework for example (presuming they are quite young) or would he have to leave work early?
What I am trying to point out is that you are a team. You each contribute according to your circumstance. The split doesn't sound too uneven to be honest.
Edited for typo

with my dh it was housework and mental load. After many years of rotas, lists, asking, reminding (nagging) I realised I just had to care less than him. So I dropped some of the tasks and didn’t do them, didn’t mention them. He started to do them because he did want them doing. I cancelled one of ds after school clubs and switched it to a weekend so we could both go (or one of us) when ds wanted to do another club I found one for a Friday when dh finishes early. I made sure I had nothing to do with it. I book parents evenings for after dh finishes work. I tend to do more Xmas concerts etc though but we are definitely more equally balanced than we were.

Sounds cliche and sexist. DP has arranged and taken our 5 year old to most of his drs appointments and we also had an incident where he was given the wrong medication and DP researched and got some further advice. A lot of men are great at this stuff.

There’s a fantastic feminist critical theorist called Cynthia Enloe who has written a lot about women’s invisible work, often in the context of war but I feel it fits most domestic households. Women naturally seem to take on this role almost without question. I saw a funny video a few weeks back with a man pretending to be a dad taking his child to the GP and he basically had to call his wife 10 times to answer every question. It’s funny because it’s so real.

Ok so when you say that it's unbalanced and he then gets emotional and says "you're accusing me of not doing anything" that's a straw man argument. A rhetorical trick designed to shut you down. Which suggests he knows fine well he's getting an easy ride.

The point is, it is unfair and you both know it. Don't give us the "but he's a good man / dad" bollocks, that's not how good people behave, is it?

Have you tried making lists of what each of you do, to demonstrate the unfairness? Or pointed out how much free time each of you has?

You could get the fair play cards and try that approach. Or just tell him that you are now stopping X Y or Z and it's his job to organise it.

Do what I did. Add your DH to all the group chats for school and clubs and all school emails and apps. Just so he can experience the craziness (particularly around Christmas). When I did it I didn’t ask him to do anything but just be in them as I was forgetting stuff and could he be a second pair of eyes. After a few weeks he quietly started offering to sort out bits and pieces - I think he had no awareness of what I had going on in my head with the kid admin and house admin. He had to be in it to see it, not be told by me.

I also suggest you relax your standards if he does start helping. I have to keep reminding myself it’s ok he is doing the thing I would do perfectly effectively but sometimes not how I would do it.

I always find this a tricky one, as especially when it comes to children's activities and organisation of anything involving them I find a lot of women might moan about being the one carrying the mental load, but would also be reluctant to hand it over and fully leave to their OH.
Would you want to miss out on going to parents evenings?
Also if you said can you do the school club admin would you fully trust him or would you be supervising (in which case handing over this would be pointless). Same with clothes, would you be happy with his choices?

You have only given examples of what you do in terms of admin relating to children, but what about other household admin? Do you also sort breakdown cover, car insurance, home insurance, gas/electric supplier, internet/TV package.

I am lucky as my DH takes on cleaning (purely as he has better standards than me) so other than general day to day hoovering or wiping surfaces he will do the deeper cleans.
However if I moan about doing the pressing stuff like kids, laundry and food he will point out a lot of stuff he does that might be missed (other than cleaning). He deals with the bins, car maintenance and washing the cars, gardening, DIY. He somehow ended up with the gas/electric bill so he also deals with that one. I can't say that all other admin tasks are that tricky though - water bill is not changeable for example. There are probably lots of other stuff he does too that I don't even think about because it is done.
I think the food shop and meal planning just feels worse as it's every single day.

What is the issue with the kids club admin and why is that so stressful?
Do you children have a medical condition that requires frequent appointments? (You mention hospital so I am guessing so?)
Can you do the food shop online? We generally buy the same each week so can you not set up a list and then just add bits/change before submitting?
How often are the children in need of new clothes? How old are they to be involved in choosing? When little (and still now) I get a lot from the supermarket. When younger they didn't really have an opinion on what they wore so was pretty easy to just find some bits and pop in the trolley.

No children do not need all this parents just think they do

I do all the things you do but I work part time. Can you afford to go part time? If he won't do more then I would do less.

Tell him he is cooking three meals a week or it's really simple dinners like beans on toast. Stop doing his washing for him.

Exactly the same situation here except I’m paying 40 per cent of the bills, and because I’m self employed DH thinks that means I have all the time in the world to take on kid related stuff. I’m constnely angry about this stuff, but also like you know that deep down DH is a decent guy. I can’t work out how to share things more equally

He doesn't value what you do

He's told you that

If you were earning more, he'd have more respect. Even though you'd be doing less in the house so he'd have to do it

It's that simple

2 full time parents and kids is just busy. Plus being an active caring parent involves volunteering for sports teams, school and nursery roles and events.

You both work full time - does he work evenings too? I used to work professional services and the partners with kids usually really cared about their family. They recognised they couldn’t commit to getting home in the evening except perhaps one or two set nights a week (usually to coach teams or do something ‘dad job’ oriented, sigh) but a few of them did stuff like cook a Sunday roast, plus their wives didn’t even usually work full time. I’d tell your dh he needs to plan and cook two meals a week starting now. One weekend and one weeknight every week and if he can’t get home in time to cook then he needs to make something in advance like a curry or a pasta sauce. I would not tolerate his saying it’s too much for him - if he doesn’t earn enough to pay for cleaners and housekeepers he needs to chip in with his time. I send my dh to buy the school shoes and I make him fully responsible for signing school notices. Simple tasks you can fully hand over and start building them.