AIBU to hate the term mental load?

[YeahIsaidit]

I cringe every time I read it, people lamenting that they can't cope with the mental load, partners aren't taking on an equal share of the mental load, argh! They're chores, household tasks, jobs. Mental load makes it sound like you're suffering from some kind of mental health issue rather than being dragged down by housework, stop it.

lose the useless sacks of shit

They're not that useless though, they're still around for their children.

NTFT so sorry if this has been mentioned, but I see mental load as the way to make it clear that each small action has a much bigger ‘thinking’ component to it, too.

So, making dinner - the act is making dinner, but before that can happen, someone needs to know what’s in the cupboards and buy anything missing, plus have everyone’s schedules in mind so they know what time to make it. They also need to know who eats what, any allergies / dietary requirements, what they’ve had the rest of the week and think about how much to make so everyone is sated without waste.

The issue is that some (many?!) partners only see the action - making dinner - but not the rest. So when couples try to share the chores and make a more even split, giving someone ‘making dinner’ as a chore needs to include all of the prep work.

It’s not about moaning about normal adult tasks, it’s about making it clear that ‘making dinner’ doesn’t begin and end with cooking the pasta.

Some people are really good at it, and it comes naturally so it’s not difficult. Others are less good at juggling all the info in their heads / calendars, so it’s harder.

Add women working more, and the brain fog that comes with pregnancy and menopause and actually it takes a lot more brain power to do it all.

Being able to name and explain the concept is, as one PP said so eloquently, the first step to making sure it’s shared.

It is hilarious when an op presents themselves as cool and sorted and chilled and “not like the other girls” and yet they have managed to maintain a thread of hundreds of posts, occasionally giving little frothing boosts to keep it going, over a single phrase. Are you getting lots of enjoyment out of this OP? I think you are.

Especially when it comes from people who avoid shouldering an equal share of the financial load.

That all becomes habit very quickly. These are repetitive tasks that you can do without a lot of thought. Shopping and cooking, it's pretty much the same routine week in and out. Not buying that one.

This is me / our family.
He works hard, full time and brings in 75% of our income. I work part time but do almost EVERYTHING else relating to home and family, all the planning and all the executing. The only chore he does regularly is clear up the kitchen after I've made dinner.

The only exception is things relating to his parents and siblings which I don't do, but will remind, eg "It's Father's Day on Sunday, you need to get a card", or "You should ring your mum and find out how her hospital appt went today".

He's knackered from his job and tbh I'm knackered from my life. My kids are older but still need late night lifts and logistical planning. I don't know how families survive with two full time working parents.

Exactly. And the one thinking only about the report is the one who’s most likely to stay full time after having kids because they’re not burning out, they then get more promotions and pay rises, build up a better pension, then take on more work as they pursue this career path and leave even more mental load to the one who’s already proven they are the one to do it, and that one cuts their hours to cope, and the full-time one checks out more so it becomes harder to share the load with them because there’s so much information and it’s easier to “just do it themselves”.

And the report partner sails on, thriving in a career and with brain/energy left for hobbies, while the mental load one continues to work and carry the household, with little energy, time and brain left for themselves. Cue divorce! Or perimenopausal breakdown!

Life admin: booking the optician appointment for DS (5 mins)

Mental load: delegating taking DS to the appointment to DH. Informing DH that he needed to explain to the optician why DS needs the non-routine appointment, the problems DS has been having and what the paediatric consultant said.
Repeating it the night before while DH took notes so he got it right, because it was a lot to remember.
If DH didn't pass on the information, the optician wouldn't have done a full scale of testing and would not have been prescribed glasses.
The delegation was sucessful. This information is still all in my head as part of the big picture of DS's health concerns.

It's more than booking the appointment and delegating.

While trawling through the thread, since 5am the thought that I need to order DS's medication for a different health problem is niggling through my head. But I can't action that until 9am... but at that time, I'll be organising t'other DS into action. He has executive function difficulties, so trainining him into being a functional, competentent human and not damaging the next generation of feminism takes easily 3x the effort that it does for a motivated NT child. We're on week 3 of "The Battle of the School Bag" and training him to put the school bag in the new, special, Right Place, but at least it remains a daily Christmas-like surprise that the school bag is each morning in the Right Place... except it isn't this morning because it's unusually placed by the back door from where he was released from the garden having climbed the gate to wait for me to get back from the neighbouring county after he forgot his key. He was already doing well to have not had a meltdown in the street, so making him wait it out for the full time instead of aborting and re-arranging my plans would have been a tad unfair and probably set back some of a year's progress on independence work, but as a result, I'm now catching up Wednesday's plans on Friday, with a very jumbled end of term, off-routine Thursday to plough through first... I will end the life-ramble there!

It's life, it's not particularly unusual or special but that doesn't stop it being tiring.

Giving it a name even if it sounds a bit naff is useful at identifing a significant part of making life function and validating the time and effort it costs which will vary by person and family set-up.

I think Mental Load as a phrase needs to change to more explicitly embrace the idea that this is a phenomenon that exists in relation to couples.

I’ve been a single parent since my DD was four (she’s nearly 13). The workload is fairly heavy when you’re on your own and it’s a lot of juggling but it’s manageable because you are your own line manager so you don’t create more stress than you yourself can handle.

The Mental Load thing really kicks in when you are taking on the burden of meeting someone else’s needs as well as your own and that person is not pulling their weight.

The crucial issue is that someone else can spring tasks and considerations on you which you don’t have the mental or time budget for. And resentment creeps in really quickly when that person doesn’t experience the same demands and pressures because they have outsourced it to you by default.

It’s true that we need to learn to push back and delegate properly but this all brings with it additional Mental Load and friction. The “I’lll just do it myself” approach is a cop-out but often much quicker and less stressful than arguing with someone about every single task on the to do list.

But dismissing this on the grounds that single parents cope misses the point. One of the main justifications of being in a settled relationship is supposed to be the support of the other partner. At the moment that feels very uneven in many relationships.

Years ago DH laughed at "the fuss people made saying it was stressful packing for holiday"

We were going to France. I had packed mine and DC clothes and toiletries, made a small Medicine box (calpol, travel sickness tablets etc) got food and snacks for the journey, organised and printed ferry tickets, got directions and instructions for holiday accommodation, put driving licenses and insurance policy in a folder, updated breakdown cover for driving abroad etc. Organised with a neighbour to feed the cats. DH packed a bag of his own clothes the night before. He possibly exchanged some pounds to euros
Of course this is a once a year, completely optional event but it's indicative of many smaller more vital, happenings that go on in households, week in week out

This is MN and specifically AIBU. Frothing and suchlike is the norm and what makes it tick.

Are you new?

OK what questions have I failed to answer?

I'm in my mid 30s, I'm not with my dc's dad because I realised from DS was 4 months old that he was horrible, I was a dumb teen and put up with it when it was only myself and didn't know better but wasn't willing to accept someone who'd ditch them in favour of a days long bender for my son, the door has always been open to them but they chose not to walk through it, fine, DS isn't bothered by it, very little contact with em and that suits. That was my failing having a kid with a prick but I was a kid myself that didn't know better.

I'm in a relationship, don't live together because both value our own space and don't want to, I don't want to disrupt DS life adding someone else to the house either.

I'm hardly being a pick me, a lot of the examples on here such as remembering cards and presents for DH family, that's taking things on that you don't need to so it's a bit daft to whine about it isn't it. Other things such as making dinner are being dragged out into step by step tasks, every single thing a person does is like this and if you view the world in this way no wonder you're wrecked. I've said that of course things should be equally split but if something as daft as laundry becomes a this and this and this and this thing, I'm not surprised a bunch of people are opting out of it. Over complicating silly things got you to that point, not the patriarchy, not women being oppressed, you.

OP, if you still can't comprehend that a scenario with you (and one almost adult child) has very little mental load, Vs someone with a live in partner/husband and several DC generates a much bigger mental load, despite the many examples showing you how this is the case...there's not really much any of us can do about that.

All you can do is insist you're "doing the same" and "just getting on with it" and think it's because mental load doesn't exist, rather than understanding it's not the same at all.

It's not who empties the dishwasher etc. it's the list -
Need a costume for Wednesday-Amazon?
Dentists Monday pick up 30 min earlier
No dog walker Friday need to come home at lunch
Two party's Saturday need to buy pressies and cards. Make sure each one have a ironed top. Clean jeans? Need to go straight from ballet so will have to get changed there.

And so on. Tbh I was glad to have a name for it because years of trying to explain it to my husband who literally doesn't get it. He also annoyingly says he has his own mental load. There is nothing on my list that I would describe as mine.

Over complicating silly things got you to that point, not the patriarchy, not women being oppressed, you.
Blaming women for a systemic issue that means women carry more of the default responsibility in many households isn't a good look.
🙄

Silly women. If only they woman-ed a bit better and we're as cool as you then all their issues would be solved.

What about your “noisy as fuck phone”, OP? The constant blaring reminders of do this, do that. If there’s so little to think about – car insurance once a year, dentist twice, job done – why is the phone noisy as fuck with reminders? And why the phrase “noisy as fuck” – that’s the language of someone irritated by the constant interruptions of, wait for it, the mental load! No wonder you’re so angry.

No one here is suggesting that it’s healthy to dwell on every detail of a task for the rest of eternity. That’s not the point. You keep talking about useless men and weak willed women. But this isn’t about useless men. It’s about men and women not being aware of or acknowledging the imbalance. Talking about mental load is helping people become aware so that they can acknowledge it and change to. Waking up to the reality that mental load exists should be a really healthy and positive thing because once acknowledged it can be addressed, and it should lead to a truly equitable balance of household management. Once a couple realise that a man offering to put the dinner on isn’t actually taking the load of his partner in the same way as actually planning, shopping, putting away the food AND cooking dinner, the weight of the task evens out. Neither party needs to complain, because things are now properly balanced. The term ‘mental load’ is a positive one because it’s waking people up to the fact that there’s more to a task than the doing and allowing them to address it (hopefully). I just cannot understand how you would see a problem with that?

Yeah, running the house is like boiling the ocean. If you take a deep dive into it you can understand how to break down the silos and collaboratively do some blue sky thinking. You can then focus on the deliverables of the household. Job done.

I'm not kicking women as they're doing a perfectly good job of that themselves.

'Mental Load' is almost exclusively an MN thing and judging by this thread, trotted out by women who seem to have gotten all their ducks in a row but have been thrown under the bus by their husbands. They have subsequently come up with a term that describes the donkeys or pack horses they've become. Carrying the 'mental load' like the weight of the world.

FUCK THAT SHIT.

I'm not anyone's donkey and wouldn't entertain living with anyone with that little respect. If women want to be equal they need to believe they're equal. Making up buzzwords and working like a dog is not equality.

It definitely is child related though so maybe the word child needs to come into the phrase.

If you don't have kids (or dogs) then most of this stuff just doesn't exist
Okay I book all holidays as I like to plan and know it's done but that's no more onerous than doing it if single plus I get to share plans and someone share the burden of "is this cheap hotel okay?" Choice.

At work I have many things to plan track and follow up on but I don't call it mental load there, it's just "work" and I keep to do lists and email reminders for annual stuff

It's a simple turn of phrase that is obviously not useful to you, but is to other people. Not everyone sees things the same way as you and if a phrase is useful for some women to navigate their lives and relationships, there is no need to get so angry about that.

There is also nothing you can do about the fact that it exists so maybe step away from MN if it makes you this angry. Your blood pressure must be through the roof!

I think you’ve got way too bogged down in the fact that people have given a name to it. You are clearly not who this term is for, because it sounds like you are already aware of it and have addressed it in your relationship. That’s great. You should be celebrating the fact that other women are waking up to the same realisation and wanting to address it in their own relationships! For a huge number of women, the term has helped them to step back and see the reality of their situation. Having a word for it should be a good thing because having the language to define a problem can be hugely eye opening, helpful and empowering. Stop beating women up for realising things aren’t right and wanting to change it!

Ugh sorry that was for @SamanthaCaine , it didn’t quote.

If everyone does them, as in both partners , then its just a Job. I think the point is when he never makes sure the uniform is all ready, he never knows when out of uniform is, he isn't interested in whether they have a yellow t-shirt for happy day, he has no idea of the uniform fits or when to buy new or where's cheapest, he couldn't tell you a single child's shoe size. So everything about school uniform becomes your responsibility. On top of all the food stuff. And all the medical appts. And all the extracurricular stuff. And... And... And..

So whilst I would never go around complaining about my mental load or cite it on my CV, it's a handy way of referencing the responsibility you hold for keeping everything going whilst he does nothing

you've absolutely missed the point,
isn't anything to do with the tasks themselves, its to do with the person using the mental energy to be the one running the ship, hence "mental load"

I don't find it onerous, but in contrast we can't pre-book in 6 months so we go, welcome away, wait for the reminder, try to squeeze it in short notice, sort childcare / pick up for the kids I'm not taking (we use two different dentists, don't want to drag the smalls to the eldest appt, don't want eldest to miss school for youngests appt), possibly have to rearrange short notice.
So it isn't just about standing at a desk and shoving and old date in your phone. It's like people's lives are different to each other...