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.

I'm saying that I think whinging about hoovering and what soap to buy etc etc is a bit pathetic

If it was just those two things, yes. The threads nearly full and you still haven't got to the point where you are able to understand that a great many little things are harder to deal with than just the one 😂

I don't see how prioritising tasks and getting things done is difficult no, I appreciate there's more cogs in the machine when there are more people involved but a lot of the examples given and explanations haven't gone to change my mind.

It’s not difficult. It’s time- and brain-consuming. And I still don’t think you really understand the magnitude because you still talk about the individual examples instead of the cumulative load of them all.

I have my suspicions about a few threads at the moment and about “manosphere” infiltrators
There's a very interesting thread on that at the moment. I agree by the way.

Some threads, like this one, seem to be a game of bingo seeing how many Laws of Misogyny can be ticked off before the thread goes poof

I understand having a bunch of things to do and working out when to do them. But giving it a bunch of brain space and letting it become a whole thing bigger than it is, nah don't buy it.

Bloody hell, I can’t believe this thread is STILL going on and op STILL doesn’t get it. I honestly think they are being this dense just to be goady and get a reaction. Surely no one is this stupid that they can’t grasp the concept of a mental load and why it is a problem. The mental load has been ending marriages for as long as there have been people living in modern society, we just have a name for it now and the misogynists don’t like it because we can call it out.

I think some people get cross when they aren't able to understand something. It's not a difficult thing to understand at all, but not everyone has the comprehension skills. That's ok. People can carry on using the expression and op can carry on being puzzled by it.

OhBanana
You hit the nail on the head.
Misogynists don't like women having the language to articulate their experiences and they like it even less when women gather to discuss male (as a class) pattern behaviour.
It gets them awfully annoyed when women do that.

Fuck I’ll bite one last time since this is at a close anyway.

Imagine you have a job share running a company. You and another person (call them X for ease) - same job, same expectations, same experience etc. You both should have a similar workload right? Except X doesn’t pull their weight. X needs to reply to an email but won’t unless told to. Then X asks how to open their email, how to do write it, when should I send it? Other people need managing in the company, but X never runs meetings or supports staff, X thinks you’re much better at that stuff than them. Staff would like a treat at Christmas, not essential but you think it would be nice. X hasn’t thought about that, won’t arrange or find the funding for it. They will turn up and be sociable whilst you’re on edge hoping everyone is catered for though. X seems to be part of the company but only on face value, it’s actually all being run by you. You tell X that maybe it’s not worth them being there if you’re the one doing all the work anyway, so X leaves the company. You’re still doing all the work but at least X isn’t sat there wasting your energy needing to be told what to do and covering their share for them, despite it being advertised the same job for both of you.

The expression is meaningless. Mental load seems to mean thinking about tasks, planning tasks and then doing tasks. That is life!! How much thought and planning needs to go into putting the washing machine on, buying new soap and getting hair conditioner. 🤔

No point asking women this, why don’t you ask the other men in your life why thinking and carrying out these tasks are so taxing that they simply cannot do them without being told to?

Are you on the wind-up?

No, not a lot of thought/planning needs to go into any of those things. But will you concede that some (as opposed to no) thought/planning has to go into every single trivial act involved in running a home?

And if one person finds herself responsible for every one of those tasks, that adds up to a certain quantity of thought/planning?

And if the other person who ought to share this quantity of work never ever does then you have a certain level of unfairness?

I don’t really see where you can disagree with that unless you are dispensing with the whole concept of logic?

I'm a woman and I agree. Not being goady or dense or anything else. If marriages are ending because people aren't doing the washing up or remembering what bin goes out when it was a shit marriage to begin with

With respect, you might not be being goady, but you are being dense or at least spectacularly unimaginative.

Can you really not get your head around a situation where a man might be/become so lazy that his constant, disrespectful refusal to pull his weight in a domestic situation might lead to the breakdown of a relationship? and yet it happens all the time.

I do have a sneaking suspicion that many of the "Mental load-what a lot of rubbish" posters are of the "men just don't see dirt" "if you want a job done, do it yourself" persuasion! There is a thread currently running about the ways in which men-almost by definition-are useless at any task to do with domesticity or child rearing, and people are falling over themselves to have the most useless. With a kind of "Oh, what are they like!" vibe. So frustrating.

Yes, but this entire thread in a nutshell is simply your inability to see it.

After 40 pages of excellent examples and painstaking repetition from over a hundred posters trying to get you to understand, you remain at the level of "whinging about hoovering, innit".

I don't think anyone has the patience, nor the Crayola to try and help you, if you're only ever going to have this level of understanding.

OP has become offensive. Nobody who says those sorts of things has any place commenting on sexism and misogyny.

Well done OP, you are clearly a superior being, with your almost adult child. I'd love to have met you when you were a silly pregnant teen and I had my shit together and been as gloaty as you are now. Tell me how did you manage to pay your mortgage/ rent as a teenage mum? How did you pay for child care and do all the drop off while working full time? Is it possible you had a family who supported you and carried the 'mental load' so you could cope?

I've been accused of being a man, posters implying I was easy as the were, been called stupid, a dick, a cunt, a misogynist and all sorts of other unpleasant things but I am offensive for saying that you're an idiot for going on to have more children with someone that isn't pulling their weight whilst you complain about it and that a marriage that's so fragile to end over doing dishes and answering party invites and the myriad of other stupid bollocks that's been spouted is likely a shit one.

I mean BEING A WIFE(!) was listed as something of a job that contributed to this mental load. How can I take anything seriously when that's mentioned?

I asked if things were financially balanced and nobody answered properly, just given a load of tosh about how it would be if women weren't loaded with domestic stuff. So it really does look like you're all for equality with the running of the home but not the financing of it, which in my eyes is absolute bollocks. Equality if it benefits you. I can't support that.

If you have shitty spouses that sucks but you can get rid or stop pandering to their lazy ways and make them get cards for their own parents, have them deal with the fall out of dc not having their PE kit ready, but nah its easier to just keep having more kids and bitch and moan about how the men you're choosing to have children with are shite.

I just don't agree with what you're saying, if you all want to fret over silly things and make mountains out of molehills that's fine. I think you're being ridiculous in doing so and patronising "but, but it's the thinking" shit is falling on deaf ears because I think you're bringing it on yourself. Sorry you resent the responsibility of being an adult and/or parent but don't keep carrying on with things and doing nothing about it but moaning

I mean BEING A WIFE(!) was listed as something of a job that contributed to this mental load. How can I take anything seriously when that's mentioned?

Are you really this dense? This has to be deliberate. All we can say is re read the thread. This has been answered about thirty times.

If you aren't capable of understanding the explanation, it doesn't make the explanation invalid.

Yup pick out the one thing that you still haven't answered. HOW DOES BEING A WIFE CONTRIBUTE TO THE MENTAL LOAD?? Or do you think that you only consider the needs and wellbeing of your partner if you're married to them. That others in relationships don't think about their partners and have their back with things. That's not a job it's being supportive

OP are you capable of understanding that whatever the labour is (thinking, planning, hoovering, shopping, re-plastering the entire house), if ONE partner is doing ALL of it and one partner is doing NONE of it, then there’s an issue?

And, as such, it might be useful to have the terminology to discuss that inequality?

Can you at least see that? Because that’s primary school level logic.

I had childcare, how's that hard to work out? I worked at night, was around all day during the day when DS was awake and doing all those treacherous things parents do that you all seem to resent and fret over. But as said before, son seems to be the exact opposite of all these useless men you're procreating with so I must be doing something right. I wonder how different that would be if I bitched and moaned about every little thing and seemed resentful of having to do things for him by myself

Instead of inventing important sounding phrases to whine about your inept partners, make them step up and stop pandering to their lazy ways. Be way more effective as clearly having this phrase has done fuck all to help you