Is the "Mental Load" exaggerated.

[whatnow123]

I know the concept of the "mental load" gets a lot of discussion, so bear with me here. My wife and I have three kids (twins who are 5 and an 8-year-old), and I used to agree that I didn’t carry my share of the mental load. But two years ago, my wife got a big promotion that required her to work away a lot, so I condensed my hours and took over most of the household tasks—cooking, cleaning, organizing, etc.

The first couple of months were chaotic, but soon things settled. Life felt more relaxed without the usual structure: bath times and bedtimes slipped a bit, the house wasn’t always tidy, favorite clothes weren’t always washed, I’d order takeout when family visited, and holidays were planned last minute etc etc Yet, there were no real issues.

Now that my wife is home more, she's stressed about how things are organised and once again the "mental load" is bringing her mood down. She admitted that it seriously annoyed her how lax i was with things, but obviously she wasn't home a lot so had to ignore.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Once again not trying to be goady but Dr and Dentist appointments were hard to facilitate and are once every few months. School do lunches. I enjoy cooking to an extent as I am into fitness so, I'm cooking for myself and kids; just not every night. It wasn't a hardship. School events and birthday in calendar, Christmas presents; if you know what they want 5 minutes on amazon.

Everything gets done, definitely not with the efficiency my wife brings but it gets done.

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.

What a lucky woman she is 🙄

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

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...

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Well good for you, but you are hardly parent of the year if that's what you think!!

You have working hours and of course you're expected to deal with "100x more than school". Don't you find it a challenge to be a full-time parent on top of a full-time job? I did, still do, and mine are adults.

And your school never made any last-minute demands involving something you didn't have in the house already and they needed it tomorrow - and you didn't find out until after 6pm? Used to drive me cuckoo! But who fecking sorted it, me of course, never dH!

Because she is a 10/10 parent. How would you feel if she did things like you did?

The question is - was she having to remind you to book dentists, buy gifts, put school dates in the calendar etc? Because it certainly sounds like she had to nag you to sort out the holiday if it “caused an almighty row”. If you’re not realizing yourself about all these things that need to be done - and then doing them - you’re not carrying the mental load, someone else is.

My dh is much tidier than me, too, and he cleans more. Not sure that my standards are lower with regard to cleanliness, I'm just less good at achieving them than he is, but as far as tidiness is concerned, I just don't care as much. He's very fussy about hanging clothes out to dry in a particular way as well, whereas I don't really care about that kind of stuff.

This. I'm actually quite relaxed about the stuff you're talking about OP, I also don't stick to a strict schedule, the place is often a mess, my priority is clean kids, clean clothes, diet balanced most of the time, and clean kitchen/bathroom surfaces. But the mental load is dealing with the relentless life admin of everyone in the family.

I do think you are talking about housework more than mental load. And your housework standard seems similar to mine.

(But sometimes that's the nature of a forum like this. You try to give an example and it ends up focused on a specific issue)

mental load is about anticipating, identifying, deciding and monitoring more that doing things. None of which is hard, until it is. Often cos you have lots of other things going on.

Have you never had that feeling where you'd just like someone else to decide whether that sprain is worthy of a trip to A&E, or someone else to remember its bin day, or someone else to be looking at the washer fluid regularly so you dont end up on a motorway with no washer fluid.

Surely the whole point of the thread is that the OP would be fine with his wife doing stuff to his standards?