The ‘mental load’

[Cachall]

Does anyone else cringe when they read this term on here?

Do you have 10 children who all need biannual performance reviews, monthly pay slips and career progression? 🙄

If project management was so easy every mum in the country could do it you wouldn't need any qualifications or experience to do the job and the salary would be shit.

Admin relating to the house and children is, worse

It's not much help comparing work admin with home admin unless it's actually an either/or situation. A heavy workload at work just probably means you have less energy for domestic stuff and vice versa.

But some people manage a single supermarket, some people manage Sainsbury’s.

No-one is shitting on you because you only have 10 people to manage, not 50, so what’s your point?

The fact that managing a family is easier than project managing a company doesn’t change the fact that it all involves planning, strategising and management.

Mental load is simply a term used to acknowledge the ‘thinking’ part of task execution.

Mental load is simply a term used to acknowledge the ‘thinking’ part of task execution.

Well yes, quite. Which is why many of us think it’s self indulgent nonsense. We now need a “term” to describe “thinking about stuff”. A thing that humans have managed do for millennia without having to label it for sympathy.
So I know you didn’t mean to, but you’ve just accidentally pointed out how daft your own argument is.

i have adhd, every task is like that in my head. it isn't much fun.

No. It’s a useful shorthand for ‘being totally taken for granted and overburdened with having to do the thinking and taking responsibility for other people’.

Yes, again, that’s called “being a parent”. Or did you expect that your five year old would be able book their own dentist appointments and carry out all the thousands of steps that apparently need organising to be able to get there, independently of any input from you?

“Taking responsibility for other people” is literally what the job of being a parent is and yet somehow this seems to be a surprise to people.

The point I was making is that there is a difference in mental load between being a project leader and being a team member and that's a recognised fact. It's an extra mental load. It's not wrong to say so.

We don't deny that it is the case when when we get promoted at work. We don't deny that your mental load increases when you are not just responsible for ensuring your own work is done.

Imagine if someone who doesn't have the same responsibility as you said that what you do is 'just being an employee' and it's no more of a mental load than the work they do as a team member who only has to manage their own role in the project. After all, they still have to get to the office on time, they still have deadlines to meet, etc.

But it's not the same mental load is it? Just as for me, with no children, organising my own appointments, juggling work around those appointments, etc, is not the same mental load as doing all that for three other people as well as myself.

I am not saying being a mum is the mental load equivalent of being a project manager for a big company. I am saying it's as disingenuous to claim there is no difference in mental load between a single person who only has to do their own administration and somebody with dependants who isn't just responsible for themselves.

We recognise it in the workplace. We complain if we do more and it isn't recognised. Why is it not acceptable to recognise it in the home?

Out of interest, what is wrong with language evolving?
You’ve just acknowledged that “thinking” does in fact have to happen in order to manage everyday life.
The more stuff you have to do, the more stuff you have to think about/manage/organise/remember/anticipate.
The more people you have to do stuff for, the more complicated the thinking/managing/organising/remembering/anticipating can become.
I don’t think anyone has said it’s a new thing, or just a parent thing, or that any one single part of it is particularly hard. It’s just that language has evolved to capture the current social reality we are in.
My mum didn’t have 15 emails from school and nursery before her morning tea break to dredge through, never mind what my ancestors millennia ago were getting up to.

5 person family, with differing hours, needs, routines, activities and one who's autistic.

I spend my time thinking constantly about who needs to be where, with what equipment, clothing, cash (always forget that one) and preparation.

My husband asks me where everyone is. Just this week, I asked him to start tea while I took one to a club and came back to find him "watching the end of an episode". Another one was then late to their club because tea was late - the club he'd nagged me to rearrange to that day 🤬🤬🤬

Whenever I’ve seen women talk about the mental load it’s not to do with ‘being a parent’, it’s more usually to do with being a parent and also having to do all the thinking for and project managing of the person who is supposed to be your co-parent.

Yet the ‘thinking’ part in a work environment is called management, strategy, planning.

So in a realm traditionally dominated by men, ‘the workplace’, this ‘thinking’ part of task execution is valued more highly than the ‘doing’ part.

And in a traditionally female realm, ‘the home’, it is considered so irrelevant as to not even deserve a name.

And you think it’s my argument that’s daft?

😂

No, you don’t understand this at all.

No one is upset at the idea of having to do these task for a child, people are pointing out that doing these tasks for more than just yourself is extra work.

That extra work is broken into the task planning and the task execution - like everything else in life.

Where most people have an unequal division of labour it is not just task execution, it is (often largely) the task planning.

Without acknowledging all the constituent parts of labour, you risk ignoring the work required.

A PP pointed out that many women find out too late that they have less than equal partnerships - because before having kids, each person is responsible for their own work, from mental load to task completion.

Again, ML is a helpful tool to articulate part of the task that is hidden and in danger of being overlooked.

Because work is traditionally male dominated and home is the female space.

That’s why managerial roles at home aren’t acknowledged or feted.

Patriarchy and internalised misogyny. For a change

My 5yo? No.. i kind of expected he would be by age 18 though... but no, because he is disabled.

So at age 19, i'm still having to book his dentist appointments, be available to take him to school, pick him up from school, have regular meetings with his school, book his dr & specialist appointments, be available for all of those, feed him, dress him, make sure he is showering.

I have a 19yo who operates at the same capacity as that 5yo.

I signed up to parent, with a competent parter and all that involves.. i don't remember reading in the small print that i'd be a single mum with a dickhead ExH, looking after a 19yo toddler, a teenager, my elderly mother, and myself while my own health and mobility nose dives to the point i'm considered significantly disabled in my own right... and that my 'mental load' would include not only running a household, but the medical timetables of 3 different adults around 2 sets of college/special school timetables.

It's a surprise to people when there's two of you who are parents and only one of you is not only taking that responsibility, but is expected, without complaint, to take that responsibility.

I wouldn't do that at work. I wouldn't take on a joint management position and put up with my co-manager passing the extra workload on to me. Not only that, handing their own general workload on to me and expecting me to do it because it 'only takes five minutes'.

I can't imagine I'd be seen as some pathetic whiner for labelling myself as carrying the mental load in that scenario. I don't think I'd be wrong to bring up the extra load I'm carrying because someone else at an equal level to me isn't doing it.

Gosh, are people on this thread still pretending they don’t know what this means? Still pretending that all parents equally share all parenting duties?

I wonder why some women engage in this pretence?

What is it about parenting did people imagine was easy before they had kids? People complain how busy and stressed they are and how hard it is doing everything, what on earth were people expecting?

Again, I know what it “means”. I just disagree with you. Why are people so hell bent on trying to make us “understand” this? I understand it your argument perfectly well. And I still think it’s twaddle.

i didn't imagine any of it would be easy.. i've worked with kids from babies to teenagers.

But as for the rest, i refer you to this paragraph from my previous post...
"I signed up to parent, with a competent partner and all that involves.. i don't remember reading in the small print that i'd be a single mum with a dickhead ExH, looking after a 19yo toddler, a teenager, my elderly mother, and myself while my own health and mobility nose dives to the point i'm considered significantly disabled in my own right... and that my 'mental load' would include not only running a household, but the medical timetables of 3 different adults around 2 sets of college/special school timetables."

what would you like me to call my situation, out of interest, if you think referring to it a 'mental load' is twaddle?

I'm not parenting at this point.. i'm a Carer, while also being a Personal Assistant to my mother and adult disabled son.

Is there another phrase you think i should be using to refer to the impact of it all?

I agree

For those that think it’s an over dramatisation of every day tasks. Do you split this with your DH? Or you’re happy to suck it all up and do it yourself?

You are then minimising all the extra stuff that women do. That leads to less equal partnerships. And let men get away with doing FA. Do you minimise everything else you do around the home? I can’t see the logic in this at all. Unless you are trying to be super cool and ‘oh I can do everything I’m super woman’ which is pretty stupid and a backward way of thinking.

Diminishing the mental load surely sets back any equality. Why do other women want that? It’s so bizarre.

And if you do share the mental load with your DH then I could understand why you wouldn’t think it’s much. But doing all of it is a lot and should be recognised as such.

No one is upset at the idea of having to do these task for a child, people are pointing out that doing these tasks for more than just yourself is extra work

Leaving aside the obvious “but what on earth did you expect when you chose to have a child?!” response, because that’s so obvious I can’t believe people are having to point it out: not necessarily. It’s entirely situational. There are probably single childfree people in completely different situations to you juggling just as much and thinking about just as much, but for some reason you seem to think that’s not the case, or that people with partners and kids need some kind of special term to show how difficult it all is.

For example: a single working person with a chronic medical condition or disability, trying to think about and organise countless medical appointments, attend those appointments and figure out how to get there because transport is inaccessible, appointments with the DWP that you have to go to or you get sanctioned, fitting that around work and planning time off and cover, while also, as an only child, looking after a parent with dementia, and trying to sort out their care at the same time, and with nobody to help at all. Who are you to say that doesn’t take more thinking about than a routine dentist’s appointment or ferrying the kids to extracurriculars, which aren’t exactly unexpected tasks in the first place? So many parents on this thread apparently incapable of putting themselves in someone else’s shoes or doing the most mundane of everyday things without complaining how much worse it is for them because they have to “think about stuff”.