The ‘mental load’

[Cachall]

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

Yawn.

None of us are pretending we don't know what it means. We know what you mean, we just think it's silly.

Why are you pretending we don't understand?

My DH “thinks about stuff” — his job, the news, the future of the Labour Party, stuff he’s been scrolling on the internet…what he doesn’t “think about” is a constant running narrative as he gets up every day of …

….who’s picking which child up, must get loo rolls today when passing Waitrose because there’s only two left and I’m in meetings all day tomorrow so I won’t be able to do it tomorrow, at lunch I need to ring my mum and send some flowers for a friend who’s ill, deadline for flux vac consent form and need to remind kid to pick up coat from school locker at home time, we have things in for fajitas but not enough wraps so get some of those with the loo rolls, need to send in an email to school today as DD has a hospital appointment on Friday and they like at least two days’ notice, put in petrol on way home as DD has to be picked up from hockey game tomorrow 20 miles away (okay, let’s make a detour to Sainsbury’s instead of Waitrose for the petrol and then I can get the loo rolls there plus the wraps. When I’m there, check when Dd next has food tech). Bring back that birthday card that I bought that I left in the office, and remind DD to ask her friend what she would like. Oh and pay piano teacher as my phone says I’ve just got paid. Nip in to feed the cat between Sains and piano practice and must remind DH to order her cat biscuits. Litter needs complete change. Ask DH to do it this evening when he gets in as I need to prep three sets of netting notes for tomorrow and put DD’s PE kit on….

DH doesn’t think about ANY of this stuff. Just like when we go on holiday he appears having packed his underwear and some T-shirts in a bag for life, and then says smugly: “I’m ready, I don’t know why you make such a big deal out of packing, you just need to be more organised” <while I do loads of laundry and count how many plug converters we have and look for the passports>

Who has said that single people don’t have a mental load?

Everyone has a mental load of some sorts, what it entails differs. How is that difficult to understand? Why is the term such a bad thing when it says on the tin what it is?

You use your brain, your mind to think, see, observe, remember, and do a task.

Yes, the term is often used in reference to parents, particularly mothers, but nowhere in the definition does it say that only parents have a mental load.

Don’t like the term, fine, but it’s ridiculous to make it out as if it is an unnecessary term.

There’s plenty of terms about and some want to act as if synonyms aren’t a thing.

What do you want to call it?

Being an adult is vague because the age one is considered an adult varies widely, unfortunately as does what people consider being an adult.

This is completely true!

When we go on holiday my DH does no laundry/packing/house cleaning before. He usually decides to do some random task entirely unrelated to the imminent holiday. One year he cleaned the garage…

Yes, before we go on a trip or holiday I have a really accurate sense of exactly how many hours it’s going to take to do the packing, but when I say “this is going to need at least four hours to get done, so if we don’t start now we will end up being up all night being stressed”, then DH will even start arguing with me over how long it’s going to take (because it can’t possibly be the amount of time I’ve suggested…) Later, at 2am…everyone is frazzled and I’m incandescent because yet again not only am I having to “project manage” the packing but I don’t even get any acknowledgment for doing it.

Now, the smug people on the thread will say that I have a “husband problem” (yes: obviously I do 😬); but it also seems to be something rather a lot of women have, which suggests that there is something structural going on as well.

"Mental load" is only a thing worth complaining about if it's unbalanced between you and your partner, but even in that case, the only person who can actually do something about it is you.

I have seen posts that include things like "plumping the cushions" and "hoovering every day" and "buying presents for his side of the family" in the mental load so forgive me if I don't take the term as seriously as I could.

If you and your partner share things equally I'm sure you have a horrendous mental load compared to me, a child-free woman, but also I don't especially care. I organised my life to have as little mental load as possible and it's working out well for me.

Yes and downplaying all that women do is so unhelpful from some posters. Or acting like it’s all easy and not boring drudgery. I don’t get why they would do this. Unless the posters are actually men. That’s the only thing that makes sense.

I think it genuinely is a bit of a “cool girl” posturing — look at me, I’m so organised it isn’t even work for me!

That’s fine if you’re a SAHP or have a part time job precisely to cover all of those things for a household — because it is work that someone had got to do, and traditionally it was all covered by the “at home” mother (or indeed an at home father). But DH and I both have “big jobs”: the only difference is that mine happens to have more flexibility in working hours, so by default I end up covering not just all the school runs and shopping trips, but also all the project management that goes along with it. But somehow this seems to be replicated across nearly all of the dual-income families I know, whether the woman has the “bigger” job or not. I know two NHS consultants married to each other, where the mum “project manages” everything while the dad puts on a good facade of strategic incompetence! And that’s not by any means unusual!

Im still waiting to hear from all the smug people who knew and anticipated every aspect of parenting before they were a parent.

As i said previously, I expected babies didnt sleep a lot ....I didnt understand how years of sleep deprivation would feel...

Obviously I knew they cant make their own dentist/dr/optician appointments....as someone (very fortunate) with minimal health issues I didnt realise how much time id waste waiting in queues to get a GP appointment , while trying to get kids ready for school.and myself ready for work.
Or that orthodontist appointments are only available in the middle of a school day and require me to take a day off work - my own orthodontist apts, 30 years ago, were always after school and it was before safeguarding so I went on my own

My bad that I did anticipate just how many dress up days/wear something yellow for charity days there were (spoiler a lot more than i remember from my own school) One year DD needed - on the same day - a costume for an assembly, a different costume for a whole school dress up days and had to wear something different to normal, for an after school activity

I didnt know there would be 3 separate parent portals for the same school each with different login and password for trips, school.lunches etc - who finds out that before becoming parent???

And this feels overwhelming sometimes for someone with 2 DC with no additional.needs

No it's a real thing. Often one person, usually the woman will be the one who the buck stops at however wrong that is for stuff being done or not done. Everyone else can keep their options open, play things by ear, see how they feel and be spontaneous and fun but its the wife and the mum who needs to make sure everyone has what they need in any eventuality, who needs to plan and know what is happening in advance so she can be prepared and organised otherwise she's the one getting the blame for the kids missing their dentist appointment, not having things for a school activity or having a messy house and not much in when family pop round last minute.

It shouldn't be this way but it is. Recently DH was unwell after not booking a GP appointment about an ongoing issue for ages. When he was clearly in pain at a family get together quite a few people came up to me and quietly admonished me for not ensuring he'd seen a GP by now. To be clear I had called for him and been on at him to get an appointment for ages but his GP practice requires only the patient call up for appointments unless they are kids or unable to communicate and DH had just been putting it off. Still it was his wife his family saw as being neglectful in this case.

Agreed it is exactly this. Ridiculous ‘I’m so cool and organised it barely registers with me’ bollocks.

But it doesn’t do women any favours in general to downplay this. It’s not a competition. It’s not a race to the bottom. Surely the goal is for men to understand all the other things we do and to help out proportionally. Not to minimise. If you minimise then you’re the one working, taking on the mental load and having less time for yourself. Whilst the DH is all chilled and swanning off to his hobbies or whatever with all the extra time he has. That not equality!

He’s not the one waking up in the night thinking of all the things he hasn’t done. ..

@Delatron yes, and it isn’t enough to just say “oh well that’s just being an adult”, because all too often the DH isn’t “being an adult”, he’s just enjoying his free time and free headspace for himself that is only enabled by his wife/partner doing the “adulting”, as the young people say.

Yep @thecatfromneptune I do not get the ‘oh that’s just being an adult. Or that’s just parenting’ argument when disproportionately women are taking on more of this load and therefore adding to the lack of time and stress they are under.

Whilst the man can focus on his job then come home and relax. How lovely for him. Then we have other WOMEN on here saying ‘oh don’t worry it’s not that much anyway’ it is - there’s so much other stuff to do around running a house and having a family. We shouldn’t minimise this. It’s like going back in time…

Im still waiting to hear from all the smugpeople who knew and anticipated every aspect of parenting before they were a parent.

Same. I didn’t anticipate having children with additional needs. I had speech classes as a child for a few years but that was it, yet I think that had more to do with coming from a different region at the time. I didn’t know what autism was, what it actually meant and examples growing up were portrayals of those high-functioning. Didn’t realise until the assessment that DH was on the spectrum and thought he was just someone who had his quirks, like most people and they weren’t anything that stood out.

When I thought additional needs, I thought physical disabilities because that is what was at the forefront when I was growing up and whenever ADD was brought up, it was said kids like that just needed stronger discipline.

I didn’t anticipate having to constantly be on alert and anticipating dangers every time I take 10 yo DC1 out, not being able to open the windows in the house in case they try to hang out of them or having to look out for things that may set him off, the lack of holiday camps for children like him because he’s non-verbal but potty trained, also did anticipate having to subdue him when he melts down because he gets physical and will one day be bigger and stronger than me.

Yes, that’s absolutely what I signed up for. 🙄

Yes but when you’re the one organising the party and organising the shopping and planning the play dates and sorting birthday presents and making sure the washing is always done and monitoring all the school coms and remembering which day is PE and booking school holiday clubs and …. And…. The list goes on. Yes there are descriptions for each of these things individually that describe what you are physically doing but when you are the only one who actually thinks about any of those things - that is the mental load. Even if the partner does some of those things - if they have to be asked to do tasks then it’s still the thinking and organising that is shouldered by someone. Don’t know what it is such an offensive term to so many - not sure how else you describe that mental juggle which is relentless and at times overwhelming.

People have also raised kids for millennia and yet here we now are all posting on a thread with the sole purpose of (supposedly) supporting each other in acknowledgment of how difficult it can be so your argument also backfires. Whether it’s being the one who does all the “thinking of the stuff” or “bearing the mental load” it amounts the same thing and both are equally exhausting.

@thecatfromneptune

You've distilled this perfectly. Even fairly neanderthal men "think about" stuff in the sense that they are aware things need to be done. But they almost never have this continual noise in their heads which you've described of having to think all the time about five or six things which need to be done and they don't stop to think about the impact that has on all the other things you are doing.

For example: my DD went on a language trip this morning which involved me having to drop her at the airport. I'd spent the whole of the past 12 hours largely focused on getting all the last minute bits ready for and packing (interspersed with bouts of work and housework).

15 minutes before we were due to leave, with frantic last minute things happening, DP started asking me if we needed more of various kinds of groceries and could we go through the shopping list because he was about to do the weekly shop ("do we need bay leaves?". I was standing on the landing frantically throwing underwear into DD's bag while I shouted at her to check she had everything she needed, he was actually in the kitchen and could see the bay leaves and all the other groceries from where he was sitting. Why he couldn't have

a) asked me to do this the previous day when I wasn't frantically packing to go to an airport
b) checked the fridge and kitchen cupboards on his own to see with his own eyes
c) waited until I was back

I will never know.

My DP is one of the good ones: he pulls his weight at home, he gets things done without being asked, he doesn't assume things will get done and he's good at domestic planning. But he still thinks instinctively that a lot of this is something I know better than he does.

Its the failure to understand that as a working mother, at any given second of the day there are five or six urgent demands on your time which make it virtually impossible to give proper attention to any of these or to sit down and think strategically about them. You are spread so thinly that you can't focus on anything for that long. It's the lack of thought that making a sudden, urgent demand on my time will have a knock on impact on other, urgent demands on my time which at best is highly inconvenient. And the slightly chiding tone that the failure to know immediately how many bay leaves we have left is a sign of poor organisational skills.

That's what mental load is. And pretending that it is something which can be solved with calendar reminders at the click of a button is just patronishing bullshit.

Again, you don’t seem to understand at all.

I don’t think being a parent makes the mental load worse - organising more than one person is clearly harder than organising for just one.

Of course someone with a chronic illness has it harder than someone without. But is it harder to organise your own time (even with more to think about than a healthy person) than the time of several people with competing schedules? Maybe, maybe not.

Not sure why you are determined to discuss the minutiae rather than acknowledge the systemic issues your fellow women are sharing their experiences of.

I don't think many people actually really do think about the logistics of managing a job, childcare, a world book day costume, gym and swimming lessons at clashing times, a food allergy, a parents evening, a child who inconveniently pukes or needs a poo just as you want to leave or has a tantrum because they want the green cup that's in the dishwasher. If anyone says they really considered or knew about any of that beyond the most basic planning of mat leave and childcare , they're lying. It's just a bollocks line you say ' you knew". No-one does. Especially, as pp have pointed out, if you then add in a disabled child, or a runaway dad or incapacity etc.

@RhaenysRocks

I don't think many people actually really do think about the logistics of managing a job, childcare, a world book day costume, gym and swimming lessons at clashing times, a food allergy, a parents evening, a child who inconveniently pukes or needs a poo just as you want to leave or has a tantrum because they want the green cup that's in the dishwasher. If anyone says they really considered or knew about any of that beyond the most basic planning of mat leave and childcare , they're lying. It's just a bollocks line you say ' you knew". No-one does.

No indeed. And very few people consciously start out thinking "I want to hugely overburden myself in every aspect of my life so I'll take on far too much". It happens cumulatively and often it happens because the support that is promised to you, by a husband or partner, by a boss or colleagues or by wider family, falls away, precisely because you're expected to just get on with everything.

And of course it's never been exactly easy for SAHMs and housewives and they are also subject to other people's unreasonable demands, but at least they have only had one "track" of burdens to manage.

Working mums constantly feel they are letting someone down. There hasn't been a time in my life since my daughter was born 14 years ago when I haven't felt that I'm either letting her down (by working at home after hours) or by letting my employer down (by leaving half an hour early to pick her up from school or not being able to attend a networking drinks) or letting my DP down (by not being able to find childcare for the pub meet he wants to do).

I've just about made this work. But for the most part, men don't have this tension in their lives. They may do pick-ups and drop-offs, they may hoover the stairs on weekends or do the weekly shop or whatever. But you can bet your life they won't allow it to interfere with their precious careers or social lives, because that's what a woman is for. And before someone tips up to say "that's because you chose the wrong man", mine is, in relative terms, one of the good ones. They just never really have to think in three dimensions all the time. They prioritise what they need, and "helping out" is an optional extra which they get to as an act of generosity, its never a necessity.

And it pisses me off that none of this is ever seen as a shortcoming for them, or is ever really made to stand in their way.

Absolutely agree with this. Even the posters with great husbands: ask yourself, does he know which days are PE days without having to be reminded or ask someone else? Because I always know when PE days are — I don’t even have to check, even if they’re completely different days to last year. I just know that they’re on Wednesday and Friday this term; and at the weekend before, or the night before, I’m automatically washing/drying/ checking/getting out the PE kit.

DH wouldn’t have a clue unless DD or me reminded him, and even if he asked himself whether it was a PE day tomorrow, he’d have to go and check with someone else or with the timetable. It’s not that he can’t remember things; it’s that it just doesn’t even occur to him that he should even have to internalise this information.

Very much this. My ex will say he can't see the kids on x day because it's inconvenient, or can't take them for school shoes at the weekend he had them when the shoes have fallen apart mid week because "he has no plans to go town"..well change the sodding plan. Factor it in, work it out. Juggle. I think the "thinking in 3 dimensions" is a good way to explain it.

DS had a massive growth spurt a year or so ago, it was impossible not to notice....so obviously the school trousers that were fine at the beginning of term were several inches too short at the end of term. (Ds didnt even tell me about shoes - they went up by at least 2 sizes in one go! ) DH made lots of jokes about how short his trousers were....but it literally wouldn't occur to him to go on M and S website at lunch time and order new trousers. And then remember to collect them at the end of the week. Ditto if DS braces broke, it wouldn't be DH trying to awkwardly take a pic of his mouth, to email the orthodontist and rearrange the day to fit in the appointment

I remember on the odd time
DH was on school pick up- he’d ask me what time school finished. I mean every time! FFS they just don’t take up space in their brains with all this stuff.

Haha yes same. Ditto with after school activities that had been the same time/place for years!