The hidden load: How 'thinking of everything' holds mums back
This morning I emptied the bathroom bin, wondered about stocking up on more bin liners, made a packed lunch for my eldest while pondering if I had enough wraps and cream cheese in the food order for the rest of the week. I then checked the food order, added toilet roll and cleaning products and reminded my partner to pick up milk. It was only 7.00 a.m.
What I’m describing is cognitive labour, or the mental load - the invisible work needed to make a household function. It’s not that our partners don’t want to - or couldn’t pick up some of this load (mine really does do a lot), it’s more that women have been conditioned from an early age to do the bulk of what is typically considered ‘women’s work’. It starts so early on - we know for instance that daughters do more chores than sons, and it only intensifies when children arrive.
It’s why many couples who aim to split tasks 50:50 often fall short of that when considering all the mental work needed to get there. It's so hard to hand over because it requires constant project management. It’s also invisible, ever present and tied specifically to how mothers are judged and the expectations put on mothers, not fathers, to ensure the smooth running of the household.
I’ve written an in-depth piece on this for BBC Worklife. I also offer some potential solutions - we simply need to do less, more often, as a chapter in my book also expands upon. The first step is understanding just how much more of the mental load women (in heterosexual relationships) carry, the next step is dividing tasks end to end. If our partner takes the kids out on the playdate, they also need to do the planning and organising to get there:
Experts say that this hidden work comes in three overlapping categories. There’s cognitive labour – which is thinking about all the practical elements of household responsibilities, including organising playdates, shopping and planning activities. Then there’s emotional labour, which is maintaining the family’s emotions; calming things down if the kids are acting up or worrying about how they are managing at school. Third, the mental load is the intersection of the two: preparing, organising and anticipating everything, emotional and practical, that needs to get done to make life flow.
Read the full article here: The hidden load: How 'thinking of everything' holds mums back (BBC)
For more on this - and more solutions, see Chapter 7 of my book - it is out next week - pre-orders arrive on the day of delivery.
In it, you will also learn about: The science behind the mum brain myth – and how our brain is actually optimised in a positive lasting way during pregnancy, how mothers absorb our baby’s foetal cells, and vice versa, the importance of understanding our cervical mucus patterns and I explore how some people develop post-natal mental health problems but why others, even after a severe -stranger-than-fiction- trauma like I had, do not.
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