The Mental Load

Even if fathers are shouldering their fair share of chores, it seems that many women of my generation (including myself) still carry the mental load, and believe that if they didn’t the household would fall apart.

If you read the last sentence and thought to yourself “well it would”, there’s a good chance you’re struggling under the weight of the mental load yourself. It’s known as the “mental load” - the burden of remembering, and usually also executing, the myriad tasks required to keep a household ticking over. In all cases (with exception of very few) the mental load is shouldered by the woman of the house, no matter how demanding a career she may also have.

What Is The Mental Load?

The mental load is the total sum of responsibilities that you take on to manage “the remembering of things.” It has to do with emotional labor, defined by Arlie Hochschild in the 1983 book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, as the process of managing emotions and relationships with others in order to be more successful at your job.

This popular comic, by an anonymous French author via the pseudonym “Emma,” can largely be attributed as having brought the concept of “the mental load” to the forefront of Western culture’s collective conscious as a problematic way in which many gender-conforming households are organized. The comic points out that one partner (most often women) is generally designated as the manager of such “remembering work,” while the other (most often men) takes a more siloed approach to what needs doing. 

The mental load includes the planning work required to ensure the children make it to Bollywood dancing, the refrigerator is stocked for dinner and the sugar in jar is filled. It's incessant, gnawing and exhausting, and disproportionately falls to women.

If you're using your mental energy thinking about this unpaid work, then one of the things you are not thinking about is actual paid work, and this is can have long-term economic consequences for women. 

Helping to maintain a functional family has intrinsic benefits, the joy of knowing everyone had a wonderful day and satisfaction that comes from helping others. But the work of household manager is often relentless, exhausting and can be stressful. It can affect health, in particular the sleep, and women are known to have more disrupted sleep than men. 

Why do we (mostly women) do it?

Women adopt the mental load in part because we've been socialised that way, (our mothers and grandmothers did it, so we do it). But it's also because we anticipate that the blame for any family or domestic failures will fall at our feet.For me, this manifests through obsessive cleaning prior to the arrival of dinner guests, anticipating that they will see my true barbaric (i.e. messy) nature.

In an era where "good" mothers are those who are unequivocally invested in our children and "good" women always have a squeaky clean home, the mental load is on steroids, requiring women's constant attention. For females, housework and the mental load are cast as ways to love and care for the family. Yet, questions of equity are important here, especially if women's absorption of the mental load and the managerial role are at the expense of their employment, sleep, leisure and health.

Time for change?

Pledge to 'do less'

While this is a huge issue for many women, do not despair. There are some ways we can cut back on mental load, and empower others in life to step up. Please follow the list in order and repeat.

1. Take a break. While many women know they perform the mental load, they are likely unaware to what extent the mental load affects their lives. So, take a break. Take a day. Take a week. Take a month. This will allow you to feel your mental load and for others to see the gaps. The ultimate goal of the break is to identify, reduce and redistribute the mental load.

2. Reduce your expectations. So, let's start accepting a little less perfect houses or perfect cooked food and reduce our expectations. Life is just too short to be spending this much time indoors.

3. Delegate. Once you stop the charade of perfection, it is time to delegate. This means putting your partner in charge of few household works. This may take time (as they may not equate our pace of working) but why absolve yourself of all responsibility (including thinking and planning). Unless death is impending from poor domestic decisions, step back, support and allow others to learn from their mistakes.

4. Stop judging. This includes friends, family and most important yourself. Have a friend who never irons her clothes? Stop judging. Have a husband who thinks cheesy toasties are appropriate for breakfast, lunch and dinner? Stop judging. Rather, start accepting and shifting the norms about domesticity.

Source for inspiration: The gender wars of household chores: a feminist comic