Have you heard of ‘the mental load’ (also known as emotional labour)?
The term is bouncing about everywhere right now. Google it if you like, but this is my understanding of it:
The mental load is carried (predominantly) by women. It comprises the things that (they believe) are essential to the welfare of their relationship or family, for example meal planning, remembering relatives’ birthdays, or buying toothpaste before it runs out. The carrier of the mental load often feels overwhelmed or resentful because their partners don’t share it.
Now, I am all for the equitable distribution of work, including paid employment, childcare, chores, and general life admin. However, my sympathy for people who complain about their ‘mental load’ nose dives when I hear or read this:
‘My partner should know what to do without me having to ask them. Me having to ask adds to my mental load.’
In other words:
‘I expect my partner to mind-read or interpret my passive aggressive clues, while I continue to do everything myself because no one else’s efforts meet my standards.’
These are not the actions of an empowered person. These are the actions of a pouting child. And they feed offensive stereotypes. Specifically, the stereotype of the inept, man who doesn’t know how to dress or feed his children, while his wife snorts derisively, does it all herself, and then complains to her friends about her useless husband.
If you feel you are married to (or in a relationship with) a child who seems incapable of sharing your load, you have choices: You can have a conversation (with your partner) about it. If that does nothing, you can enlist the help of a psychologist. If that does nothing, you can separate and make better choices in your next partner.
Or you can do nothing and become the perfect role model of a resentful martyr for your children.
Some women believe that family life will collapse if they stop doing everything for everyone. I would suggest that these women are not differentiating their family’s rights from its privileges.
A family has a right to:
Clean water, food, love, fresh air, clothing (cleanish most days), accommodation that isn’t so unhygienic or messy it causes illness or injury, medical care, education, electricity, respect for its members, regular physical exercise and down time for each member, and clear, compassionate communication between its members.
A family’s privileges are different to its rights. If you choose to provide your family with privileges, it is just that – your choice. Family privileges include but are not limited to:
Having mustard in the pantry for a particular type of dinner; anything to do with kids’ birthday parties; expensive cars, clothes, technology, or holidays; paying for and ferrying kids around to extra-curricular activities; adding children or pets to your family; a spotless kitchen floor, folded laundry, a self-catered dinner party, meals planned more than twelve hours in advance; never going a day without toilet paper, tooth paste, or milk…
Dividing up life’s loads is complex today. And that is a good thing. I am profoundly grateful I don’t live in a ‘simpler time’ when the only path through my life would have been to clean my husband’s house, look after his children, and put on a full face of make up to present him with his pipe and slippers at the end of his long, hard day. I would have died of boredom and resentment.
But sometimes we don’t get a say in who shoulders which load when.
When our first baby was five days old, I got very sick and had to go into hospital. My husband was handed our baby daughter with instructions to pick up formula, bottles, and a steriliser on the way home. He did not question whether he could handle the load of looking after a newborn. He got on with it. I was in hospital for months. At that time in our lives the physical, mental, and emotional load for our new family was all on him.
In nearly 19 years of marriage there have been times when I have worked full-time including on call work and my husband ran our household. At times he has worked during the week and I have worked most weekends. Right now, he works long hours full- time, I work from home, and we share housekeeping and childcare. The lines of who does what blur sometimes, but we don’t keep score. We try to move with what life throws at us. And when things get rough, we try to remember we are on the same team.
How you juggle your life (and it’s a juggle for most of us) is up to you, but this part is your full responsibility:
Finding the time and energy to discuss your load (mental or otherwise) with your partner if you feel it is unfairly distributed.
If you can’t be bothered to do that, if you would rather mop the floor, make a perfect birthday cake, or if you feel your partner should be able to read your mind, then you are not invested enough in your relationship to sustain it.
This article originally appeared on Thought Food and has been republished here with full permission.
Top Comments
I too was very sick after my first child was born... my husband without question took on the role of caretaker... he too is a very capable human being; can think for himself and does, always has. He was, is even, rare among his peers... not all, in fact almost none of the other men in my life of his generation could have or at least would have picked up the mantle as my husband did when I was ill... they would have got their mother's involved!
The author themselves fell into the "mental load" trap: they got "very ill" but still handed the baby to the husband WITH INSTRUCTIONS to pick up formula, bottles and a sterilizer on his way home... THAT's the POINT; he should have seen what was needed, the mother had - why should she have to think of that for him, especially while "very ill"? She shouldn't,
The fact that he "had the mental load" for that time was probably a very good thing, he would have been very aware that it IS work, running a house and family. I'm sure my husband got an appreciation for it when I was essentially unavailable for some months
I count myself lucky that I have the husband I have, I don't think I was smart, clever, better informed, to "make better choices",more worthy or deserving, I think I was lucky... I did not live with my husband before we married, I had not road tested him for his ability to share the emotional workload... I was LUCKY that I got one of the (apparently rare) ones that willingly does so.
I would never be so arrogant as to assert that my husband shares the mental load because I've been so good at imparting my needs, of training him... and all that without having to resort to "passive aggressive clues".
Had I not been so lucky, like my sister with her first husband, I would have been just as stressed as she was... her husband would not discuss her "issues"... her wanting to do so, her "finding the time and energy to discuss" her mental load was an effort - a totally wasted effort as he was not interested in the discussion. Eventually HE left her... for a woman who kept the house "better", mopped the floor and baked perfect birthday cakes. That didn't last and he married a third time, finally finding the "good woman" he felt he deserved, a woman who was brought up in a mysoginist culture - maybe the next generation of that culture will show the burden needs to be shared
The concept of sharing responsibility NEVER came to him, why would it? He's innately lazy, he was disinterested in making his wife (any of them) content by helping, with or without requests, with running his family.
"making a better choice" as the author put it sounds fine and dandy; of course not all women take the lives and lifestyles of their children in such a cavalier fashion, they put those considerations ahead of their own.
I agree 95% with this article. My only gripe is that emotional labour is managing your own and other people's emotions. It requires emotional intelligence where mental load is planning and monitoring.
My husband's mother did everything for him and expects me to carry on the tradition. I realised the situation when I started dating him at 19 y/o and refused to play along. I've had some disappointments. The time he spent 5 hours cleaning the bathroom whilst I cleaned the rest of the house and made a 3 course meal comes to mind. But I learnt from the experience. Ever since I've given him and the kids (when they were old enough) the complete list of things to do before visitors. There's four of us and we divide the list into quarters with the kids getting first dibs.
You're doing yourself and your family no favours by making them so dependent. What would happen if you died unexpectedly tomorrow? In addition to the grief of losing you, they'd have the pressure of trying to learn how to be responsible and experiencing the inconvenience and disappointment when they fail. (Don't expect people to help them indefinitely. They won't. People are too busy with their own mental loads.)