What is with DCUM women and "mental loads?"
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Anonymous
| I'm hearing this term so much on this board recently. There's a thread about how women are unhappy in their marriages because of the unequal distribution of the "mental load" with their husbands. Another thread in the Family section describes how stressful the holidays are because of the "mental load." And on and on. I've never heard this term until a few months back on this site. Is this just a new buzzword? |
Anonymous
| Of course it is. Welcome to DCUM. |
Anonymous
| It's not new, and it's not exclusive to DCUM. Who in your household keeps track of birthdays, doctors appointments, clothing sizes, early dismissals, permission slips, camp signups, holiday cards, and meal planning? Does that person also have a paid job? |
Anonymous
| Do you ever read a newspaper, magazines, journal articles? Because the mental load of mothers is a widely discussed topic and has been for a number of years. The reason why you hear about it on DCUM is because many of us who post on DCUM are also widely read and feel like our experiences and feelings are acknowledged when reading articles about the mental load of mothers. |
Anonymous
| There’s a lot of recent research on this. It illustrates another point where men slack and don’t contribute equally. |
Anonymous
|
The mental load from being married and raising young kids is the reason I am now blissfully divorced with grown out of the house children, and no one but me understands my current state of bliss.
I cringe at the thought of remarriage. Why would I enter into an arrangement again that is of very limited benefit to me? |
Anonymous
| I really don't understand this term "mental" load, maybe menial load, physical load, but mental - no, that's not right. |
Anonymous
| This term has been around for years. |
Anonymous
That’s concerning. |
Anonymous
|
Some helpful articles if anyone on this thread is truly interested.
https://www.workingmother.com/this-comic-perfectly-explains-mental-load-working-mothers-bear https://www.healthline.com/health/relationships/mental-load https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelcarrell/2019/08/15/lets-share-womens-mental-load/?sh=5453b1786bd6 |
Anonymous
They aren't interested in learning. They want to live in denial and rail against any change. They have to protect their fragile ego against self-reflection. |
Anonymous
I wouldn’t say it’s new at all, but it certainly something that is being more recognized, especially since so much of the COVID burden fell (again, disproportionately) on women. |
Anonymous
The mental load refers to the fact that planning and organizing and deciding are all forms of labor, even if they can appear invisible to the person who does not do them. If I make dinner 3 times a week and DH makes dinner three times a week and one night we order takeout, then we are 100% equal, right? But the task of cooking dinner is just one of a number of tasks needed to prepare dinner. 1) Make a plan for what to cook (making sure it is something everyone in the family can reasonably be expected to eat some of, it’s not too expensive, we haven’t already had it 4 times this month) 2) shop for the food and make sure day-of that we haven’t used up any key ingredients (and manage the food budget generally, and keep track of what foods we already have that need to be used up before they expire, and make sure we are optimizing our shopping by going to the right store with the best prices on the things we need and also a decent quality, putting groceries away and labeling things for certain meals, or packing them carefully such as rinsing berries and drying them to extent their freshness or putting raw meat in a tray so it doesn’t drip in the fridge). 3) Manually prepare the food If I do 1 and 2 for 6 meals a week and he does 3 half the time, we are not equal. Likewise, if we alternate who takes days off for sick days, snow days or appointments for the kids, that is equal. But there is, again, a lot of invisible labor that takes up mental space. Keeping track of a roster of backup care options, including interviewing and training new sitters so that they are available to call if needed, maintaining all the paperwork needed to stay current on health insurance for all family members, finding providers for each medical need each family member has that also accepts our insurance, keeping track of what appointments are needed:at what intervals, scheduling appointments in the right time frame, keeping track of ongoing health issues and following upnon concerns from previous appointments, keeping track of paperwork needed for each kid’s school/sports and knowing when the paperwork expires and which medical appointment to take it to to keep it all current. If I am managing all of this prep work and my husband‘s only contribution is physically bringing the child 2/2 of the resulting appointments then we are not equal. |
Anonymous
It’s referred to as ‘mental’ because it’s a ton of small, unrelated tasks that we have to keep track of! |
Anonymous
| Are you Mork from Ork, if so, it's new. |