Reply to What is with DCUM women and "mental loads?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I really don't understand this term "mental" load, maybe menial load, physical load, but mental - no, that's not right. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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