Sharing the mental load with our partners
Motherhood Musings: Collection 2, Volume 2
Welcome to the second piece in this collection of Motherhood Musings, you can read the first piece and other collections here.
This piece will explore how we share and experience the mental load with our partners.
If you are new to Being in Motherhood, welcome. I’m Emma, a mother, writer, and artist. Through my writing, I explore nurturing a relationship with myself and the present moment as I navigate motherhood.
My partner and I work to share the mental load. We both have a tendency to babble when we feel anxious and overwhelmed, we both like to talk about what needs to be done when we feel the pressure building up. It is nice that we process life in a similar fashion but after the first two years of parenthood together, it was exhausting.
I was exhausted for many reasons, but the constant talk about what needs to be done and who is going to do it was consuming our lives. I finally got frustrated enough to read Fair Play by Eve Rodsky. While we did not adapt her system entirely, reading her book and buying the corresponding deck helped a lot.
Now, we sit down each week and see what needs to happen this week, what that entails, and who is going to do it. We do our best to save big discussions and things that require a more in depth conversation for our weekly meeting.
It is not a perfect system, but it allows us to be in conversation about what is happening in a different way. There is less back and forth about who is doing what because it has already been agreed upon each week.
wrote about how she shares the mental load with her partner…My mental load comes across as frustration. I haven't found the tools to communicate my mental load, yet. I feel like when I try, the reaction I'm hoping for, isn't what I get...Or the weight of the load isn't understood based on how heavy it is. This makes me feel like I'm being dramatic or taking things too seriously when I try to talk to my partner about my mental load. So I'm still trying to figure it out, case by case....day by day.
It took me a long time to be able to talk about the mental load with my partner, because I had many conversations where I felt unheard and misunderstood because of how heavy the load was.
said…Because I work from home and do the majority of childcare for our son, I take on more of the mental load than him. So, because I work at home I end up doing the laundry and washing up every day. Because I have time in my day to do lots of other things, while my husband is in an office focusing intensely on work (he's a film editor), I end up doing so much of the organising/admin tasks because I can.
But of course that means I have less time to focus on other things like my work, creative pursuits and my wellbeing. My husband is generally in charge of bills, DIY and sorting out the car. It's funny how we've ended up dividing things into this traditionally gendered way - not intentionally but subconsciously, and also because as the mother I do less paid work and more childcare, and my husband does more paid work.
My partner shoulders a lot of the mental load in terms of work, stress and finances which I know can weigh heavily. We divide the housework, cooking and he does a lot in the house. My responsibilities come in the day to day maintenance of some sense of order within our chaotic life with children, and a great deal/all of the responsibility for them during the day (and night), including the daily management of emotions and needs, and generally being an anchor and home for them to return to and be with as much as possible.
Despite the many things on the to-do list that centres around my children, my work and creativity and aspirations for our home and garden, the mental load does not feel like a separate thing from me but that I live in a constant state of being full to the brim with everything that makes up my life. I think we underestimate how much holding we are doing even when it is invisible.
The most interesting thing I find about the mental load is even when it is divided in more even way, it stills feels like so much. Even though my partner and I have things split, I am still worrying about things getting done. My partner is responsible and carries his own weight, but I am still keeping track of the things he is doing as if I have some control over them.
The shift in the mental load while raising kids
I believe I wrote this in the last piece, but it did not feel like we had a household until a child came into it. The laundry, the dishes, the cleaning, I did not spend a lot of time thinking about those things before my son. My partner and I did everything together. We split everything, it was cute and maybe even a little co-dependent. When we had our son, we had to divide things and we each had to have our own responsibilities.
Jasmine shared what shifted for her…
I think it's gotten heavier since having my daughter. I wear more hats now. More hats for others and less hats for myself. It's hard to process that reality sometimes. My child is a toddler so she clings to me more than she does my husband. Most of the time I like it, but sometimes I just need a mental moment and/or day...alone.
Ellie experienced the shift in this way…
There is so much more mental load now associated with having a child, and yet so much less time than we had before. It's a fraction of the time we had before becoming parents, and yet the mental load has increased dramatically. We now find ourselves desperately trying to fitting in housework, food shopping, DIY and everything else into tiny pockets of time. I have to leave the house at 2:30 to pick up my son, so I have to drop everything else I'm doing at that point. And then he goes to sleep between 9 and 9:30pm (yes, we've tried an earlier bedtime, and no, he won't go to sleep earlier). I know that lots of families get stuff done once their kid/s go to bed at 7pm, but that's just not possible for us.
Lyndsay experienced a shift in the distribution of the mental load greatly…
There is so much more to hold! Of course there is the daily responsibility of our children, but also for their futures. We are both keen to provide our children with security and stability and we both aim to provide that within our different roles.
What we wish our partners understood about the mental load
I wish my partner understood how I wish I could carry more. My partner holds a lot, my bandwidth is smaller and he tends to do more of the grunt work in a day because I need more space to simply function. Sometimes I wish this was different, and when I have more space I try to do more, I am also trying to remember it is okay that I need more time and space to breathe than he does. I also lean into trusting we have found a balance that works for us and keeps us both relatively sane.
Jasmine wrote she wished her partner knew…
It's a lot and I'm doing the best I can. I feel like I'm vulnerable in all the wrong ways right now because I'm trying to process who I am and who I'm becoming. I think it's being communicated and showcased in some pretty unhealthy ways right now.
Ellie shared she wished her partner understood…
The overwhelm.
The feeling that I've been given an impossible amount to do. The anger that comes with that. The sense of unfairness. The frustration. The hopelessness. The constant stress. I do express it and he does listen, but I don't know if he can really understand. He had a big realisation about what it's like for me when he wasn't working for a bit over the summer and so was picking River up from nursery. 'It's awful!' he said, 'Having to stop whatever I'm doing at 2:30pm and not being able to get anything else done!' Yep, I said.
Finally, Lyndsay shared she wished her partner understood…
That often it is hard to describe and that the nature of mothering, living creatively and trying to forge a new sense of identity and career is all-consuming. That a lot of what I am doing is 'holding' all of the many aspects of being a mother and a woman, and that it is a lot even when it is often unseen by the wider world.
Lyndsay put it so beautiful. Part of the load is forging a new identity once we become a mother and it takes a lot of time and energy to do that, especially while raising children and trying to distribute the load of the household.
What does the mental load mean to you?
How do you share the mental load with your partner?
How has the mental load changed since having kids?
What is one thing you wish your partner understood about the mental load?
Share with us in the comments.
Thank you to the women who contribute to this series. I am honored to hold space for your words and wisdoms. It is healing to write along side your experiences of motherhood.
I invite you to share this post with other mothers who may find healing in these words and experiences.
Thank you for giving us this opportunity to share Emma. You have weaved our stories together so beautifully, with your own experiences too and it is so affirming to read them all, individual but together. Since writing my responses, I have come to realise just how much I am holding everyday and how easy it feels to drop the ball, which of course is not the end of the world (and I think we need to give ourselves a lot more grace for that), but it does feel as though there is a such a small margin for error/forgetfulness/daring to relax! xx
This was such a great collaborative post and I could relate to all of these experiences. It's so helpful to read other mums experiences with the mental load as it articulates how I feel about the mental load, but sometimes I don't know how to express it. It's the invisibility of it all and that it's just expected. And the overwhelm, stress and anger behind it too.