The Mental Load

When men judge women for the mental load and how we choose to handle it.
In this hot take, Katlynn discusses why sometimes as mothers, we might feel judged by our partners for the way we parent in certain situations/at certain times. But the reality is, that sometimes this is a result of the massive weight of the mental load and our parenting choice at that moment is an effort to lighten that load.

How do kids' chores impact the mental load for women?
In this full-length episode, we discuss various ways that getting kids to pitch in and do chores around the house, when managed differently between partners, can create more mental load for mothers. That's right, we’re talking about kids, chores and cooperative cleaning. AKA: getting your children to work together to clean or tidy up.
There’s a lot of reasons chores are good for kids:
Learning time management skills
Developing organizational skills
Accepting responsibility in the family
Providing an opportunity for success (especially for a child struggling in other ways)
Learning to balance work and play from a young age
Setting a good foundation for functioning independently

Doing chores helps children learn about what they need to do to care for themselves, a home and a family.
Ways getting kids to chores becomes part of the mental load:
Emotional labor of avoiding meltdowns
Managing kids’ desire for things to be “fair”
Tension between older and younger children
Tension between kids and parents
Teaching independence
Teaching initiative

Ways to help change this:
Connect and then ask
Say: “This is fun game! I love how everyone’s involved and I know you don’t want to stop… next up it’s dinner. And I need your help to get ready…. Who wants to put the knives and forks on the table and who wants to help me get the plates out?”
Comment on what you see
Kids don’t see messes the same way we see them and being able to take initiative is part of hte mental load, so helping them learn how to see by saying “i see puzzle pieces that need to get put back in their box and trash that needs to go into the trashcan” helps them learn. It also helps them to start to anticipate the needs around them.
Help them
Avoid the emotional labor of a meltdown by making them feel like you’re on their team
Create visual clues
Help them understand and work independently to create a standard of clean everyone’s happy with
Divide chores equally among genders

When husbands pass chores off to their kids it creates more mental load for women.
In today's hot take, Katlynn discusses why passing the buck on chores might seem helpful and like husband's are teaching kids a lesson, but it really just keeps the mental load in place.
More and more, men are realizing and becoming aware of the need to lighten the mental load in their households. Especially when it comes to daily chores and tasks. A new trend we've noticed emerging however, is that, when men are asked to do a task or chore, instead of taking it on, they re-delegate or pass the buck, to their kids.
Here's how it plays out:
Husband: deep fries chicken for dinner (yum!)
Wife: can you clean up the grease off the stove before bed?
Husband to oldest child: go clean up the stove for your mom
Mom: has to supervise cleaning of grease
The problem with re-delegating chores to kids is twofold:
It sends the message to kids that they can get out of doing household labor by simply passing off the work to someone in the house with less authority than them.
It doesn't actually eliminate the mental load - it forces women to re-acquire the mental load by either having to supervise or teach a new skill instead of focusing on what they originally set out to do by asking for their husbands to take on the task.

Passing the buck doesn't help the mental load, it creates more or at the very least, keeps it in place.

The mental load of daily responsibilities outweighs occasional maintenance chores.
In this week's hot take, Katlynn discusses how, when men and women are raised differently, it creates a large gap in how they view household responsibilities.
Men often say things like "I don't have to help with the dishes on a daily basis, because I handle the car maintenance". Which would be the equivalent of women saying "I don't have to help with the dishes on a daily basis because I plan birthday parties."
While things like house maintenance and car maintenance are large and necessary responsibilities, they do not excuse you from the day to day responsibilities of running a household and the mental load and invisible labor associated with a family.
As partners we have a responsibility to lighten the load for our partners when we know they've got an additional duty or responsibility to take care of. But it must go both ways. It should not be that women look for ways to lighten the load for their partners when they're doing more than normal while also taking on more than their fair share without recognition or the same reciprocation.

How to immediately lighten the mental load
In this week's hot take, Katlynn discusses how to identify when you're overwhelmed by the mental load and how to immediately get relief.
Bodily cues can tell us we're at our limit:
Tightening in your chest/feeling anxious
Short temper
Having brain fog

Other cues from our brain might be:
Feeling like you're taking in too much information
Not enjoying your normal activities
Feeling disconnected or conversely overstimulated

When you need to get immediate relief try the sound of silence. Eliminate any extra noise you don't need in your day from activities where it's reasonable.
Turn off the TV in the background
Stop listening to podcasts on your walk (even ours)
Turn the radio off in your car

Eliminating extra noise helps lighten the mental load by giving you space to just sit still and be quiet. Go outside and get some sunshine on your face and be quiet. It does wonders!