On mental load and how our family planning works
Everywhere I look, I see parents - mostly moms - talking about mental load. But what is mental load exactly? Mental load is all the things that we think and worry about as parents. It goes deeper than remembering what’s on our calendar, it’s about all the steps it takes to get us there, worrying about our children and their wellbeing and all the little bits inbetween.
One example of mental load that I always find stressful is going on holidays. For me, it’s not just deciding where to go, booking the flights and accomodation and putting it into our calendar. With the kids, we need to think about what to pack for the trips, if we will have a possibility to wash so we can bring less clothes (because it can be very unpredictable how many clothes changes they may need a day), what toys we’ll bring to keep them entertained, what we will need to pack for the trip, if they have their favourite stuffed animals and enough snacks, etc. There are so many little bits to think about until the last minute that I usually feel very relieved once we have actually left or are sitting in the airplane with all our stuff stowed away securely.
The little things matter
But it’s also little things in daily life. Remembering to replace the kids’ toothbrushes, buying a birthday present for our niece’s birthday next month, deciding what to cook, knowing the kids’ planning at school and when they need to pack gym clothes and when they have a forest day, and so on.
It’s a lot - and I have just noticed that it gets even more once the kids go to school. Keeping track of when they have an irregular schedule or an extra day off, preparing daily lunch boxes and making sure they have all they need for the day. Plus all the extracurricular activities, taking them to sports and music class on time.
One thing that has helped our family has been planning. Last year, I read a book by German author Laura Fröhlich who offers different tools on how to deal with mental load. One of them is the “weekly kitchen meeting”, which just like in project management, is a meeting where the parents (and maybe also the kids once they are older) look at appointments for the next week, what needs to be done and who in charge of it.
What works for us right now
My husband and I have been trying to experiment with what works best for us in the past year, and after several options, we’ve come up with a plan that has been working for us:
We have a board on Trello for our family planning. Any task will be put into this board. We will then decide who is in charge of what and each have our responsibilities.
We have a big monthly planner in our living room with all the appointments and events. It also includes a to do list (so we can pop stuff on there if we are not with our phone), a grocery list and a space for each of us to add our own ideas, to do’s, reminders…
Every week, we sit together and go through the calendar and the to do list. We try to be as specific as possible, and we plan for example who brings the kids to kindergarten or nursery, who picks them up, who is in charge of getting the kids dressed and giving them breakfast.
One of the challenges for us is finding the time to sit together. We initially tried to plan the week on Sunday evening when the kids are in bed, but soon realised that we were usually too exhausted to focus on anything. At the moment, we often do the planning on our date night, before having dinner together. It’s a time where we know our kids are taken care off and we can take some time to disuss different points, before putting the planning away and having dinner together.
While on paper, it sounds great, I realise that a lot of the mental load still resides with me. This is where the research of Allison Daminger from Harvard University comes in: she pins down the different steps of the mental load: anticipate, identify, decide and monitor. While decisions are often taken by both partners, the other steps still often stay with the women - and that’s the added stress that we need to take up upon us, that might ultimately lead us to burnout.
The role of society
I believe that social conditioning still plays a big part in all of this. While many fathers want to play a bigger role in childcare, a lot of housework still stays in the mothers’ responsibility. At the same time, mothers may not let the father take on more responsibility - out of guilt, perfectionism, because they feel they need to do it themselves or because they want to. We can’t undo years and years of history in a split second - but we have to continue trying and taking small steps into the right direction!
For me, this means that I want to start looking at the different tasks in our family from the “anticipate, identify, decide and monitor” perspective. If my husband is in charge of a task, he will be responsible for these four aspects in order to make sure it gets done. Decisions will still be taken together, though the person who is responsible for the task will need to make sure the decision gets taken in time. This means that my husband needs to committ to doing the task by the deadline we have set together. But it also means that I need to let go and let him do things his way - as long as they are done in the deadline we have agreed on and including the non-negociables we might have set together.
I don’t know if this is the solution to reduce my mental load, but I feel that it is a step in the right direction - for my mental health but also for us as a couple and as a family.
If mental load is something that you struggle with, have a look at my 1:1 mini coaching programme that I’m offering for a limited time until the end of September. Together, we can look at your situation and find ways to reduce your mental load that work for you and your family.