The Mental Load is an Equal Opportunity Frustration
The ‘mental load’ is trending online as a woman’s burden. But if we only count tasks and time, we miss half the story – because someone also sets the standard, and that makes a big impact on the dynamic.
We’re at a family gathering and our sister-in-law approaches the husbands who are chatting in a group. Our siblings had all pitched in to get her a combined birthday present and she offers her thanks.
Except the blokes have no idea she’d even had a birthday. “Glad you like it”, says Byron, but she sees through the bluffing and humorously calls it out as they all confess their ignorance.
It makes for a funny story but behind it is a sombre reality – birthday gifts, like many domestic tasks, are principally carried by the women.
That gap – between doing a task and carrying it – is what commentators are calling the ‘mental load’. From courses, podcasts and no end of online commentary, the theme is naming something real: a deep-felt sense of injustice around domestic responsibility.
Managers rather than partners
Social science research has long documented the unequal distribution of domestic labour between husbands and wives, including among dual-income couples. But the ‘mental load’ conversation isn’t only about who does more; it’s about who carries the ongoing, invisible work of noticing, planning and managing it all.
We describe it as the ‘manager burden’. While well intended, whenever a husband asks, “what can I do to help?”, he’s unwittingly reinforcing the idea that it’s her job, and he’s the assistant.
Whether it’s dinner, the kids’ activities, or his mother’s birthday present – she’s usually the one thinking about it, planning it, and often executing it too. Even when he takes the last, visible step – ordering dinner, taking the kids to the park, buying the gift – she’s already spent hours thinking about it, and often worrying whether he’ll actually follow through.
That’s the ‘mental load’, and it’s landing hard with women who feel frustrated, lonely and burnt out.
The trust cost of carrying it alone
This theme isn’t new. It is one of the most compelling topics we explore in the SmartLoving Marriage retreat; helping couples to identify unintentional patterns of irresponsibility and understand how it damages trust in the marriage.
The thing is, the ‘mental load’ is an equal opportunity problem. Husbands also carry a mental load with all the same issues but in different areas to their wives – typically in the long-term provision and financial security (which has nothing to do with who earns more).
When one spouse feels they are carrying all the weight of managing an area of their shared life, stress rises. Over time, resentment builds, and couples can end up keeping score instead of connecting.
Being the other’s manager, rather than partner and lover, undermines the tenderness in the relationship. That dynamic is deeply corrosive in a marriage and will impact their receptivity to intimacy of all kinds.
When nothing’s ever quite enough
But there is a flip side to this situation we both need to watch; we often set unreasonable expectations in the very areas we desire more engagement from our spouse.
Wives often set the standards around domestic chores. For example, her approach to introducing a baby to solid food may be calibrated to maximum compliance with paediatric guidelines.
Meanwhile dad is bewildered by her anxiety and feels unqualified to choose a food without her sign-off. That food regime is one of her ‘mental load’ peeves, but he feels disempowered by her exacting standards.
We’ve had plenty of conversations on topics like this ourselves. In essence, we don’t just want load sharing, we also want it done ‘our way’ – for reasons we often can’t fully explain.
The mental load isn’t a new problem – it’s been part of marriage since the beginning of time and is a consequence of our sexual and personality differences.
What’s new is that we’ve finally got better language for it, and for that, we’re grateful. Because with deeper understanding we can be empowered to act.
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Here’s some commentary
Share your thoughts in the comments.
I learned that mental load is invisible work. It’s about carrying the responsibility, not just doing the task. We want to be partners, not manager and helper.
This article opened my eyes. Marriage is not just about doing chores, but remembering and planning with love. As an engaged couple, we are learning to talk about who does what and to say thank you more.
I don’t think ‘mental load’ is so much about expectations and/or standards. I think it’s about appreciation, respect and gratitude for the humble and thankless roles of service we perform in our marriage and family life, and the effort of our frontal lobe executive function needed to sequence and implement these tasks; the things (both menial chores and intelligence) that many of us, male and female, took for granted from the self-sacrificing and humble caregivers of our own childhoods; They are qualities and skills not usually listed on our CVs, or nominated for awards, but that are needed to meet our most basic human needs as outlined on the bottom rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy. They become a deep part of our identity because, despite our resistance and resentment, we overcome odds to achieve them. They are the bread and wine of our lives – broken and transformed.
Redundancy (having someone else, be it a person or a robot attempt to take them from us) can be terrifying.