The Mental Load – Details, episodes & analysis

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.

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

It's (one) of the episodes you all have been waiting for. How do you have the mental load conversation with your spouse and create meaningful change?

Licensed therapist, Kristen Sanchez, takes us through the process of:

• having the conversation
• examining your own contributions
• approaching your partner
• creating lasting change
• the impact of the mental load on relationships

Join us for this impactful conversation with an unexpected solution to solving the mental load.

Merch

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In this hot take, Katlynn discusses what weaponized incompetence looks like after women have been gone for a short or extended period of time from their homes.

When we leave our home whether to travel for work or for time away for a little bit of self care, it's unfair to come home to a messy house and kids that are completely off schedule.

Why is it that when we're out of town our husbands get to parent like they're in survival mode? But when we're home alone for anything length of time, we're failures if we aren't maintaining the standards.

Here's they hypothesis: women know they will be judged on the state of their house and parenting when they have to do it solo whereas men don't know they have the privilege of being free from that judgement.

Is it nature or nurture? Probably a bit of both when it comes to housekeeping. Men weren't raised to care about it and they may also come from households where that wasn't the vibe or priority. But, the thing is, if your partner has expressed how much they need the household to be maintained in order to move smoothly throughout their day and you simply choose not to do it? That's weaponized incompetence. As adults we are all capable of learning; we do it all the time in our jobs, so by you opting out of learning how to support your partner, that's a clear sign of opting out of supporting them.

This week Angie and Katlynn debrief their episode with their boomer moms about the mental load. The two biggest takeaways from moms week were:

1. They didn't have the language to talk about the mental load like millennial women
2. They accepted and were ok with the way things were

Which makes us wonder: where did we get the audacity?

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Mentioned in this episode:

Joy School Affiliate Link

https://thepathtojoy.thrivecart.com/melissa-blooms-joy-school/partner/

There's no shame in the mommy influencer game. At all. It's a respectable way to make a living. But as millennial moms were inundated with information previous generations didn't have; in large part because of influencers.

We've done a lot of damage to our mental health in the early days of influencers. We're just starting to see a shift to more "authentic" content and an even smaller percentage of mom-targeted content creators that are talking about things like the mental load and its affects on women.

We've accidentally added to our mental load by following a million parenting content creators. It was with the best of intentions, but comparison became another to-do box on our to-do list.

If you're looking to lighten the mental load, take inventory of the content creators your follow in the parenting space and Marie Kondo that shit. If it doesn't serve you and bring you joy; let it go.

Mute those friends who make you feel like you're a shitty mom because you don't have the most stylish family photos scheduled. Trust us, it will give you back a lot of headspace.

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This week Katlynn and Angie host their moms and mother-in-laws to discuss the mental load and get perspective from a different generation.

We have our moms here because we thought it’d be a fun way for people to get to know us but also because as we’ve discussed so often on the podcast, the mental load is gendered, it’s generational and there are so many social standards that keep it in place so we think it’s going to be fun to hear what our moms thought about the mental load raising us and what their thoughts are on it now that they’ve got adult children and grandchildren.

Together we discuss:

• What our moms knew about the mental load or how much they thought about it as they were mothering. Bringing us to one of the most shocking realizations that we discuss in the next episode.
• What they talked about with their friends about the mental load
• The biggest differences between millennials raising kids and their generation when they raised kids
• How they divided and thought about work amongst their kids
• What their expectations for their husbands were
• What they'd change if they could parent again

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This week's hot take is about the mental load and prepping to go out of town. Those who carry the mental load can't simply pack their suitcase, give a few minor instructions and leave town. When you carry the mental load, in order to leave town you have to download your inherent knowledge and bring your partner up to speed on everything that needs to happen such as:

• school schedules/summer camp schedules
• appointments
• extracurricular activities

For men, it's often not the same. They get to pack their suitcase and leave without a worry. This is the epitome of the mental load: needing to document details that only you know but are critical to your family functions because there is no safety net.

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Today we’re discussing some of the valuable skill sets you get as a mom from balancing the mental load. I think we all feel stuck sometimes and focus a lot on the drain that the mental load causes and a while back, I listened to a podcast that was focused on skills that are unique to moms in the workplace because of motherhood and it felt like this awesome little pick me up, so I thought today’s topic would be a sweet little follow up and pep talk to why it’s hard to talk about the mental load to also look at some of the ways we can use it to our advantage. So that’s not to say that things shouldn’t change; they definitely should, but if you’re a mom who’s feeling stuck, looking to change jobs or just move in a new direction in life, our hope is that this episode makes you feel badass and see how you can apply some of the things you’re learning from being a mother to your goals and dreams in your own life. 

Anticipation = risk analysis and trade off

1. What is a risk assessment and how do you conduct one?
2. According to UCLA: "In operations, financial reporting and compliance, risks need to be identified and analyzed. Assessing risk enables you better achieve your group's goals by helping you determine how pitfalls should be managed. Managers must determine the level of operations, financial and compliance risk they are willing to assume. Assessing risk enables managers to proactively reduce unwanted surprises.
3. What questions do you ask  yourself when you conduct a risk assessment? These are direct from UCLA’s website. Do they sound familiar?
4. What could go wrong?
5. How could we fail?
6. What must go right for us to succeed?
7. Where are we vulnerable?
8. How could someone disrupt our operations?
9. On what information do we most rely?
10. On what do we spend the most money?

After risks have been identified, an analysis should be performed to set priorities:

• Assess the likelihood (or frequency) of the risk occurring.
• Estimate the potential impact if the risk were to occur. Consider both quantitative and qualitative costs.
• Determine how the risk should be managed; decide what actions are necessary.

Prioritizing helps departments focus their attention on managing significant risks such as risks with reasonable likelihoods of occurrence and large potential impacts."

Finding solutions = creativity

Making decisions = empathetic, creating buy in

According to Mural

1. "Build a compelling case - To do this, you should make sure that you’ve carefully identified the problem you’re looking to solve (remember: it’s not always so obvious!), understand your success criteria, and have gathered supporting data so you can test your idea.
2. Understand your audience - know how involved they are and how to tailor your message
3. Make it collaborative - engage your stakeholders, co-create solutions, solicit feedback
4. Anticipate and overcome resistance - offer compromises and build consensus"

Monitoring = self awareness

1. Forces you to be introspective
2. Helps you balance what was in vs out of your control
3. Is this the trickiest one for toxic positivity because we end up blaming ourselves too much?

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Mentioned in this episode:

Joy School Affiliate...

As a family of six, the mental load around dinner and chores related to dinner is never ending. And with summer approaching we'll be running the dishwasher multiple times a day. And while it's important to take care of our earth and we pride ourselves on being an earth-conscious family sometimes you just need to use paper plates and plastic silverware to save your sanity.

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