UBC Motherhood - Mental Load

Juggling priorities and schedules and the nagging feeling of potentially dropping a ball at any given moment is not the greatest feeling and will often keep me awake.

I thought this anxiety was what they meant by "mental load": many thoughts of stuff to remember. 

Turns out mental load has ddefinition, and the stuff has been put together!

In the German speaking area there is an interest group that takes care of "Equal Care" topics, and they came up with this checklist to evaluate how many little and huge things a family needs to take care of. Here's your mental load self-test: (click on the link above for an English version)

I can't help but think the list was made by Moms in order to make fellow Moms feel good about themselves. 

Any husband / Dad on the other hand will most likely think it's unfair and wants to see at least 100 points for his going to work and providing for his family every day.

In all reality in our family, I basically do all the things on that list, except: 

• Deep cleaning: I hired (meaning I pay for a cleaning lady with the litte money I make working my part-time job)  who comes to our house every other week. She also does the ironing.
• Water the flowers: we don't have any ;-)
• Cleaning drains and doing small repairs around the house: I am, however, the one who calls repairpeople and I am the one who will be at home to let them in. Hubby will pay the bills.
• Handywork like drilling: it goes on the Honey-do List and won't get done ;-)
• Gardening: hubby hired and pays for a gardener 
• Tax declaration: due to the fact that hubby owns his company plus the office building it's more complicated than your average working coulple's tax declaration, so we hired a consultant, paid for by hubby.
• Internet, Insurance: I don't agree that these two topics belong together. Hubby, being an IT guy, takes care of all things gadget, telecom and internet. Me, being the HR person know my way around healthcare, life insurance and the like, which I pay for Colin and myself.
• Nightshifts during illness: fortunately we hardly ever needed to do them.
• Manicure: this has actually been my parent's job for a long time. My Dad was the first one who dared cutting baby Colin's nails because I complained how hard it was to hold the fidgeting boy and to focus on not hurting him. Since Colin spent a day per week at their place it sort of became their chore - literally until he learned to do it himself! 
  
  
  
• Take care of pets: we don't have any.
• Manage pocket money: this is hubby's job. Every school year he negotiates pocket and "good grades' money" with Colin. I'm the one our son turns to if he needs more money ;-)

 All in all your average old school allocation of tasks ;-)

In hubby's defense: he sometimes offers to, let's say, load the diswasher. I only accept if I'm super tired. Otherwise, upon unloading it the next morning, I will repeately wonder how that guy ever managed to play Tetris if you know what I mean.

What do I want to say by this? Hubby has many wonderful qualities. Considering he originally didn't want to have any children, he's a wonderful Dad, and we share the same values, which makes things so much easier. He's smart, caring, reliable and has a good sense of humor. 

He claims however - and he's not wrong about that - to have two left hands, plus he's really not interested in all things houshold *rolling my eyes*. 

Long story short, I'm the mental load bearer of the family. And I have a list to prove it. Just in case anybody ever dared to ask what I was doing all day ;-)

Also I don't think true equality is even possible. Not as long as men can't have periods, become pregnant and give birth, that is. Oh, wouldn't prices for sanitary products, abortion laws and maternity benefits be different? That'd be a post for another day...

How about yourself? How many points did you score on the mental load list? Do you believe in equality?

PS: Today's prompt asks to list a few industry leaders and explain why we follow them. I don't.

Oh, wait, there is one: Howard Schultz. He was my boss's boss's boss. Or something like that. He is Mr Starbucks, for which I worked before becoming a Mom. I dedicated the April UBC to my coffee journey. If you missed these posts, here's an overview.