Are You Struggling With the “Mental Load”?
It’s known as the “mental load” – the burden of remembering, and usually also executing, the many tasks required to keep a household ticking over. In many cases, but not all, the mental load is shouldered by the woman of the house, no matter how demanding a career she may also have.
But according to the head of a leading girls’ school, it shouldn’t be so. Vicky Bingham has urged women to loosen their grip on the household, not only to stop “infantilising” their husbands and propagating the myth of male domestic ineptitude, but to prove to their daughters they do not have to be perfect at everything.
“I have known friends leave instructions for their husbands on ‘Looking after the Children’ when they have been away on business. I have listened to them lament apparently having to micro-manage decisions about coats, socks, carrot batons, baths and homework, on top of very demanding jobs.
“Even if fathers are shouldering their fair share of chores, it seems that many women of my generation still carry the mental load, and believe that if they didn’t, the household would fall apart.”
Vocabulary:
mental load – the mental effort and stress of planning, organizing, and remembering all the daily tasks needed to run a home or life, “Even when my partner cooks dinner, I carry the mental load of planning what we will eat for the whole week.”
ticking over – working or operating smoothly at a basic, continuous level, “The manager hired an assistant to keep the office ticking over while she was away on vacation.”
shouldered by – carried, accepted, or dealt with by a specific person (especially a heavy responsibility), “The cost of repairing the broken school window was shouldered by the town council.”
loosen their grip – to relax your control over a situation or allow others to take over some tasks, “Parents need to slowly loosen their grip as their children grow into independent teenagers.”
infantilising – treating an adult as if they are a helpless child who cannot do things for themselves, “By choosing all of her husband’s clothes for him, she was accidentally infantilising him.”
propagating the myth – spreading or continuing a false belief or story so that people keep believing it, “Sharing unverified rumors online is propagating the myth that the local park is dangerous at night.”
domestic ineptitude – a total lack of skill or ability when it comes to doing household chores like cleaning or cooking, “He always burns the food, but his domestic ineptitude is just an excuse to avoid cooking.”
lament – to express sadness, regret, or disappointment about a bad situation, “The old neighbors often lament how much the quiet town has changed over the years.”
micro-manage – to control every tiny detail of a situation or what someone else is doing, instead of trusting them, “If you micro-manage the workers, it will take them twice as long to finish painting the house.”
fair share – an equal, right, or fair amount of work, cost, or responsibility compared to others, “We will finish cleaning the kitchen quickly if everyone does their fair share of the work.”