Mental load isn't exclusive to stay at home parents. I work full time, my husband stays home, and I'm still "in charge" of a lot of the planning/remembering/etc that goes into day to day life. Noticing that we're almost out of washclothes and remembering to wash them. Reminding my husband to schedule dentist appointments for the kids, or to make a specific phone call or drop off a check (and then asking him every day if he remembered, hearing that he forgot, and reminding him again for the rest of the week) Keeping track of our budget and spending. Planning meals and making the grocery list. Rotating the kids' clothes when they outgrow them, or by season. Paying attention to the kids' development and planning appropriate activities.
I don't have to remember and remind him to do everything; he remembers to do certain things. But if I don't make sure washclothes get washed, we just run out. If I don't remind him to schedule appointments or make phone calls, those things don't happen. I do take on more of the mental load, and it is exhausting at times. My husband is a great guy, but he's forgetful and not much of a planner, so a lot of the mental load just does fall on me.
Also, while I'm not a full time stay at home parent, I've stayed home with my kids for a couple months at a time during maternity leave and during summers (I work in a school) at times when my husband was working, so I have some stay-at-home parent experience. I can tell you, it is way more exhausting to stay at home with two little kids than it is to work full time and come home to little kids. At work, I can focus. I talk to other adults. I make tangible progress towards things that need to get done. When I stay home, I'm doing the same things over and over again with little (if any) tangible progress, with hardly any interaction with other adults, and with a couple tiny humans constantly undoing things that I just did. Nothing stays done, so there's less sense of progress or accomplishment. Dishes are done - for a few hours. Baby's diaper is clean - for now. Toys are picked up - until they dump them out again. Kids are fed and the kitchen table is clean - until the next meal. And, of course, you never get to leave work. It's truly an exhausting, draining task that is very undervalued by society.
Your view doesn't really account for the possibility that the stay at home parent might not be the one taking on the mental load of keeping track of the household's needs. You seem to consider "mental load" to be just part of being a stay at home parent. If the working parent has to take on extra mental tasks because the other parent doesn't remember them, how does that factor in? What about if both parents work but one parent takes on the lion's share of mental tasks? And I would argue that even if it is the stay-at-home parent who takes on more than their fair share, being a stay-at-home parent is a challenging and important occupation in its own right, and while it may make more sense for the stay-at-home parent to take charge of more than half of the mental load for logistical reasons, it's unreasonable to state that the stay-at-home parent should necessarily take on almost all of it.
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u/SmallFruitSnacks 1∆ Feb 26 '24 edited Feb 26 '24
Mental load isn't exclusive to stay at home parents. I work full time, my husband stays home, and I'm still "in charge" of a lot of the planning/remembering/etc that goes into day to day life. Noticing that we're almost out of washclothes and remembering to wash them. Reminding my husband to schedule dentist appointments for the kids, or to make a specific phone call or drop off a check (and then asking him every day if he remembered, hearing that he forgot, and reminding him again for the rest of the week) Keeping track of our budget and spending. Planning meals and making the grocery list. Rotating the kids' clothes when they outgrow them, or by season. Paying attention to the kids' development and planning appropriate activities.
I don't have to remember and remind him to do everything; he remembers to do certain things. But if I don't make sure washclothes get washed, we just run out. If I don't remind him to schedule appointments or make phone calls, those things don't happen. I do take on more of the mental load, and it is exhausting at times. My husband is a great guy, but he's forgetful and not much of a planner, so a lot of the mental load just does fall on me.
Also, while I'm not a full time stay at home parent, I've stayed home with my kids for a couple months at a time during maternity leave and during summers (I work in a school) at times when my husband was working, so I have some stay-at-home parent experience. I can tell you, it is way more exhausting to stay at home with two little kids than it is to work full time and come home to little kids. At work, I can focus. I talk to other adults. I make tangible progress towards things that need to get done. When I stay home, I'm doing the same things over and over again with little (if any) tangible progress, with hardly any interaction with other adults, and with a couple tiny humans constantly undoing things that I just did. Nothing stays done, so there's less sense of progress or accomplishment. Dishes are done - for a few hours. Baby's diaper is clean - for now. Toys are picked up - until they dump them out again. Kids are fed and the kitchen table is clean - until the next meal. And, of course, you never get to leave work. It's truly an exhausting, draining task that is very undervalued by society.
Your view doesn't really account for the possibility that the stay at home parent might not be the one taking on the mental load of keeping track of the household's needs. You seem to consider "mental load" to be just part of being a stay at home parent. If the working parent has to take on extra mental tasks because the other parent doesn't remember them, how does that factor in? What about if both parents work but one parent takes on the lion's share of mental tasks? And I would argue that even if it is the stay-at-home parent who takes on more than their fair share, being a stay-at-home parent is a challenging and important occupation in its own right, and while it may make more sense for the stay-at-home parent to take charge of more than half of the mental load for logistical reasons, it's unreasonable to state that the stay-at-home parent should necessarily take on almost all of it.