I was recently intrigued by this visual depiction of women’s workload and this related article that describes the “mental load” that is carried by most women who are homemakers. While I’m not crazy about the underlying tones in these pieces of that infer mothering and maintaining the home are insignificant drudgery or that all men are clueless when it comes to homemaking, I think there are important points to be considered.
The basic gist of these pieces is that most women act not only as the primarily homemakers with all the tasks that role entails but also as the “project manager” for the whole family. Because she is in charge of the big picture, for anyone to assist her in household duties, she must know what to ask for and delegate that task. This results in women taking on 75% or more of the work it requires to run a home/family.
This model makes sense if women are taking on the bulk of household management because they are staying home and the family can be supported by the husband’s income alone. But that’s not the reality for many families (including mine). In our current economic situation in which most families can’t survive on one income, women take on multiple full-time jobs. Working full-time outside the home, managing the family, maintaining the home, and doing the majority of care for the children feels like an impossible work load for mere mortals.
The conversation surrounding the idea of the “mental load” prompted me to consider how we share the important tasks of running our home and family. Although we’ve never written it out, Daniel and I have fallen into a kind of rhythm that ebbs and flows according to who is working more at the time and what our family needs (as well as what each of us enjoy and are most skilled to tackle). I thought I’d share what has worked for us and I’m interested to hear what works for you.
Because I homeschool and work from home (here’s a breakdown of my typical day) I do handle a lot of the home management simply because Daniel is away from home more than I am.
Things I do:
–Laundry (I actually kind of like laundry because I watch movies while folding.)
–Homeschool planning (Ordering materials, homeschool co-op participation, daily work with kids.)
–Floors (Sweeping and mopping.)
–Doctor’s appointments for the kids
–Decluttering/Donating items we don’t need
–Purchasing necessities for the home and kids (local Buy Nothing group, online consignment, or Amazon)
–Organizing
–Giving haircuts
–Managing our budgeting app (we just started using this great system!)
–Putting the kids to bed on nights when Daniel’s working
Things Daniel spearheads:
–Grocery shopping
–Financial planning/Banking/Bill paying/Taxes
–Health Insurance
–Backyard chicken care
–Lawn care/Gardening
–Cleaning the bathroom
–Organizing family trips
–Home repairs
–Putting the kids to bed on night’s when he’s not working
–Car maintenance
–Mending
We share:
–Dishes
–Fridge clean
–Setting up family calendar
–Cooking and Meal Planning (This is our system)
Kids do:
–Emptying dishes
–Cleaning their rooms
–Taking out trash/compost
–Clearing the dining room table
I don’t think there’s any one way to run a household. Families are different, have different work/life situations, and different people are skilled at and enjoy different things.
My husband is an amazing cook. He puts on farm-to-table meals for more than 100 people. He can create masterpieces out of what I think is an empty pantry. It would just be insane for me to cook every night in some misguided attempt to conform to conventional roles. We would be missing out on great food. And furthermore, since cooking isn’t a passion for me, I would be taking on a task that does not boost my creative energy and would be depriving Daniel of using his creativity in a way that makes him come alive (and bless our family).
Different things also bother me more than Daniel and vice versa. I feel anxious when the house feels cluttered and the floors are sticky so those are things that are at the top of my priority list. Daniel really hates dirty dishes on the counter and messy sink in the bathroom so he makes it a priority to tackle those things. Different strokes, y’all. I do think it’s important to remember that if a certain task is very important to you but not to your spouse, instead of being frustrated that your spouse isn’t taking care of it, add it to your own to do list. Problem solved.
But however you share the tasks of homemaking, those acts of service for your family that make it a home are meaningful. Don’t let anybody tell you they’re merely drudgery. Because every act of love matters.
How do you manage the “mental load” of homemaking and the tasks that are necessary for your home and family to run smoothly? Let’s chat in the comments!
So true that there’s no one “right way” to do it. When you write it, you do see that there are a lot of “invisible” tasks that your spouse does without you even noticing or remembering.
A couple other things I’d add to the list….1) gift buying and 2) communicating with family (especially if your family is out of state, like ours). (Both are in my territory, mainly because I enjoy it! :))
My husband is the sole income-earner, and I’m a true stay-at-home mom/housewife/homemaker of three going on four kids. This means that our roles are almost entirely very traditional. I do all the cooking, cleaning, shopping, appointments, and things to do with kids. He earns the money, takes care of the home and car maintenance, and does the taxes. These things mostly suit our personalities. But since this is 2017, not 1947, I can ask for help with dishes or cooking or childcare and not expect pushback. I don’t ask often, however (more often now that I’m pregnant again though), because I recognize that those things are pretty much my job. He does his job all day, I do mine, and if we’ve done it right, by the end of the day, it’s all done and we can relax together. I kind of look at it as he makes the money, but I save it. In lots of ways.
Can I just say that I love your recent articles on work and women and families? So often the conversation turns into the gender wars or the mommy wars or some other kind of war that completely misses the point – the point is the family – and you are doing such a good job keeping that as the center, without throwing away the wisdom of the ages or trying to send us back to some mythical better time in the past.
My only specific comment is that my husband and I have had many iterations of how we divide the work based on our season of life. He used to do the dishes. When I started working PT instead of FT, and spending a lot more time with 2 toddlers, I told him that I’d make him a deal and I’d do the dishes. He was confused until I explained that was the deal – he could play with the kids and I’d do dishes in (relative) peace. Now there’s a new baby who likes to go to bed immediately after dinner, so he’s doing dishes again. We adapt.
Beautifully stated.
The point is family.
If we both rend to serve our family we always find a way.
I want to second that I love these recent posts of yours! I am a full time pediatrician, and my husband is a SAHD. As you may imagine, we get a lot of negative comments about this situation from people who expect us either both to work, or for me to stay home… but as you have highlighted, the important thing is that this is what’s best for our family right now. I trained for a long time to do what I do, and I feel a calling to continue. My husband, on the other hand, finds fulfillment in meal planning, cooking, coffee making, and being home during the day with our children. Our share of the cleaning and other household tasks varies from season to season, and I’ll admit that sometimes it feels like I’m doing 75%. But then at other times it feels I’m not pulling my share and I’m grateful to my husband for keeping us afloat.
Thank you for this interesting article!
“Emotional labour” is the recognised term for this phenomenon that some readers might have seen before. (Not sure why the translators of comic strip render the original french “charge mentale” as “mental load” instead of emotional labour, but anyway.)
This was such an interesting and timely post for me. I’m looking forward to discussing it with Kyle later!
I also have greatly enjoyed your recent posts on work and family. I am a medical resident and work 60-80 hours a week outside the home, while my husband is a grad student who also works a flexible part time job, meaning he often spends more time at home with our two kids than I do, and also takes on more of the household chores. Your comments about each partner doing what he or she finds most enlivening resonated with me. I’m happy to let my husband take care of our bills, savings, insurance payments, home and car maintenance – all of that would be such a headache for me! It’s harder for me when (as necessitated by my work schedule) he takes on more of the cooking, cleaning and child care. Those are acts of service to our family that I find particularly fulfilling, and I look forward to the day when I can contribute more in those areas. Thank you, Haley, for helping me to remember that it is the good of our families that we are all working toward in our own ways!
I forgot to add what I actually do take on at home – I cook as much as possible, because I enjoy it and like knowing that I have provided my children with healthy meals. My mother recently gifted us with a pressure cooker, which has been a complete game changer! I also clean the bathrooms, because messy bathrooms bother me more than they do my husband (he, on the other hand, keeps our bedroom tidy, a task at which I am woefully inadequate!) I schedule our kids’ pediatrician appointments (and hound my husband about going for a physical), mainly because I am immersed in the medical world all day so it is frequently on my mind. I put our preschooler to bed, because that means quality time with her, while he puts the toddler down, because he just has that magic touch with him! We both try to pray with the kids and read Bible stories and saint stories as much as possible. One unexpected gift of me working so much as I do is the role my husband has been able to take on in catechizing our kids. Our 3 year old knows more Latin hymns than I do thanks to him! He prays the Liturgy of the Hours with the kids over breakfast (don’t imagine that it looks very holy – lots of interruptions for more milk or food dropped on the floor!), and has instilled in our daughter a love for the Rosary. I hope and pray that when I’m done with residency we’ll be in a position to allow me stay home at least part time with the kids, but for now I am so grateful for the relationships my husband is developing with our two little ones. God shows me over and over again that His plan is greater than mine.
Hey Katie,
I’m in my second year of family medicine residency, married about 1 year, and my husband and I are very excited to grow our family. I’m looking ahead to potential jobs, hopeful for children, and it would be ideal to stay home part time after residency if we have little ones. Unfortunately, exploring that route in conversation with my co-residents has been discouraging (almost all of them are single, and there’s only 1 person in our program with a child, and he’s male… it’s a different perspective, you know?) Do you know of resources, information, recruitment sites, or even just encouraging words for our situation? My email is reesjulianne@gmail.com, just so we don’t crowd the comment inbox 🙂
Oh yeah btw, Haley, great article! Long time reader, first time commenter!
I totally agree that it makes sense and saves a lot of grief to just take care of the things that bother you – if I didn’t do the dishes daily, no one would do them for a week at a time and no one except me would even care. So I just do it, rather than argue about it. There are other things that work the other way.
However, I was discussing this with a friend’s mother recently, and mentioned that I’m happy to let my partner be in charge of finance, tax, bills etc cos I’m rubbish with figures and it comes easy to him. But she said something that stuck in my mind – that this was an important part of the first wave of feminism, because women were finding that they were so uneducated about how to take care of money matters that if their husbands died, or left them, or for whatever reason could no longer do that, they would find themselves totally at a loss in matters that could have a significant impact on their lives, and the lives of their family. I realised that growing up, my parents always took care of those things and so I didn’t learn, and then I moved straight to having my own family, where my partner does those things. Since then, I’ve made an effort to get at least some grasp on how to deal with the bank, how to do tax returns, how to figure out insurance issues, etc. I want to know I could stand on my own two feet with those matters if I had to.
Anyway, I’m sure that isn’t everyone’s experience, but it’s been a way in which we’ve tried to rebalance the mental load in our home.
Also – I try to reclaim the word “partner”! I think there’s some pushback against it these days, but I love to consider us as partners in the team of managing our family’s life. I find it’s a good way to keep us both focussed on the idea of working together for a common goal – a happy family life.
My in-laws have traditional roles in marriage and they’ve addressed this with The Death Book. It has step-by-step directions for my MIL to follow if my FIL passes away. All my MIL’s girlfriends want one too.
First off, I love your approach to family life. It is 2017 and family life has evolved in so many ways that’s its nice to see Catholic families really focus on the fact it’s not about gender or mommy wars, it’s about what is best for each individual family. We run our household pretty similar to yours where we do split up things based on our personal strengths and preferences. It ebbs and flows with what our schedules are like. My husband works full time outside of the home and I stay at home with our four children so I guess you could say I am the primary home manager. We’ve been married almost 8 years and some things still require navigation; i.e. I see a mess where he does not think it’s a problem!! During the week I cook meals because he gets home around 6:30 or after 7:00 pm. But on the weekends he cooks most if not all the meal because I need a break and he is a really good cook. When there is a baby in the house and currently our youngest is 5 months old he shares feeding responsibilities during the evening and gets up with him during the night on the weekends. Evening routines kind of get switched up; one of us does dishes and clean up the other does bath times and bed time routines. We are still trying to work some kinks out in our routines so as not to have the whole “who does more” battle. It is a constant learning process for us and we are trying to do it prayerfully! Thank you for your honest insights into family life!
When my husband is home our set up is similar to yours except 1) I work only a couple hours a week from home 2) I cook during the week and we mostly grill on the weekend, which my husband enjoys.. he is also an excellent pancake maker.
But, and I write this for any spouse who finds themselves in a similar situations, there are times when I shoulder the entire bulk of the home responsibilities, car and finances .. during deployments when my husband was in the military and now in a civilian job, where he is away sometimes as long as two months at a time. It is not easy, and I realize it is not ideal but it’s our life and God gives us the grace to weather those times. I always move into survival mode during those times and try not to worry about eating cheese and crackers for dinner 3x a week during those times!
I am retired now for almost ten years – I was a working mom in a different time than the young women of today. I want to share that I am overjoyed to see there is so little criticism of each other’s choices among women today.
In the ’90 women faced horrible criticism, stay at home moms were judgemental about working women, and vice-versa. The acceptance that you have for one another and today’s necessity for two incomes have changed the tone of the conversation. I am so glad to see this. I wish I could have had the support you all have for one another!
Actually I worked from the early ’70’s to the 2000’s so not just the ’90’s here.
I work full-time outside the house, and my husband works full-time from home. We do what makes sense. We share cooking, grocery shopping, dishes, taxes, and general cleaning up. We each do our own laundry. We each take care of our own cars. I do more “deep cleaning,” and we hire out some yard work, but he supplements the yard work. I do most of the bill paying. I was really worried about being overwhelmed with household duties and whatnot when we got married (my dad never lifted a finger inside the home). I anticipated the 75% that article describes, but thankfully I was wrong. It has been *easier* being married. We are truly a team. Hoping to add a child into the mix, and I’m sure we’ll readjust again.
A) I agree that the undertones of the article is negative.
B) I’m so glad this is being brought up, though! I often feel this “mental load” even though my husband is amazing at sharing ALL the work. But I think it’s far-fetched for society to think that we can share everything, equally, all the time. I don’t have two managers at work- I have one. It makes sense that one person will have the Project Manager position. When you have two Project Managers you end up spending a bunch of time talking about what each person should be doing, rather than, you know, doing. I think it makes sense for women to take on this Project Manager role for the home, but I’m not permitted to say that out loud in 2017…oops I just did.
Furthermore, if we subscribe to the “one Project Manager is enough” mindset, like we do in the workforce, but then we want to relieve women from that burden…well then we give the PM title to the man. Which means the man will be giving orders to the wife. Which doesn’t seem like liberation to the secular mindset. And in circles we go on and on…
Having two people share all the chores equally is a good goal, but we need to stop pretending like marriage is 50/50. Marriage is 100/100. You work all the time. And it’s good. But it’s hard work. And it’s not fair all day every day. (But *overall* it’s pretty rad.)
C) I currently work full-time, but I will be staying home with my children at the end of this month. I am curious to see how this will change our family chore dynamic. I will definitely take on more of the “manager of the home” role. But my husband is an awesome cook and generally jumps in on all the household chores without me asking. So this role change will be a learning experience for both of us! I think he will still take on household chores, but the main responsibilities will definitely fall to me since I will be home more. Pray for us, please!
D) I also have a housekeeper for about 2 hours a week…and I’m keeping her. Forever and always. Might name the next kid after her. Seriously, I’ll will do anything to keep that in the budget. I think THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is the secret to a good marriage.
One issue with just dividing tasks according to natural inclination is a) people only develop these inclinations after repeated practice, meaning many men and women are missing out on both the ability to appreciate and the ability to find joy in certain gendered tasks and b) each partner needs to see value in the acts that the other does take on, even if they’re not top of their priority list. So, okay, dirty dishes in the sink may not bother *you, but you should still be able to appreciate the joy of coming home to a clean sink, and give a silent note of gratitude for your partner taking on that task.
This is not the case in our house. My husband sees laundry, most meal prep, house cleaning, organizing as monotonous, menial tasks devoid of any intrinsic meaning — to him it would be preposterous to say they are acts of service or love — they’re just things that either objectively need to be done or don’t need to be done, and someone needs to do them or doesn’t, in which case they’re a sucker who has fallen prey to some advertising trap.
In his opinion, there is no value in him doing any of these things over, say, a cleaning service or me, and the solution if I feel overwhelmed (or he does) is to outsource as many tasks as possible. Or not do them. He for instance only washes his clothes under duress and then pulls clean shirts, underwear and pants from a bucket of perpetually unfolded clothes. I could wash and fold his clothes for him, but why? He learned he can get by with his bucket method, has decided that’s a task that doesn’t need to be done and so wouldn’t appreciate if it was done for him by someone else. The act of service he really appreciates is time to himself with friends, and time to sleep in. And because he values those things he is very generous in making sure I have them when needed. But if what I really want is to have a 24-hour period where the living room does not have socks and underwear on the floor, he won’t bother because it’s not important to him.
Sadly, for folks like us, I think it works better to be very explicit in doling out who does what and to stick as much as possible to those rules, even if they don’t sort by natural inclination. Relying on an organic pattern is a recipe for me being very burnt out and/or us living in squalor.
He definitely contributes in other ways to our family, so it’s not like he’s just an ungrateful person — but he just does not value home chores as truly valuable. And for people like that, it’s better to just have very clear systems — a chore chart, a “fair” distribution, rules for regular cleanup times, etc.
Anyways, glad that many people find these organic systems to work. Ours always has to be much more clearly delineated.
Great points!
“In our current economic situation in which most families can’t survive on one income, women take on multiple full-time jobs. ”
I don’t agree with the premise that most families can’t survive on one income. It’s all about choices and what one deems “necessary”–gymnastics, private music lesson, big house with big mortgage, private school, nice car (or two), nice clothes, vacations. Children don’t need much except the love of parents who are PRESENT, primarily the mother in the early years. Does the mother of young children really need to leave them? In some circumstances, yes, but in most cases, probably not. It’s not the society that dictates mothers leaving the home, it’s the choice of the mothers themselves.
I actually addressed this critique in a recent post, Kathy: http://www.carrotsformichaelmas.com/2017/06/07/an-honest-look-at-why-i-work-from-home/
While what you said might be true of many families pre-recession, I have not found this to be the case over the past decade. No matter how frugal we were, we could not survive on $25K with three kids in a tiny house, no vacations, no private school, sharing a used vehicle, and buying secondhand. We were not alone. Most of the other working moms I know are working to pay their grocery bills not to have a big house. I find that it’s best not to make sweeping judgements about people’s family choices.
Hubby and I both work full-time and have never explicitly discussed who does what – it just happened naturally. Since my job is more flexible, I do all the things with a set date and time – doctors appointments, school and sports/hobbies drop offs and pickups. I also manage the family calendar (Cozi, y’all need to use it), gift buying, party planning, family purchases (Amazon prime!). He does the financial planning, taxes, grocery shopping (Amazon Fresh!), and dinner cooking. But after dinner, I get to do the dishes while he gives baths and reads to the kids (currently Harry Potter, of course!) We share chores like laundry and lunch packing. Play to your strengths and I agree that if it’s important to you, do it yourself.
My husband is from a different culture in which men are not expected to do any household work. People are amazed that he helps out around the home at all. He is quite a good cook, does the dishes, drops off/picks up the kids from school, stays home with sick kids, vacuums and mops. However, he procrastinates. Or he stays up late watching TV on Friday/Saturday and then needs a long nap before he can finish the half-done vacuuming. Reminding him of his role in household work often leads to accusations of nagging. (In truth, I have never figured out how to remind a person on a regular basis that they need to finish cleaning the floors before napping without sounding like I’m nagging.) My solution to managing house hold tasks is to focus on getting the kids involved. I start early when kids are eager to contribute and “do things themselves”. At 3 and 5 YO my kids started cleaning the bathrooms. Yes, I had to monitor their efforts for months before they could do it truly on their own but it has paid off because now (2 years later) they view their house chores as something that is part of Sat morning and that cleaning the house is a family responsibility. I plan to buy a more expensive spin mop so that they can mop even though they don’t have the strength to wring out a traditional mop. I’m starting to teach my daughter (7YO) how to use the stove safely. She also vacuums small rooms like the laundry room. My son will learn the same things when he grows a little taller and stronger. I would suggest to readers who are overwhelmed by household work load to get their kids more involved, as well as their spouses.
I think it’s great that you’re recruiting your kids into this effort. I should probably redouble my efforts to outsource some of this work to my children. I suspect it would be easier to convince my children to do chores than it is to convince my grown husband :).
However, there’s always a wrinkle. My husband did not grow up lifting a finger at home so he finds it objectionable that I want the kids to empty the dishwasher every morning, make their own beds, set the table, wash dishes or sweep the floor in the kitchen. He’s okay with me making them pick up their toys, but he doesn’t consistently make that effort himself.
If I am not there 100 percent of the time to reinforce the chores the kids are expected to do, they will not get done. And for us at least, if we skip more than one or two days a week of chores, it’s no longer a routine and I have to initiate the same high level of cajoling, overseeing and threatening to get them to do it.
In general I think the chore distribution problem is just a hard one. After 10 years in group housing, and probably over 40 roommates, I’ve realized there is never an optimal solution to the house-cleaning chore issue if the set of people involved have radically different standards. The “clean it if it’s important to you” method only works if all the people have different, complementary things they’re cleaning — not if one person thinks everything is important to clean and the others think nothing is. The fair-is-fair method works for. a while, but at some point the slobby people resent taking effort they don’t believe needs to be done.
It’s just a tough problem!
I agree that it is impossible to survive on one income. As much as we wanted to make it work, we could not do it. It’s sad, but true. I stay home with the kids and my husband works 2 jobs. He ended up getting the second job and that is just what works for us even if other people think it is unbalanced. At some point I will probably get a job, but right now with 4 kids under 5 it makes more sense for me to stay home so we don’t have to pay for daycare of any kind.
As far as dividing up household stuff, my husband takes care of the yard work, most of the cooking (he is a much better cook than I am and he enjoys it. I cook on the evenings when he is working at the second job), fixing things around the house, anything technology related (fixing computers, etc), and anything car related. I take care of most of the laundry, finances, and house cleaning, although he will help with the laundry on occasion, he has input on the finances, and he will help with the cleaning pretty regularly. I am the one who does the meal planning and grocery shopping. We share dishes, taking care of the kids like getting them ready for bed, and taking care of the babies.
I would say we really share a lot of things. He pretty much exclusively does yard work, car work, and most of the cooking, while I pretty much exclusively do meal planning, setting up the budget for the month, and laundry. Everything else gets shared fairly regularly. I like that we are able to share so much even though he works the 2 jobs and I stay home. I think in the end we both work hard and I feel like the way we have divided things up is fair and I don’t feel like we are unbalanced.
My first thought when reading through that whole ‘mental load’ cartoon was that it completely disregarded the ‘mental load’ many men carry of providing for and protecting their family. And I don’t mean only the men whose wives don’t bring in an income. I think men carry this load in a different and more profound way than women. Not that I don’t feel this responsibility too, but for him, it is the reason he gets up every morning and takes on the day. And after 22 years of marriage I think I am finally beginning to understand this part of his soul and I am able to see my own father’s actions through a new lens. I am not downplaying the mental load of home management. I feel it myself everyday, but I do not think it is fair to overlook the load so many men feel deep down that they must provide for and protect their family. It is a burden my husband carries as part of his identity even when I bring in an income too.
Fascinating read! My family situation is about to change drastically – for the first six years of our marriage, my husband was in grad school, so I was the breadwinner and he was basically a househusband. (It worked out great because he’s the one who loves to cook!) Two weeks from now, we’re moving to a new town, where he will begin a full-time job, I’ll work part-time, and help run the household more. It’s so comforting to me to see how many different ways this can work!
Thanks for the encouragement!
I haven’t analyzed the workload in my home and we’ve been at it almost 22 years. I guess we’re successful at divvying up the work. What struck me MOST in this post was this point:
” . . . every act of love matters.”
Amen, aMEN, AMENNNNNNNNNN! THAT is what it ALL comes down to, make no mistake.
Thank you, Haley for this post and that statement. God bless and have a beautiful day!
I’m doing some research on this topic especially as it relates to the faith community and I find it interesting that although the original topic is “mental load” or “emotional labor” that nearly all of the comments and much of the post are about physical labor. I would be very curious if anyone has thoughts as to the actual mental/emotional component? Who remembers doctors appointments, science projects, social engagements, extended family birthdays, when to get the oil changed, replace the air filters, or if you outsource help around the house, when to pay those people? Yes this all has an end result in a physical action but i think the burden comes in having to be the person that thinks about and remembers all the things. TIA!