There are six members of my household: my husband and me, our three sons – and the invisible work that comes with keeping us all functioning, fed, connected and well.
I’m not talking about the mental load as we know it – that familiar list-making and life admin feature that women often feel is their responsibility to carry. I’m referring to modern motherhood’s overthinking phenomenon, the emotional labour that keeps us up at night, derails days and dominates downtime.
From hours talking through friendship woes, ruminating over whether you’ve scarred the kids – or maybe made them hardier – by forgetting a piece of school residential kit, staying up late to make a birthday treasure hunt (I did it last month) or remembering to research the right response to that question you promised to answer at breakfast yesterday (am I neglectful if I don’t?) – it’s the energy-draining thinking time dedicated to our kids and loved ones that buzzes in my mind constantly. On one day last week, I clocked 38 occurrences on top of my paid work and practical parenting.
This hidden cognitive overtime that feels pressing and intuitive to mothers (often played out as my husband scrolls his phone on the sofa at the end of a day) has now been acknowledged and categorised, by new research which, frankly, has me feeling “seen”.
Professor Leah Ruppanner, a University of Melbourne sociologist, says women are spending their mental load eight different ways: life organisation (staying on top of planning and tasks); emotional support (checking in on family, friends, and co-workers); relationship hygiene (maintaining strong social connections); magic making (carrying on traditions and creating special life moments); dream-building (helping others fulfil passions and ambitions); individual upkeep (keeping fit and healthy); safety (protecting family and loved ones from danger) and meta-care (raising children to thrive in the future).
“The mental load is emotional thinking work necessary to keep work, life and family running,” says Ruppanner, author of Drained: Reduce Your Mental Load to Do Less and Be More. “Imagine it goes something like this: ‘Oh, did I forget the school permission slip?’ If it were straight thinking work, you’d go: ‘It’s on the list, tick it off, it’s done.’ But often our mental load goes from something small to worst case, so it might look like: ‘Have I remembered the permission slip? I forgot it. Does that make me a bad mum? Am I actually a good mum? I read a motherhood article about how we need to do a, b and c – am I doing that? If not, what does it mean for my child?” And on it goes. “We go from simple thinking work into this constant emotional thinking work about not only tomorrow but our children’s futures.”
Intrigued by this categorisation of the jumbled tabs open inside my brain, I tallied up my own invisible work over 24 hours. The highlights were as follows:
Category one, life organisation: remember the eight-year-old’s spelling book because we forgot it last week. Will he be judged for forgetting? Will he feel stupid? Should I print child one’s (age 13) revision guide for him or leave him to learn independently? Did I book the barber’s yet? Has anyone filled out the after-school clubs email? How will sons one and two (both 12) get home from school presentation night so my husband can go to the football? Have they seen my message about getting home? Am I a bad parent if I miss presentation night? Am I a worse parent if I don’t get their little brother to bed?
Category two, emotional support. This one feels endless: I didn’t chat to one of them for as long last night; he seems quiet. Is he worried about something? Have I missed it? Refer to an argument; discuss why, “It’s not fair.” Was it fair? Will the youngest grow up to feel neglected because he’s on an iPad while I work? Has his brother’s friend-group issues improved? Find a moment to broach it, spend an hour talking to him, then another thinking about it. Look up that book a friend recommended to help. Message your own friend who’s having a tough time.
Which brings us to three: relationship hygiene: arrange a play date for the youngest, speak to your husband, find a time to visit grandma, make sure they sing happy birthday to grandpa, agree to a walk with another kid’s mum to help maintain their friendship, consider that WhatsApp about the mums’ social for the same reason. Let the neighbour’s kid come to play; I should get involved in the neighbours’ WhatsApp in case we need them in an emergency? I need to reply to my friend.
Four, magic making: Have I got time to make their favourite meal this weekend? Research the ingredients again. Maybe we’ll get round to that holiday photo book. Play our family card game, watch a Saturday night movie together?
Five, dream-building, which simply means the small task of making sure everyone has what they need to achieve their wildest dreams. This is one of the burdens that the research suggests my husband is more inclined to carry; men’s historical status as breadwinners remains tied, even now, to the notion of investing energy in these areas, which reflects in both them and their families achieving their goals. But of course, I carry it too. Can I get them down to the extra football training they asked about? Cancel a plan so husband can play football. But that also means, out of fairness, asking him to cancel one of his so I can visit a friend.
And six, individual upkeep: I need to chase those blood tests from three weeks ago. Do I have time to go to the gym on Friday? I need to eat more protein. Am I low on iron? Go to sleep!
Seven, safety. Along with dream-building, the research says this is another one that my husband is also likely to carry. Where vigilant overthinking about real-world safety is huge when they’re tiny, protecting them online now dominates a huge amount of my mental load: checking their Snapchat. Talk about that group chat message – or maybe don’t? Analyse their screen time. Track their bus journey home. Remember to discuss bike safety so they can start to cycle home too.
And, finally, eight, meta-care. This big-picture consideration of their future selves plays out as a constant hum under absolutely everything else.
Unknowingly, my review was the start of what Ruppanner – also mum to a teenager – calls a mental load audit, a path for more strategic “spending” of that emotional energy. Rather than pushing the headspace mums spend on themselves to the bottom of the list, identifying duplication and priorities can “reignite women’s dreaming muscle,” she says. “We start to think about the mental load as precious and finite – you cannot spend it as though it’s infinite.”
To use her language, I noticed, for example, that “magic making” – the treasure hunt my eight-year-old asked for and I forgot until 10pm the night before his birthday – gave me energy because the memorable impact for him was worth more than the time it took. However, going out with parents I didn’t know in the hope it would cultivate his friendships took away energy that would have been better spent at home with them and getting a night’s rest.
“Women are socialised to believe they’re total jerks if they don’t give everything, every time, all the time,” says Ruppenner. “We’ve made mothers CEO of the family, but no other CEO is responsible for literally everything: HR, safety, people’s futures.”
To a point, the mental load serves a purpose. In families with complex needs, much of it simply cannot be dropped. “Get really strategic about culling, cutting and reducing, delegating or dropping it. Women tend to have long lists of people they’re giving their mental load energy to. Men are more tailored or truncated,” she says. “You cannot give the book club, church group, school PTA, your best friend, children, partner, co-worker, that random person you met on the Tube and your tangential neighbour all your mental load energy at all moments.”
So, I said no to the school mums’ social and left the neighbourhood WhatsApp group alone; I delegated my middle son’s drawn-out decision-making about football training to him and my husband and sent my eldest his residential kit list to sort himself, closing a few tabs on the way.
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