The Mental Load

Women deal with a lot of emotions and roadblocks going into and coming back from maternity leave. How do we better prepare ourselves, our workplaces and our partners so the mental load at home and at work isn’t as bad? We had a great episode a couple weeks ago with Sarah Reeves about how to help shape the workplace into one that is more supportive for caregivers, so today’s conversation I think is going to be a nice follow-up to how to prepare yourself for the changes that come with becoming a mother and taking on more of the mental load both at home and in the office.

Today's guest is Lauren Gordon. Lauren is a dual-certified life and career coach for working moms, and a former senior leader in human resources at a global financial services company. She specializes in helping working moms fully enjoy life with a career and children, without trading happiness for a paycheck.

Lauren runs her own coaching practice where she works one-on-one with working moms who are navigating a wide range of personal and professional challenges. Lauren's areas of expertise include helping women to overcome feelings of stress, guilt, and overwhelm; ending imposter syndrome by growing their self-confidence; addressing people-pleasing and perfectionistic tendencies; navigating career decisions; and more.

 Lauren lives in a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with her husband, Eli, and their three young daughters, ages 7, 5, and 3. When Lauren isn't coaching and teaching working moms, you can find her taking Peloton classes, reading, and continually trying to improve her cooking skills to keep up with the other members of her monthly cookbook club.

Visit www.laurengordon.com to learn more about how to work with Lauren, and follow her on Instagram @workingmomcoach for tips you can begin applying to your life today.

The mental load isn’t just something that shows up at home, it’s also something that creeps in to our work lives. In the workplace, women spend more time on “non-promotable tasks” than men, which is unpaid work related to social or administrative “office housekeeping.” These types of activities are vital to maintaining company culture and strengthening team connections, but are not valued as strategic — and therefore come with little to no recognition, appreciation, reward, or career advantage.

In this episode, we explore:

• Where the mental load started for us
• What emotions women are facing personally and professionally going into maternity leave
• What the mental load looks like professionally
• How we can better prepare women for maternity leave
• How the mental load perpetuates the stereotype that women are distracted or somehow not as good at their jobs after they have kids
• How men prepare for maternity leave and how it looks different than women
• How to prepare to return from maternity leave

Mentioned in this episode:

Joy School Affiliate Link

https://thepathtojoy.thrivecart.com/melissa-blooms-joy-school/partner/

What do nordic countries do to support families:

• Baby boxes with important newborn items to set families up for success
• Paid parental leave 
• In Norway, parental leave is paid at full pay for the first 44 weeks or at 80% if parents opt to take 54 weeks. To encourage both parents to play their part, fathers must take at least six weeks' parental leave or risk the family losing payments for the same period.
• Free universal childcare from 18 mo - 7 years
• Capped childcare costs
• Strong gender equality in the workforce:
• Gender quotas legislate for a 40% female presence in the country’s parliament and on business boards, resulting in a strong female presence – Norway’s prime minister, minister of finance and minister of foreign affairs are all female, while women make up 41% of the C-suite.

What happened to America?

"Ronald Reagan: by 1980 the Moral Majority, the main Evangelical lobby, had almost half a million members (Diamond 174).2 These new activists had three priorities, and they were directly related to the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the issue of women’s rights: the denunciation of homosexuality, the fight against abortion (which was famously declared constitutional by the Supreme Court with its Roe v. Wade decision in 1973), and the rejection of the ERA (the Equal Rights Amendment) (Martin 162-166, 193-194). In the late 1970s, Ronald Reagan quickly understood the incredible electoral potential of the Christian Right."

These policies all hold women back economically by making childcare unaffordable (which means we have to puzzle piece it together).

Hit women of color especially hard bc there are stricter gender norms

When we’re faced with this onslaught of policies that harm more than they help, we decide to leave the workforce. 

The nation loses a major economic factor:

• Household earnings therefore spending go down
• Companies lose more workers and therefore innovation

Why don’t we view it as economically beneficial to support families?

America’s lack of family support rests on a false assumption: that providing help discourages parents from taking responsibility for their children.

And while other wealthy countries spend an average of $14,000each year per child on early-childhood care, the U.S. spends a miserly $500. Underlying each of these bleak truths appears to be the same, misguided belief: that government support for parents is at odds with parents being responsible for their kids.

Helping parents is not the same as parenting, and support does not replace real-life parents.

Why do we think tough love is good for families as policy?

• Treating parenting with punitive punishment

We know that in countries with greater gender inequality just closing the gap in women’s labor force participation could increase economic output by an average of 35 percent. 

• New Mexico used $77 million in American Rescue Plan Act dollars to create the Competitive Pay for Professionals (CPP) program to fund $3/hour pay increases for an estimated 16,000 child care staff.37
•  Iowa used $30 million to provide $1,000 and $2,000 Recruitment and Retention Bonuses to individual child care workers. Child care staff could apply for a bonus every 6 months until funding runs out.38
•  Maine used American Rescue Plan Act dollars to provide $200 monthly stipends to 7,000 early childhood educators39 and has since invested additional state funding to make the salary supplements permanent.40
• In Norway, the expansion of universal childcare increased the likelihood of mothers’ employment by 32 percentage points.
•  IMF analysis shows that a greater presence of women in financial institutions and financial policymaking goes hand in hand with greater financial resilience.
• What do we know about supporting families?
• We know that higher quality childcare creates better economic outcomes for children. 
• In lower-income and communities of color, this helps to break a cycle of generational poverty. 
• Supporting families decreases level of incarceration. 
• Decreases healthcare costs because as adults they’re healthier. 
• Helps fill jobs today and prepare children for jobs in the future

Why don’t we view supporting families as economically good?

How does this mentality prevent families from having an equal household?

-political talking points

- weaponization of families for political gain

Join us on YouTube

Mentioned in this episode:

Joy School Affiliate Link

https://thepathtojoy.thrivecart.com/melissa-blooms-joy-school/partner/

Meal planning, it's a bitch, right? In this week's hot take, Angie, discusses how her family of six has tackled meal planning. And, if we do say so ourselves, it's kinda genius.

Instead of meticulously planning out each meal and the ingredients or making everything on the weekend to simply reheat on the weeknights, they've picked a theme for each night, so the guess work is less and the kids know what to expect.

Maternity Leave isn't a vacation. In fact, it's where the mental load really starts and becomes one-sided.

Today we discuss how Employee Resource Groups can help support and lighten the load for not just moms, but all caregivers, joined by Sarah Reeves.

Sarah is a girl mom to Ella 8, Norah 5, Husband Aaron of 13 years. She's the Director of Product Management at one of the largest internet companies to date. After her first child, she co-founded a global employee resource group for parents that evolved to include caregivers of all kinds. Sarah loves to swear, especially during passionate discussions.

What is the issue? 

Modern parenting expectations set women up even before the birth to carry the majority of the mental load. And that load continues to avalanche in from pregnancy into maternity leave.

• Gaps in community/village support
• Twisted perceptions (mat leave is a vacation) and the additional pressures put on parents
• Internalized expectations, maternal gate-keeping, martyrdom 
• Why you can’t comparing maternity leave to vacation
• Your body is restoring itself after a traumatic event, not recovering after cocktails on the beach.
• This is prime time for cocooning, not for indulging your social butterfly side at the cruise ship dinner buffet.
• You don’t need an alarm clock because the baby is the alarm clock, not because you’re going to actually sleep in.
• A new family member means added mental load, not a break from your to-do list.
• You need real capacity to deal with the unexpected, and I don’t just mean flight delays into Aruba.

What are the effects?

• Men who take paternity leave are less likely to get divorced, and a Swedish study found that when fathers were offered up to 30 days of flexible leave while their partners were on maternity leave, their spouses are less likely to be on anti-anxiety medication in the postpartum period.
• Relationship Equity - Women whose partners take on an equal share of the MENTAL load have higher libidos
• Low female sexual desire affects more than 50% of women and is difficult to treat.
• Study findings suggest low desire is not a problem, an internal problem for women to resolve solo; effort needed from both partners.
• Need more than just the physical load - where wife/mom = project manager
• Homosexual partners handle relationship equity better on average
• Childcare deserts - women are disproportionately impacted: 23-75% of families across the US report having a struggle finding childcare. Disproportionately affecting communities of color and rural and urban areas impacted more so than suburban families.  States with fewer ‘childcare deserts’ see less women in the workforce.
• We just went off our childcare cliff with expiration of federal funding started during the pandemic to aid families in the cost of childcare. The average family spends 27% of their income on childcare, DHHS says for it to be considered “affordable” it shouldn’t exceed 7%. Over 3 million children are at risk of losing childcare because of this with a projected $10.6 billion in economic impact and American families losing over $9 billion in earnings.

How does this relate to the mental load? 

• Our findings imply that maternity leave benefits do not only protect mothers and their children around the period of childbirth, but may contribute to healthy ageing among women during the last decades of life. This finding may have profound implications for the costs of medical care, the social participation and the productivity of older women, as well as the societal impact of older mother's mental health on family members and society.                                 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4400242/
• “And once we’re back at work, things will get so hellish that it will feel less exhausting to keep doing everything rather than to battle with your partner so that he does his share”. The Mental Load: A Feminist Comic.

How can we fix this? 

• Men who take paternity leave are less likely to get divorced, and a Swedish study found that when fathers were offered up to 30 days of flexible leave while their partners were on maternity leave, their spouses are less likely to be on anti-anxiety medication in the postpartum period.
• Macro
• Large scale policy change at the federal level
• Employers can invest in ‘returners to work’ - non-profits like Path Forward
• Micro
• At work - ergs, hr/benefits
• Your manager/your team
• Nano:
• Listen to this podcast (educate/get perspective)
• Talk about it with partner/friends
• If we explicitly state how much planning is involved in every aspect of childcare and housework, it will become clearer just how much hidden work we do

Mentioned in this episode:

Joy School Affiliate Link

https://thepathtojoy.thrivecart.com/melissa-blooms-joy-school/partner/

Anecdotally I have noticed that every woman in a heterosexual relationship will say that her love language is acts of service. Ask her husband what her love language is and he'll say "definitely acts of service". But I think this is bullshit.

What if, women are using acts of service as a love language as a cover for asking our partners to pick up more of the mental load?

I find it statistically impossible that every woman lists acts of service as their love language. I would bet money that if we had more equitable households and marriages, the percentage of women who say acts of service is their love language would decline significantly.

This is all just my opinion and has not be researched in any way shape or form.

Drop your comments at the mental load podcast on YouTube.

What is the issue? 

Telling moms to practice more self-care is a bullshit cop out. 

Self care is defined as the ability to care for oneself through awareness, self-control, and self-reliance in order to achieve, maintain, or promote optimal health and well-being.

The term “self-care” actually has roots in the civil rights and women’s rights movements of the 1960s and ’70s. (There’s a frequently shared quote by Black American writer and activist Audre Lorde—“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”)

Self-care is an estimated $10 billion industry with a large portion coming from the beauty sector

The ideas for self-care is different for women vs men

• Men are allowed to work hard and play hard
• Drinking beer and hanging with buddies, golf, lawn care, watching sports
• All very time consuming events
• Women must FIND the time to get self care
• Why is a hot shower marketed to women as self care? Hot showers should just be a given and a bare minimum.
• Commercialized self care only geared towards moms: beauty serums, exercise programs, “mommy makeover”
• We’re told “you deserve it” so it becomes something we are or not worthy of
• Leisure gap: Men spend roughly 3 more hours on leisure activities per week than women.

But the truth is that self-care is not enough. And it’s time that we stop telling moms that a simple act of self-care will undo the years of culture-induced overwhelm that is causing us all to burn out.

What are the effects?

• Burn out - Constant pouring from an empty cup
• Resentment towards partner
• Fatigue, headaches, stomach issues, and heart disease.
• Low energy and less patience

How does this relate to the mental load? 

• The coordination of our own self care – when, where, how
• One more freaking thing to manage.
• coordinating before we have to leave
• Logically we know this is best for us but actually stepping away makes us feel guilty
• Societal pressures to be everything to everyone.

But also - I don’t actually need self care. I need a partner who’s more switched on on a daily basis. Self care isn’t a break; it’s just delaying getting the stuff done we need to get done. I can’t take care of myself if I don’t trust my partner will seamlessly carry on without me. 

How can we fix this? 

• Self care can be viewed as a partner's responsibility.
• Change the narrative of self care as a health priority over an optional privilege. 
• What is your self care?

Catch us on YouTube

Join us and special guest, Kate Anderson, Chief of Staff at Motherly to discuss their annual State of Motherhood report. The largest body of research regarding motherhood and issues impacting families.

Kate Anderson is a leader in generating change and gender equality within the startup space.

As a Chief of Staff at Motherly, a wellbeing destination empowering mothers to thrive with expert content, innovative product solutions, and supportive community. Motherly engages an audience of 40 million+ readers and viewers a month, with on-demand parent education classes, Webby-award winning videos, The Motherly Podcast, essays, and articles, and a highly-engaged social media community.

As co-founder and VP of Operations of IFundWomen, she has driven millions of dollars into the hands of female founders. IFundWomen's flexible crowdfunding platform combines a pay-it-forward model, expert startup coaching, professional video production, and a private community for its entrepreneurs, all with the goal of helping female entrepreneurs launch successful businesses.

Prior to launching IFundWomen, Kate spent four years at Hines Interests, one of the largest and most respected real estate organizations in the world with more than $116 billion under management.

Kate earned her BA from Colgate University and received a Masters of Professional Studies from Georgetown University.

Nearly 10,000 mothers completed our sixth annual survey, conducted from Feb. 26 to March 13, 2023. To ensure our results represent today’s mothers accurately, we weighted the data to align with US Census demographic data. Our report focuses on the findings from millennial and Gen Z mothers, but we also provide some insights from Gen X mothers who participated in the survey. Findings continue to validate that today’s mothers are parenting without adequate structural support.

Findings of the survey:

• 1. The Great Resignation continues for mothers 
• 2. Self-care looks different as moms prioritize sleep over sex and friends 
• 3. Household and family responsibilities fall more on mothers than during the height of the pandemic 
• 4. Mental health is mom’s biggest worry 
• 5. 8 in 10 mothers worry about a recession and are making preemptive cuts

The Great Resignation for Moms:

• SAHM has nearly doubled from 15% in 2022 to 25% in 2023
• The message is clear: to return to work, families need flexible work schedules and affordable childcare

Current events contradicting that:

• Return to office movement
• Childcare cliff we just went over as of 9/30

Discussion: It’s almost like we need a motherhood union. The great resignation reminds me of when unions first started and workers went on strike for one day and realized that companies would wait them out for the one day and take it as a loss, so that’s how we came to unions as we know it today where all members strike and we have collective bargaining. How do we raise immediate awareness and demand change? Why are companies so resistant to offering what seems like an easy solution?

Selfcare looks different as moms prioritize sleep over sex and friends:

• Date nights are down
• Number of times/week moms are having sex are down by 54%
• Reasons: adding a new baby & not having time
• Moms are getting more sleep, but this stat still lags for black moms
• Planning to go out with friends proves to be too difficult

Discussion: having the time is more than your partner just yelling at the kids to get a bunch of chores done so you feel “relaxed” enough to have sex that night.

Household and family responsibilities fall more on moms than even at the height of Covid.

Key findings and takeaways:

• 58% of moms feel they shoulder the main responsibilities of their household 
• Ranges from pet care to scheduling appointments
• Many feel their partners don’t know what it takes to run their household

Discussion: the daily vs the “once and a while tasks” - why dads end up with the better deal.

Mental Health:

Key findings and takeaways:

• 46% of moms seeking therapy
• Number of sessions/year has increased
• Fueled by anxiety and depression
• Despite media attention, education is at the bottom of the worry list

Discussion: the mental load and anxiety/depression is self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts

8/10 mothers worry about a recession and are making cuts

• Most mothers report feeling stressed financially
• Moms are responsible for 85% of the purchasing decisions
• Major economic indicator
• Many families aren’t prepared for a $1k unexpected expense which puts families at risk

Teach our kids to look at the week with us and anticipate what they're going to need to do each day, or just be mentally and emotionally prepared to go through their week.

The holidays are often some of the most stressful time of year, financially, emotionally and physically for many families. Creating the holiday magic often falls to the already full plate of the mom, so what can we do to have a hot-mess-less holiday season? Angies hot take covers:

• Caring for your spouse during the holiday season so it can be magical for them too
• Creating a joint budget
• Shopping together
• How to teach your kids to consider others this time of year and
• How to let go of what doesn't serve you this holiday season

What is the issue? 

We are part of a generation that wasn’t raised to think about kids’ feelings. Our parents didn’t ignore us, but they also weren’t as keyed in on emotional and social well-being as we are today. A big part of the mental load is that we’re the emotional backstop for everyone in the family and when both parents aren’t parenting from a place of emotional well being, it creates a disconnect that creates tension and another layer of the mental load: us managing our husband’s reactions to our style of parenting.

What are the main emotional issues you feel like show up at your house?

• Feeling like as women we’ve made the transition to thinking of our kids as humans with emotional intelligence and feelings but not having partners that do the same
• So difficult to drag our husbands along; straddling two sides of the same fence
• Feels like a difference in parenting styles

How does this show up?

• Kids not having a way to talk through situations - being viewed as argumentative/disrespectful
• Taking the “i’m talking you’re listening approach”
• “Just do what I say”
• Yelling a lot

Psychological effects of being yelled at; 

https://mantracare.org/therapy/issues/psychological-effects-of-being-yelled-at/#:~:text=Being%20yelled%20at%20may%20cause,be%20verbally%20abusive%20to%20others.

The body releases cortisol and adrenaline into your bloodstream

• You have more difficulty thinking: Your brain’s amygdala is triggered
• You might feel bad if someone yells at you: It feels like they are attacking your sense of self
• Also, you may feel depressed, anxious, or develop panic attacks: The effects of being yelled at can have a negative impact on your mental health
• You might withdraw from others and isolate yourself: A way to cope with the emotional pain you are feeling
• Some people express their feelings through anger: Which can lead to them being verbally abusive to others.

This article provides insight into how yelling can affect children psychologically. Yelling at a child may make them feel like they are not good enough and that there is something wrong with them. This could lead to negative self-esteem, low self-worth, and depression later in life.

Yelling at a child often leads their brain’s amygdala to be triggered. This can make kids feel bad and have panic attacks or depression.

Impacts sense of trust

How does this show up in our households?

How does having these two different parenting philosophies affect the mental load?

• Creates another layer of emotional regulation for each person in the house
• Also creates another layer of planning for how to address it with your partner
• Anticipation
• Overplanning
• Overstimulation for everyone

How does this relate to the mental load? When we have different parenting styles, we spend a lot of headspace thinking about and planning for how to navigate it.

What does this all come down to? Creating a parenting style that works for both of you. 

Why didn’t anyone tell us to have these conversations when we were dating/engaged?

How can we fix this? 

1. Validate our kids’ emotions
2. Make a coping skills plan - for them and for you
3. Practice the coping skills

Ideas:

Be on the same team. He’s not the problem. His temper isn’t the problem (but isn’t it?) You want to come together on a way you can both agree when it comes to dealing with your kids. Go back to the couples vision board: what values are most important for you to give to your children?

• How to Share The Mental Load of Parenting: 5 Tips From Therapists
• Short and Long-Term Psychological Effects of Yelling at a Child | BetterHelp
• Psychological Effects of Being Yelled at | Mantra Care

In our house, there's two versions of the mental load argument. Version 1 was "you just need to ask for help" now we're on to what I like to call 2.0 of the argument: "we just need a better routine".

This statement sounds more progressive. It's action-oriented and inclusive. I said "we!". But here's the thing, routines aren't the entire solution. They don't absolve your partner from being an equal participant in whatever task needs to get done that you're currently handling alone.

A routine isn't going to magically make your kids behave or stop meltdowns that make it difficult to get shit done by yourself.

If I'm the only one who's currently handling a task while my partner is scrolling through his phone or watching TV, and you tell me "we just need a better routine" what I hear is: "you just need a better routine." But, we don't need a better routine. We have one. You need to participate in it more. Be the other half of the "we" in this life we chose to create together.