Moms Carry 71% of the Mental Load

It's an interesting read at least as much as overviewing the abstract in the summary but I'm not so much sure that it's "doing gender" as gender differences prompt different desires. It's well known across psychology that generally men are more interested in things and women are more interested in people. So this divide of the cognitive mental load shouldn't be surprising but what would be interesting is more the why it's that way.

I have very little interest in social interactions and organizing those types of things. Many of the household cognitive mental load things they cite I also have very little interest planning for those as they seem to be things that don't really require my planning. My wife on the other hand she loved social interactions and for all of those cognitive mental load things she enjoyed planning those things or at least it seemed like she enjoyed it. Any given day if I would grab her butt there would be a piece of paper in her pocket with a list of all of those things. We're all of them required to be done, certainly not, were they required to be as her list dictated, absolutely not but for her she had to have it this way.

So are women rating so much higher on the cognitive mental load because they have to or because they want to and it becomes a different way in which you approached handling these things. One of those examples that almost any married man can relate to is when your wife wants you to do something she will nag you until it gets done. Then she'll complain my husband doesn't do things when I ask. The issue comes about because it's not that your husband won't take out the garbage for example and he'll just leave it pile up to the ceiling and it will never get taken out it's that the woman wants it done on her timetable and how she specifies. So that will definitely increase this cognitive mental load because they're attempting to micromanage the household instead of letting tasks get done in a more natural and fluid way.

Without accounting for that kind of difference in attitude and task handling this study isn't providing anything useful beyond confirmation of what every married man already knows.

But what are the outcomes of these shares of “mental load?” How much thought translates into what measure of results? In therapy my partner was shocked to learn how much time I spend plotting and considering our domestic affairs like cleaning and grocery shopping, but I had to admit also that only some of that thought genuinely effected household results. Some of it was just anxiety. I don’t think it’s reasonable to hold my partner accountable for fretting as much as I do about meal planning for us, but holding them accountable for producing as many meals seems entirely just.

"Dr Ana Catalano Weeks, a political scientist from the Department of Politics, Languages & international Studies at the University of Bath said"

A political "scientist". Not only does this study have nothing to do with neuroscience, it's literally made up propaganda to sow division, not only between husband/wife, it's also sowing division between mother/child.

> New research shows that mothers take on 71% of household mental load tasks, including planning, scheduling, and organizing, while fathers manage just 45%

71% and 45%? What do these numbers actually mean? The article doesn't really make any of this make sense.

Additionally, something I'm going to note, I don't do any of these things regardless of the fact that I am not a father and live alone. "Scheduling, planning, organizing" are all things I detest immensely. I like to live simply and according to the free-flow pace of life. The kind of highly structured, bureaucratic life driven by 4th order Baudrillardian simulations of rituals which I find most people to live, if I'm being brutally honest I don't really consider that living at all.

For the last 5 years I've handled Christmas dinner for our family. The most planning I do is ensure my food stores are full. Day of I simply look at who's showed up to my house and start cooking with what I have, completely ad hoc. Considering I've been entrusted with this for 5 years at this point indicates I'm doing something right. The idea that one would RSVP for a feast, serve specific things in specific amounts... nope. Wouldn't do that in a million years. Where's the joy? To me it always seems like a lot of pointless stress and effort for a result that doesn't actually care if people enjoy it in the moment, you just want the picturesque trope. I'm not running a restaurant here, I'm spending time with family and putting good vibes in the air. Literally nothing else matters in the slightest.

Recently went on a roadtrip with friends. The planning? When are we leaving and where are we going and for approximately how long. That's a 2 minute conversation. I wouldn't do it any other way because it's always the most fun way to do things. You're free to simply enjoy the precious moments as they come. I remember structured trips and how hollow they always felt. I'm loathe to ever go back.

Now in some things, these things can't be helped. Interaction with the medical crap, certain things with work, interacting with a bureaucracy of any kind really, especially the government. I put up with these only out of necessity. If I have the control to not have to deal with the insane, anti-human, borderline demonic nature of rigidity and structure you better believe I'm exercising that control.

People just live their lives in ways that seem to add needless mental effort and expenditure of energy. Absolutely none of this would change with a child, unless I found it to be negatively affecting them. Which isn't to say raising a child isn't a care-free experience that can be done without immense mental effort and stress. Just the idea that a household and your life must be strictly organized is more than a little cap. Is that mental effort actually doing any meaningful good? Ask yourself if your ancestors, before they developed spoken language, would give a single rat fuck about the benefit. If you can reasonably be sure they wouldn't, chances are it's not a meaningful benefit. Food? Good. Comfort? Good. Family? Good. Min max optimizing time tables and having an hour-by-hour rundown of a plan? Not my monkey, not my circus. Your ancestors are expressing concern over your furrowed brow.