The to-do list in everyday family life is long, but hardly anyone sees it: The mothers' heads turn in front of at least as many jobs to think about. The certified psychologist and mom of three Patricia Cammarata gives tips on how to reduce mental load.
by Julia Ballerstädt (Interview)
The obvious household chores – shopping, washing clothes, cooking – are just the tip of the iceberg of what mothers organize, plan, conceptualize and carry out in their heads during the day. This is called mental load. A burden that gradually comes into focus. Rightly so, because too much mental stress can make you sick. Patricia Cammarata reveals how we can reduce our mental load and how we hand over responsibility.
BARBARA.de: What is mental load anyway and what does it mean?
Patricia Cammarata: Mental load means that all processes within the family lie with one person, and that is usually the wife or mom, regardless of the actual to-dos.
That means you can even have a very good division between the parents, but the woman is always responsible for triggering or delegating processes, keeping track of them, seeing connections, and having a kind of intellectual protocol.
But why do we women always usurp these tasks to us?
That has a lot to do with socialization and the idea of role models. And that's also where you have to resolve the problem. If that is the case within the family, you can question it and then change it.
Not only will the mothers benefit from this, but also the children later?
Absolutely. We actually do this in our family with a view to our own children. To do this, we looked at what kind of tasks there were and had to find out that it is very often split between father and mother according to gender. That's why we even deliberately rotate to show the children that dad is also able to create a meal plan, buy the birthday presents and if the bike is broken, mom takes care of it too.
In this way you can have a very active influence on the next generation.
How do you really manage to give things in and, for example, let your father do the buying of presents? Many women do not trust their husbands to do this and prefer to do it themselves.
This is actually very difficult for many mothers and you simply have to learn from experience. It is important to talk in great detail beforehand about what the tasks are, but also where the expectations lie.
For example, on the subject of children's shoes: if you have been doing this as a mom for years, you have an idea of what they should be like, what they should cost and how stable they should be. If you delegate that only once and the man does it, most fathers actually come back with weird things first. But when you talk about what you expect and what the shoe should be like, you are passing on your knowledge to your partner and also a framework in which the task is meaningfully fulfilled.
In the next step, however, you have to give the partner freedom of choice. Many women have to learn that hard.
How do I even notice that my mental load is too much?
The bad thing is that a lot of women don't even notice it, because they just live and believe in this constant stress that it simply belongs as a mother. You have to look at yourself and when you realize: Wait a minute, I'm at the limit myself all the time and can barely stay afloat, you have to change something. Many women develop burnout symptoms under this constant stress, are constantly ill or simply cannot get rid of an infection. This then shows that the mental load is so high that it is simply unhealthy.
So it is not primarily about stress in the household, but actually about mental stress?
In most cases, this goes hand in hand. But with many couples who have organized their to-dos well and the partner also reliably does things, many women still feel totally stressed and unrelaxed. And then you have reached a point where you can do something.
What do you recommend then?
If you realize that this is a family issue, you should take your time and write down what you are thinking about and what you do on the side without talking about it. There really huge lists come to light, about which one is usually quite shocked because one no longer logs many points that one makes. So things like giving a change of clothes to the daycare center, buying more sunscreen or making doctor's appointments. When you see that your partner may have done this zero times in the last five years, you realize that it is quite a burden.
Do you have a few more tips on how to reduce mental load in everyday life?
1. Make a list! Who does what? Who is initiating the topic? Who always has this in mind and how much time does it take? Many male tasks occur very sporadically, something like driving the car to the MOT or changing batteries in the smoke detector is nothing compared to buying summer shoes or changing diapers every day.
2nd weekly meeting: Goes through the week in detail.
3.Retrospective! Review the last few weeks once a month: How did it go now? What was good, what wasn't? Did something take a lot more time than we estimated? Are there tasks that are incredibly annoying, such as U-appointments at the pediatrician? It takes about three minutes in your head, but in reality you have to call seven times before you can even get through. You can talk about such things in retrospect and communicate them better to the children
4. Which topics can be completely submitted? What can the partner always do from now on? Women have to learn to give up responsibility here, and it takes up to a year to overcome these mechanisms.
Should the children be involved?
When the kids are older, definitely! In this way they learn to take responsibility for their topics. For example, taking down garbage or clearing out the dishwasher. Something like that can be rotated. Sensations should also be talked about here so that there is no frustration because everyone has a different feeling, for example when the garbage has to be taken down.
Then it certainly makes sense to make a weekly plan?
Yes, definitely, because that ensures transparency and appreciation when children are involved and they know the individual steps. Then you are suddenly sitting at the dinner table and suddenly you are thanked for cooking, cleaning and shopping, because it is simply clear to everyone that there is work behind it.
Patricia Patricia Cammarata is a qualified psychologist, mother of three children and an author. She blogs on Das Nuf Advanced about compatibility and equality issues. In addition, the Berliner has already published a book and has a great weakness for digital media and the Internet.