The to-do list in everyday family life is long, but hardly anyone sees it: the mothers’ heads are spinning with at least as many tasks to think about. The qualified psychologist and mother of three Patricia Cammarata gives tips for reducing mental load.
The obvious household tasks – shopping, laundry, cooking – are just the tip of the iceberg of what mothers organize, plan, conceptualize and carry out in their heads every day. This is called mental load. A burden that is gradually coming into focus. Rightly so, because too much mental stress can make you sick. Patricia Cammarata reveals how we can reduce our mental load and hand over responsibility.
Brigitte.de: What is mental load and what does it mean?
Patricia Cammarata: Mental load means that all processes within the family lie with one person, which is usually the wife or mother, regardless of the actual to-dos.
This means that you can even have a very good division between the parents, but the woman is almost always responsible for initiating or delegating processes, for keeping track, for seeing connections, and for having a kind of mental protocol.
But why do we women always take on these tasks?
This has a lot to do with socialization and the idea of role models. And that is also the point at which you have to solve the problem. If this is the case within the family, you can question it and then change it.
Not only do the mothers benefit from this, but also the children later on?
Absolutely. We actually do this in our family with our own children in mind. We looked at what kinds of tasks there were and found that they were often divided between the parents based on gender. That’s why we even rotate on purpose to show the children that dad is also able to make a meal plan, buy birthday presents and if the bike is broken, mom will take care of it too.
This way you can have a very active influence on the next generation.
How do you really manage to give things away and, for example, let your partner buy gifts? Many women don’t 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 tasks there are, but also what the expectations are.
For example, the topic of children’s shoes: If you’ve been doing this for years as a mom, then you have an idea of what they should be like, what they cost and how stable they should be. If you delegate it just once and the man does it, most fathers actually come back with strange things at first. But if you talk about what you expect and what the shoe should be like, you are essentially passing on your knowledge to your partner and also a framework in which the task can be carried out sensibly.
In the next step you have to give your partner freedom in their choice. Many women have to learn this hard.
How do I even notice that my mental load is too much?
The bad thing is that a lot of women don’t notice this at all because that’s just how they live in this constant stress and believe that that’s just what it’s like to be a mother. You have to look at yourself and then when you realize: Wait a minute, I’m at my limit all the time and can barely keep myself afloat, you have to change something about that. Under this constant strain, many women also develop burnout symptoms, 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’s not primarily about household stress, but actually about mental stress?
In most cases these go hand in hand. But in many couples who have organized their to-dos well and whose partner also reliably gets things done, many women still feel totally burdened and un-relaxed. And then you reach a point where you can do something.
What do you recommend then?
If you notice that there is an issue in the family, you should take some time and write down what you are thinking about and what you do on the side without talking about it. Really huge lists come to light, which you are usually quite shocked about because you no longer record many of the things you do. So things like giving a change of clothes to daycare, buying more sunscreen or making doctor’s appointments. When you see that your partner has done this maybe zero times in the last five years, you realize that it’s quite a burden.
Do you have a few tips on how to reduce mental load in everyday life?
1. Make a list! Who does what? Who initiates the topic? Who always has this in their head and how much time does it take? Many men’s tasks occur very sporadically, something like driving the car to the MOT or changing the batteries in the smoke detector is nothing compared to buying summer shoes or changing diapers every day.
2nd weekly meeting: Go through the week in detail.
3.Retrospective! Once a month, review the last few weeks: How did it go now? What was good and what wasn’t? Did something take a lot more time than we estimated? Are there tasks that are incredibly annoying, like making appointments with the pediatrician? In your head you think about three minutes, but in reality you have to call seven times before you can even get through. You can then talk about such things in retrospect and communicate them better to the children
4. Which topics can be submitted completely? What can your partner always do from now on? Women have to learn to give up responsibility; it takes up to a year to overcome these mechanisms.
Should you involve the children?
If the children are older, definitely! In this way, they learn to take responsibility for their issues. For example, taking out the trash or emptying the dishwasher. You can rotate something like that. Feelings should also be discussed here so that there is no frustration because everyone has a different feeling about when, for example, the garbage has to be taken out.
Then it certainly makes sense to make a weekly plan?
Yes, definitely, because it ensures transparency and appreciation when children are involved and they know the individual steps. Then suddenly you’re sitting at the dinner table and suddenly people are thanking you for cooking, cleaning and shopping because it’s clear to everyone that there’s work involved.
Patricia Patricia Cammarata is a qualified psychologist, mother of three children and author. She blogs on The Nuf Advanced about compatibility and equality issues. In addition, the Berliner already has one Book published and has a great passion for digital media and the Internet.