Having a newborn changes your world in so many ways. Some mamas adapt overnight, while others take weeks, months or even years to feel comfortable in their new life. There are so many wonderful, amazing moments you get to experience once becoming a mum, which everyone will share. But behind closed doors, the mental load of motherhood can become exhausting.
Whether you have waited your whole life to become a stay-at-home mum or you’re a businesswoman hoping to try and have it all, you might find the mental load of your new life taking its toll. The truth is, the research is with you. The mental load of motherhood exists.
A study by Daminger (2019) investigated the idea of cognitive labour, when researching the mental load of household management. The make-up of cognitive labour includes:
- Anticipating a need
- Identification of a need
- Making a decision to fulfil the need, and
- Monitoring of the outcome
Let’s break down an example of how a mum experiences cognitive labour:
A mum knows that her son has volleyball next Tuesday and her daughter has a playdate. She identifies they will both need to be dropped off and picked up at different times and will both need dinner. She needs to decide how she’s going to be in two places and once and what she’s going to feed the kids for dinner after. She might even be trying to plan something somewhat nutritious on the side. She then has to keep this in mind and make sure her day is on track to ensure the needs of her kids are fulfilled.
Now this doesn’t sound like a complex example but now imagine this mum has another 50 needs that she knows needs fulfilling, and needs to use the same process to plan for them. It’s not starting one task at work, finishing it, then moving onto the next. A mum might have over 50 things all on the go simultaneously and needs enough mental capacity to deal with it all. Every. Single. Day.
When investigating cognitive labour duties relating to food, childcare, maintaining family scheduling, cleaning, finances, social relationships, shopping, home and car maintenance as well as leisure and travel were all included. What was highlighted in this study was that cognitive labour (i.e., the mental load of maintaining a family house) is predominately invisible to both the person conducting the work, and others. Furthermore, on average, women conduct more cognitive labour for the house and family.
So when a stay at home mum says “I’m exhausted”, its because she is. She is most likely carrying the carrying the weight of cognitive labour to care for her family. Whilst the work women (or primary care givers) do at home is unpaid, it’s no less mentally exhausting than other paid work in industry. So what is the fundamental difference? There is no salary for being a mum, there is no sick days for mum, there is no structured start and end to her day. She’s on call 24/7 and may not even have opportunities to have a lunch break. Some might say out in industry this would be called unacceptable working conditions!
Another study conducted by Robertson, Anderson, Hall and Kim (2019) also identified this invisible mental labour that is critical to family, and this mental load is very much evident in both stay-at-home and working mothers. This “invisible mental load” mothers often carry out should be recognised in order to normalise the difficulty of the work and enable mothers to see their own self-worth.
What should you take away from this?
If you’re a mama, be kind to yourself. Whether you’re a stay-at-home mum or a working mama, the work you do for your family is tiring and no matter how much you love your family, it doesn’t make it easier to hold the mental load of motherhood every day.
If you are a husband, partner or significant other, try understanding the mental load she’s carrying. Some days it might look like she’s been unproductive, but she is doing her best and acknowledging the mental load she’s carrying may just go a long way.
- the mum theory xo
References
Daminger, A. (2019). The Cognitive Dimension of Household Labor. American Sociological Review, 84(4), 609-633. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122419859007
Robertson, L,G., Anderson, T, L., Lewis Hall, M, E., & Lee Kim, C. (2019). Mothers and Mental Labor: A Phenomenological Focus Group Study of Family-Related Thinking Work. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 43(5), 184-200. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0361684319825581