Gap Mum
My days of secrecy are numbered
It’s known as the “mental load” – the burden of remembering, and usually executing as well, the myriad tasks required to keep a household ticking over. In many cases, the mental load is shouldered by the woman of the house, no matter how busy a paying job she might also have.
But according to the head of a leading girls’ school, it shouldn’t be so. Vicky Bingham, head teacher at South Hampstead High School, has urged women to loosen their grip on the household, not only to stop “infantilising” their husbands and propagating the myth of male domestic ineptitude, but to prove to their daughters they do not have to be perfect at everything.
She told the London Evening Standard: “I have known friends leave instructions for their husbands on ‘Looking after the children’ when they have been away on business. I have listened to them lament apparently having to micro-manage decisions about coats, socks, carrot batons, baths and homework, on top of very demanding jobs.
“Even if fathers are shouldering their fair share of chores, it seems that many women of my generation still carry the mental load, and believe that if they didn’t the household would fall apart.”
If you read the last sentence and thought to yourself, “Well, it would”, there’s a good chance you’re struggling under the weight of the mental load yourself. Here are eight ways to tell:
1. You issue battle plans in your absence
You’re going out for the evening so won’t be there to project-manage dinner. Instead of just leaving your partner to sort it out, you issue him with something akin to a military battle plan. This might be verbal
(in which case you’ll worry he’s not paying attention to all the details), or you might take no chances and write it down. It will include instructions such as “use the older of the two Cheddars, the one on the left hand side of the fridge on the second shelf with the slightly torn packet. Call me if you’re not sure.” Because you’d genuinely rather have your evening interrupted with a cheese-related query than risk leaving him to make his own mistakes.
2. Even when you delegate, you still keep tabs
You delegate certain tasks you find too tedious – emptying the compost bin (you tell yourself he enjoys that one), getting the car MOT’D, changing light bulbs – but you still keep tabs on these jobs from afar and check in from time to time to see how they’re progressing.
3. You take a perverse pleasure in stepping in
If he fails to perform one of his delegated tasks (see above), you take a grim pleasure in carrying it out yourself while sighing heavily and pointing out that he only had “one job”.
4. Chaos is held at bay with to-do lists
You make long to-do lists and spend much of your spare time working through them. When you notice that in the period of time you have spent paying a utility bill, booking train tickets for a family trip, filling in a school application form and checking your children’s homework, your partner has been quietly watching a football game with a beer in his hand, you say nothing, but chalk it up to use against him in future.
5. You can’t bear to let go
You could let him be in charge of the supermarket shop once in a while, including writing the weekly meal plan and shopping list, but the thought of handing over control brings you out in a cold sweat. What if he buys the wrong sort of eggs? What if he doesn’t buy enough food? What if he buys too much and it all goes bad before you’ve had a chance to eat it? What if you end up eating ready-made pizzas every night? The risks are too great; far safer to do it yourself.
6. Your instructions are long and complex
If for any reason you do have to entrust the shopping to him, you will write the list yourself and it will include endless annotations. It will say things like “cream cheese – the full fat kind, don’t get the ‘light’ one, I need it for making pâté”. He will come back with the wrong cream cheese and tell you he couldn’t read your writing. You’ll resolve never to let him near the cream cheese aisle again.
7. All arrangements are made through you
Your partner will ask you: “What are we doing this weekend?” You will never ask him this question because you manage the family diary, whereas he doesn’t even know there is a family diary. Not only this, but he often doesn’t know a social arrangement has been made until he’s in the process of attending it. Weirdly, this doesn’t seem to bother him.
8. You are holiday-planner extraordinaire
The thought of handing over the weekly shop brings you out in a cold sweat
When it comes to planning holidays, you will draw up a list of options before presenting them to your partner and asking his opinion. If he chooses the one you were least keen on and ignores the one you had your heart set on, you’ll explain why the more expensive villa would actually represent a cost-saving in the long-run and then quietly book it anyway.