In today’s episode, sociology professor Allison Daminger joins me for a fascinating discussion about mental load, division of labor, and the role of planning! She answers three great questions from listeners, tackling challenging questions about a partner not interested in long-range planning, a partner with little predictability to his job, and a partner with ADHD.
Find more from Allison and her book, The Mental Workload of Family Life, at her website, and she can also be found on substack.
Submit your questions for Allison in the comments here — she has graciously agreed to stop by and answer!
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16 Comments
Hmm, this is something I definitely struggle with and I think most women I know do. The questions in the episode to me were primarily situations where the partner maybe “can’t” engage as much as would be optimal, due to work limitations or neurodivergence.
However, I’d love to hear more about what I feel is maybe MORE common… which is where the partner just simply DOESN’T carry a similar mental load mostly because it’s just easier for him not to/he doesn’t want to!! In our case, my husband does a lot of certain things, so I’m not trying to claim he doesn’t help at home. But he is very, VERY poor at “noticing” things that need to be done (i.e. mental load!). He also sometimes seems to have an unrealistic expectation of how much “free time” a working parent (without paid household help) can actually have. (Reality is, it takes time to keep up a family and a house, esp without paid help!! And sometimes he seems to resist this reality… which is…. not really an option!)
A couple of challenges here include: a) differing opinions on how much some things matter (current real life example- I notice that our deck paint is chipping and needs to be touched up (before it gets worse and turns into a bigger problem! He apparently does not see this, or, if he does, is okay with just ignoring it indefinitely….which then subsequently drives me crazy and does not seem like a legitimate option.) b) partner doesn’t seem to have great sense of what’s coming up (e.g. if we have a free weekend this weekend, but the next 2 weekends we’ll be on vacation and then after that his mom is coming, then THIS WEEKEND is not the weekend to just lay around and relax (or at least not the entire weekend!)… this weekend should probably be used to take care of some tasks in advance of the upcoming unavailable weekends…)
Probably the answer lies in being better about doing more joint planning so things are more visible, but sometimes it feels like then I have to plan even more to plan with him… if that makes sense..(like it’s another thing to do!!).
I agree, Kae, the questions Sarah and I covered were not the most common scenarios I see in my research! Much more often, it looks like what you’re describing. You’re not alone! I wrote a little bit about the “he doesn’t see it” challenge here: https://allisondaminger.substack.com/p/hell-never-see-it-4aa
I also agree that the work of “educating” your partner is hard in itself. Unfortunately, I don’t know that there’s a way to circumvent that. Step one usually has to be something like the partner who’s doing too much telling the other partner how much she’s holding and how it’s impacting her.
Assuming your partner doesn’t want you to be overwhelmed (and in some cases, that’s a big if), I think the next step is picking a few tasks or areas of life to start experimenting with. Maybe household maintenance is one of them. You could agree that he’s going to take on not just the work of fixing things that need updating, but also the initial noticing. Then he would have to come up with a system that works for him to actually stay on top of it: maybe he has a phone reminder to survey the exterior of the house once a month, etc. And then (this is the hard part for me), you have to be disciplined about not saying anything about what you notice (unless it’s really an emergency). That’s why it’s helpful to pick areas to start with that you aren’t super passionate about!
Another way I’ve seen people handle this is to say, look, I’m never going to NOT notice, and he’s unlikely to start noticing. What they do instead is to make sure to “count” the noticing she’s doing as a contribution she’s making to the household, and then try and offset it by having him responsible for more of the physical chores, or more of the research and follow-up parts of the mental load.
I could go on at length about this, but I’ll cut myself off here 🙂
I’m curious how you would recommend teaching kids how to notice things. I feel like this is very gendered, but I also realize that my spouse (who is a stay at home dad) doesn’t notice clutter the way i do…as a result, neither do my kids! What is the process of helping kids notice what there is to be done, how to plan for it.
I’ve heard of sitting down at the beginning of the week with everyone and talking through the plan(s). But the clutter/cleaning/clearing scheduling is hard
Love this question! I think there’s SOO much value to focusing on how we raise the next generation. I can’t personally vouch for this, but I’ve heard positive things about Sam Kelly’s materials: https://hellosamkelly.com/littlecyclebreakers
She breaks down the idea of “noticing” as separate from “doing” in kid-friendly language
I interviewed Sam for BOBW! https://lauravanderkam.com/2024/11/best-of-both-worlds-podcast-lighten-your-mental-load/
I want to ask a question that’s kind of on the flip side of the ones above. Is there some real worth to just “not noticing” or not being bothered by, certain things, and is it possible to learn to notice LESS? Like…sometimes it feels like life would be so much easier if I could just sit down and work in a messy house and not care (still plan to get to it later! But not feel like it’s priority number one and is distracting me from all else, if that makes sense.)
Fair point! For myself, I try to separate out the things I’m noticing because *I* actually care about them from those where I’m noticing because I think I *should* care or because I think others will judge me. One of the reasons I find that women do so much more noticing/mental load work is that they are much more likely to be judged and held responsible for domestic/family outcomes. Men don’t need to care as much, because they’re less likely to be criticized when, say, the house isn’t clean or the kids don’t have matching socks on, or whatever.
When I ask myself if this is something I’m worrying about because I value it, the answer is sometimes yes (like, I think it’s important to not have dishes back up in the sink because it starts to smell and is harder to cook/makes the cooking process less fun for me) and sometimes no (I have a hairy dog, and there are furballs everywhere, but it just doesn’t bother me enough to vacuum more often!).
One of the things I’ve been taught to do for my neurodiverse child is to “spotlight” the thing I want her to notice. Rather than telling her to do something, I highlight the issue and leave room for her to problem solve how to address it. Like if she takes her shoes off and tosses them on the floor rather than put them away I would say “oh, the shoes are in the middle of the floor! Someone might trip and fall on them.” Or if she’s pulled out every toy and wants to pull out another I’d say “Oh! I would love to play with you but I don’t know where we can play. There isn’t any room with all the other toys out.” For my kid (who has intellectual disabilities) it’s definitely an attempt to build her problem solving skills and her autonomy, but I tell you, I have used this approach on neurotypical kids and it works on them too (at least for the under 7 crowd). They say things like “Why are you talking to me like I’m Simone??” But they will often still focus on the thing I’m spotlighting and reach their own (correct) conclusion about what they should do.
ooh I really like this!!
Whoops! This was supposed to be a reply to RJ’s comment above!
Great guest! I subscribe to Allison’s substack and highly recommend it!
I sympathize with the first question asker (B). My husband is not a long range planner. I have had to accept that some convos won’t be had with him, like ‘where will we live when we retire?’ He can’t get past all the ways our lives might change between now and then and it’s not something he enjoys discussing so we just don’t. But we did meet with a financial advisor to see when we might retire since that is a more quantitative exercise and he could get on board with that. Planning vacations is tricky because he has a lower desire to travel with young kids and he doesn’t like planning so far out in the future so I try to bring up vacation plans at a point where we could realistically look at/book flights and accommodations. But if I could design him in a lab (lol), he’d be as game for talking about future travel plans as I am!
Thanks, Lisa, I’m so glad you like it!
Lol, if only we could design spouses in the lab…(mostly) kidding, I’m sure that would be less interesting
Same! I’m married to someone who doesn’t like to plan ahead and wants to keep everything open-ended and I am not that person. On Myers Briggs I’m a J and he is definitely a P.
Can you share the name of the planner you mentioned Allison? Thanks!
Sure! It’s a Moglea Weekly plan: https://moglea.com/collections/undated-planners
I have the Sol but they’re all really beautiful
Thank you for this excellent and thought-provoking interview! Allison mentioned that men in professional positions, such as project managers, are often less interested or willing to engage in planning at home. Can you offer any explanations for this? Is this topic in your new book, or covered on your website?