Brrrrr, cold outside. Fit the Small the of winter boots yet? Maybe we need to buy new. I can do this tomorrow after work? Maybe it can make also the dad on Saturday. Must ask him tonight. Cheese hats any more – don’t forget, the Big just a slice of cheese to eat at the moment. Bread, milk and fruit we need. And the toilet paper was not finished?

So, the wife and mother thinks on the way to work. The sentences clog the synapses and take up space. Course, you could use the presentation to go through, or to develop a creative idea. However, since the class parents-Whatsapp beeps-group.

For this thought carousel that probably all parents know, established a new term: Mental Load. In English, “mental load”. But, the talk about it, prefer to stay with the English. The expression referred to something other than all of the unpaid activities around child care, education, household and care. It’s not about the specific tasks. The divide and delegate. In the case of Mental Load, it’s going to feel to have to deal with. But how can we share feelings?

Who goes next week for parents evening? We have the note that we got the invitation, signed up, and the daughter given? She made him the teacher? I need to look after in the Schulthek. The could never be removed again.

couples with a traditional division – he is not, or hardly, a profession works, and have less problems with the Mental Load. It is clear that he deserves the money and takes care of the Rest. Less and less families are living. “In most partnerships, there are far too few concrete agreements, and far too many implicit assumptions,” says Patricia Cammarata, a Berlin-based writer and blogger. It is in the German language is the First that has dealt with Mental Load.

Fifty-Fifty is often an Illusion

The unconscious but is unfortunately very susceptible to clichés – which is why a lot of women, the sentence “It has no more cheese” immediately responsible to feel and “cheese” on the invisible shopping list in your head to write and be upset that no one is on the drum. The Comic “Fallait demander” (“You should have asked”), the French cartoonist Emma’s Clit, the unnerved woman tries to feed the tired children and at the same time the dinner for the guests while the man is helplessly brought for Cammarata everything to the point.

He illustrated that many of the men are in the budget of hard – working assistants- if you are tasks are allocated. They see themselves as employees and their partners as managers. The Job is called the, which manages everything, Boss – and you no longer with to work on the project. In the family is often different.

A study by the sociologist Cornelia Koppetsch shows that women bear the major part of the invisible Thought and delegation to work with couples that consider themselves to be modern and equal. The researcher asks for the division of labor, to give you pride: fifty-fifty. The more Koppetsch demand, the less the Illusion can be maintained, women tended still more to find cleaners and nannies, to instruct and to pay. Men corresponded with the auto repair shop and the tax adviser. Of course, the Latter effort was: “However, in a family that’s in comparison to what is required around children and household, a little,” says Koppetsch, the Argument “But I am responsible, the car show”, often by men.

The Swiss gender researcher Franziska Schutzbach put it in the “days of week”: “fathers are often good wizard, but many are not willing to really come into the Cockpit.”

I have to pay the cleaning lady the money. I hope to have it suitable. And you say that you have to clean your back window. If our babysitter has time on a Thursday? I would like to go back to the Yoga, but he also has an appointment, I think. The hedge needs to be cut. Whether we end up in the next week to come? Or should I ask for a gardener?

The only question is whether the family plane can use two pilots. What is gained if two heads are overloaded, you care about the same things and in the evening together, completely exhausted and sinks into the Sofa? Not a lot of. The goal must be the responsibility of dividing – what is, however, much more complicated than the tasks – back and forth. Blogger Cammarata recommends Excel lists, mind-maps, weekly Meetings and a monthly retrospective.

in This case, Mental Load is just a new term for an old phenomenon: The American sociologist Arlie Hochschild described it in 1997. One of their – then-new concepts of emotional work, so all of the energy that people expend so that you and your loved one. Not surprisingly, This work is done primarily by women.

More tolerance for Chaos

So open it up yet another Tab in the Excel table, for all the feelings? And there’s always a tempered balance Mr? For some of us, Cammarata, with its tables, and lists. However, many women are exhausted, while some men think they do much. “Who wants to get out of this Dilemma out, must pack all the peas from the case to the Impfauffrischung,” says Cammarata.

responsibility is not to the left, but by the slide of individual peas, but by making certain areas completely. For example, he could take care of everything around the Kindergarten of child 1, she communicates with the school of child 2. Or he takes care of all the Medical – you of sorts for regular children’s clothes. A task such as “in the pediatrician’s office to call” sounds in the first Moment after a 30-second story. Only someone who is in the queue, I got it, what can be an annoying chunks of Mental Load.

still Remains the “But my husband never does the right thing”-Problem, in the case of the eye rolls from Koppetsch almost on the phone to hear. She recommends that all women have more tolerance for chaotic conditions. Those who did not, says the expert, a little ruthlessly, “must forever remain a housewife”. That the mother can be a task, she has done a thousand times, and the father never, first, better, is logical. If he is of the opinion that your claims are too high, it can help to define minimum standards: How high is our Budget for children’s shoes? We eat in the evening hot or cold? A Couple that really wants to get back with tolerance, discussion and, if necessary, a dotted list.

And at some point, the working mother is probably sitting in the train, in the head, once again, the presentation and gets an SMS: “Go today after the Pick up with the children of winter boots to buy. Then there’s lasagna!” A message as beautiful as a “I love you”.

(editing Tamedia)

Created: 20.03.2019, 17:51 PM