The mental load starts as the thing you can laugh about — the admin, the medal for mowing the lawn. And then, somewhere underneath it, it stops being funny. It's the sentence that comes out of your mouth before you can stop it: 'would you mind having the kids on Saturday so I can get a haircut' — asking the other parent for their own children like you're lodging annual leave with HR. It's 'they were so good while you were gone,' and knowing 'good' meant nobody got fed. It's being so tired of being the only adult in the building that you...
The mental load starts as the thing you can laugh about — the admin, the medal for mowing the lawn. And then, somewhere underneath it, it stops being funny. It's the sentence that comes out of your mouth before you can stop it: 'would you mind having the kids on Saturday so I can get a haircut' — asking the other parent for their own children like you're lodging annual leave with HR. It's 'they were so good while you were gone,' and knowing 'good' meant nobody got fed. It's being so tired of being the only adult in the building that you stop being angry and just go quiet.
This is Part 3, the last in the series, and it's the heavy one. It begins with a laugh and then it lets that laugh go. This one is for you, on your own, with your headphones in — and if you're right on the edge of exasperation today, Jane's honest recommendation is that you save this one for another day. Built entirely from what you wrote in. Support links are in the notes below.
CHAPTERS
00:00 — The last one. It starts funny, then it doesn't.
00:44 — 'I shouldn't have to book my own kids in like it's annual leave'
01:37 — Watch where the school emails go — and the 11-day anaphylaxis email
03:37 — 'It was so easy while you were gone.' Was it though?
05:41 — The 7am text from Cassie, and what Jane wrote back without thinking
07:32 — 'I'm not even angry anymore. I'm just so tired of being the only adult.'
07:46 — The nine-year-old asked to regulate himself while the 39-year-old isn't
11:33 — The question underneath all of it: are these women still with them?
12:37 — 'Supportive of what?' — when the pat on the back keeps you carrying it
14:39 — The economy of gratitude — his effort is a gift, yours is the weather
15:03 — 'He's cheaper than hiring someone' — the accounting that holds women in place
16:58 — Why this lands twice as hard on an ADHD mum — the load that has no gender, and the one that does
20:52 — Why leaving isn't the easy answer, and the thing nobody says about single-mother poverty
22:38 — This series was never mine. It was yours.
What We Cover
- The sentence so many women said comes out of their mouths and they don't know how they got there — asking the other parent to mind their own kids
- Where the pattern hides in plain sight — whose inbox the school actually emails, and the 11-day reply to an anaphylaxis email that says everything
- 'It was so easy while you were gone' — what 'good' actually meant, and where the bar for care got left
- The 7am text from a friend that Jane laughed at before she worried, and the moment it turned from a joke into something real
- The messages about children being asked to manage their emotions while a grown adult in the same house isn't — and what it costs the kid who gives up on a parent
- The question that started sitting under every message — are these women still with their partners, and if it's this hard, why do we stay?
- 'Supportive of what?' — the uncomfortable idea that the comfort itself might be the thing keeping you carrying all of it
- A sociologist's phrase you can't unhear — why his effort gets thanked and yours becomes the weather
- Why this exact load lands twice as hard on an ADHD mum — the part that has no gender, and the part that absolutely does
- The honest, un-tidy truth about why leaving isn't a clean answer — and the structural thing nobody wants to name
🆘 Support
If anything in this episode landed close to home, you don't have to sit with it alone.
1800RESPECT — national domestic, family and sexual violence counselling — 1800 737 732, or 1800respect.org.au (24/7, free, confidential).
Lifeline — 13 11 14, or lifeline.org.au (24/7 crisis support).
If you're not sure whether what you're experiencing 'counts,' you can still call. They will talk it through with you.
Free Resources
Household Family Meeting Template — for the 'hand over a whole job, not a favour' conversation this episode is really about — https://adhdmums.com.au/product/adhd-household-family-meeting-template/
Related Episodes
The Admin Husband: 'Do We Have Parmesan?' — Part 1 —
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/mental-load-do-we-have-parmesan-cheese-he-was-standing/id1686843092?i=1000777917338
The Gold Medal Husband: 'Did You See the Lawn?' — Part 2
https://adhdmums.com.au/adhd-podcast-episodes/mental-load-he-mowed-the-lawn-once-and-wanted-to-know-if-you-saw-it/
I Love My Family… But I'm So F**king Angry (Mum Rage Part 1) — S2 EP84 — https://adhdmums.com.au/podcast_episode/episode-84-i-love-my-family-but-im-so-fking-angry-mum-rage-part-1/
What We Wish Our Partners Knew About the Mental Load — And How to Truly Support Us — S2 EP75 — https://adhdmums.com.au/podcast_episode/episode-75-what-we-wish-our-partners-knew-about-the-mental-load-and-how-to-truly-support-us/
References & Further Reading
Hochschild, A. R. (1989). The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home. Viking.
(The 'economy of gratitude' Jane cites — whose effort reads as a gift to be thanked, and whose reads as the background running of the house.)
Also relevant — the cognitive/mental load framework underpinning the whole series:
Daminger, A. (2019). The Cognitive Dimension of Household Labor. American Sociological Review, 84(4), 609–633. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122419859007
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