The Mental Load of Christmas
Can we talk about the mental load of Christmas holidays for a second? Too bad if you answered no because I’m going too anyway.
By mental load I’m talking about the emotional labour typically taken on by the women in most situations. Societally gendered as “womens work”, emotional labour is the “work of caring”. I’ll get specific here because I am sure a lot of women are going to relate in some way to the details I give.
My whole family is currently two hours away from home at the coast - Mum and Dad, six children, five partners and two grandkids. We’re all fit into one house to celebrate Christmas together, but what is overwhelmingly apparent is that in all relationships in our family, the mental load is taken on by the women.
The males of the family are enjoying their holiday - boating in the morning, beers in the afternoon, and either the pub or relaxing in the theatre room in the evening. What a life to live. What have we been doing during this time? Serving up three meals per day, keeping children entertained (and away from the stairs and edge of the balcony), washing the clothes, the food shopping, the cleaning up etc. Add Christmas on top of that and we’re also wrapping presents, buying last minute presents, organising the food for a Christmas feast, is there an even amount of presents for everyone? Did everyone purchase their Secret Santa present?
While the males are downstairs, the females are upstairs living a life very similar to that of which we live at home. Holiday, what holiday? It’s the same shit in a different location.
Christmas is great - if you’re a kid or a male. For us as women, it’s another day with a whole lot of added pressure and stress.
In 2022 the Australian Bureau of Statistics released an article called “Females do more unpaid work, males do more paid work” with it’s findings from a survey entitled the Time Use Survey, it revealed “On average, females spent 4 hours and 31 minutes a day doing unpaid work activities. Males spent over an hour less on these activities, averaging 3 hours and 12 minutes a day.”
Roy Morgan released findings in May 2023 that found “women living with children spend over 35 hours per week doing unpaid domestic work,” and that “the gender gap in undertaking unpaid domestic work is evident in couples, and felt more strongly by women.”
In a world where we do a lot of work to make things more equal between men and women, is this one place we are not excelling?
In the 50’s it was common that women would stay at home and take care of the house and the children, and the man would go out, work and bring in the money. But we’re not in the 50’s anymore, women and men are both working and yet the mental load is still placed on the women. Why? Why have we not moved on from the mentality that women do the “care work”, but we’ve added more on top of that load. Seem’s fair right?
Let me tell you a little bit more about the mental load in my house. My partner works on a farm meaning the hours are all over the place depending on the work that needs to be done at that specific time. Usually, he’ll go to work at 7:00am, come home at 4:30pm. I have more flexible hours being that I own my own business, but usually I go into the office at 9:00am and leave at 5:00pm. I’ll also come home between 1:00pm and 3:00pm so our toddler can have a sleep as he comes into the office with me. More often than not, he is with me all day, every day.
Who does the grocery shopping? Me.
Who does the cooking? Me.
Who does the washing up? Me.
Who does the house admin? Me.
Who keeps the family organised? Me.
Who does the laundry? Me.
Who does whatever he wants, whenever he wants? My partner.
And I am not alone. This is the reality of women everywhere. This is not me shitting on my partner, or anyone elses partner - it is me highlighting the imbalance in relationships. We’re fed up, but how many times can we ask for the weight to be shifted to become a little more evenly distributed?
Some households have this incredible dynamic where both partners take an equal share of the load. They have their shit sorted. They have got it together. Their partner doesn’t require praise for doing simple tasks like the dishes or chucking a load of washing on. They are what I aspire to be like, they are on my vision board for 2023.
I’ll be doing everything I can to ensure that my son’s future partner, be it a man or women, doesn’t take more than her fair share of the load. My toddler will be raised to know that these things aren’t reserved for women to do, they aren’t a “womens job”. They are jobs and tasks to be shared. He will learn to carry his own weight.
