Women gained access to careers, but caring and household expectations didn’t quite redistribute at the same rate, did they?
As well as traditionally taking on more of the responsibility for raising children (which Clinical psychologist Natasha Wallace talks about in this BBC article), we’re often also the ones keeping track of what is in the fridge, thinking about tonight’s tea, keeping the snack cupboard stocked, thinking about Christmas presents once the birthday presents and parties have been cleared away, monitoring any sickness, knowing when world book day is, rushing to Tesco at 6:34am because they have just announced they have cooking TODAY and need some obscure ingredient, ordering endless uniform options, returning endless uniform options because ‘not the right shade of black’, managing appointments to coincide with holiday / after school clubs, traffic, annual leave, managing Michelle in the school Whatsapp group who’s kicking off about Oreo’s again – Oreogate! And so on.
There’s always that feeling of having something to remember, organise or worry about. While Dads – at best – are looking for their clean pants.
I jest, and this blog is not intended to be a bashing for any sex, I know there are many Dads out there who are sharing the load magnificently, but I also know there are many women who will read this blog and think ‘she’s talking about me’.
In this blog I refer to the added stresses of raising children alongside work and life, but please, don’t for one second feel like I am dismissing life’s pulls for those without children. Life doesn’t quite work out perfectly for many of us, including those without children. Perhaps you have chronic health issues, ageing parents, housework, relationships, life admin, money, or all of it. I understand. I get it. I hear you and I see you!
We’re carrying so much
Even if you have a supportive partner there are still things that naturally fall on the mother without anyone thinking anything of it, we don’t say anything – not fear, but because :
- we know we’ll probably do it quicker ourselves,
- it’s just a natural instinct to get it done, or
- we’ll still carry the mental load cus the bugger needs reminding.
Things like keeping a shopping list are one example. You know you don’t need toilet rolls for a few more shops, but if you left remembering to your partner you’d be using newspaper.
‘…remembering school trips, checking for updates in parents’ WhatsApp groups, noticing which parts of the house need cleaning, monitoring how much sleep children get, scheduling doctors’ appointments and buying school uniforms.
According to academics, this is work that in heterosexual couples disproportionately falls to women – particularly mothers – alongside the bulk of physical household labour.
All relationships and households are different, of course, but studies suggest clear patterns.’ (source: BBC)
At the extreme, it can sometimes feel like you’re a ‘married single mum’ if you’re doing everything AND you want a career – how selfish of you! I was a ‘married single mum’ for the first four years of my daughter’s life – her Dad was not at all hands on unless there was an audience. In fact, the day he brought us home from hospital he dropped us off and went to the driving range. I remember once trying to throw the iron at him after he walked in from work and said ‘Where’s tea? You’ve had all day to iron my shirts, why are you doing it now?’. Lucky for him the iron was still plugged in. Anyway, I left him when she was four and for the next 11 years I was an actual single parent.
So, I’d known no different. It all fell on me anyway.
Women deserve more without paying mentally and physically.
I didn’t realise that my sense of not coping as a working mum, every single day, wasn’t because I was incompetent as a mother, it was because of the mental load.
I wanted to work. I didn’t really have much choice to be honest because I wanted to keep my house (not his, I didn’t take his!). But the juggle was, on reflection, too much.
It’s a daily battle of trying to make work fit around our children, our hobbies, our personal lives, life in general, and / or the things that bring us joy (the odd beauty treatment, massage, or weekend away). But we constantly have that pushback that we can’t change, work has to be there, in fact we don’t even consider the immense pressure work is putting on our lives until it stops.
Day 3 of a 7 day holiday is when you feel it, right? Freedom, a clearer mind.
But then… it returns. That feeling of dread, that feeling in your tummy that something awful is going to happen – and you’re right, you’ve got to go back to bloody work. Life is hectic once again. Overwhelming. Why can’t your employers make you redundant and pay you £1 million? WHY ARE THEY SO SELFISH?
But it’s not just mentally exhausting, is it? It’s physically exhausting too, right?
Is a career and being a Mum possible?
Many women want to be ‘mum+’, and that’s just as fantastic as wanting to be a full time mum. We all find our purpose and identities in different places, but what we don’t all have is a choice, the freedom to live life as we choose, in a way that doesn’t make life difficult, hard or stressful – one where you can enjoy those precious experiences we’ll never get back.
An identity outside motherhood. Financial independence. Adult interaction. Something you’re building. Something you enjoy. Something to talk about that isn’t how embarrassing it was that Jacob chalked a drawing of a willy on the blackboard in the butchers when you were paying for the corned beef.
And we can have it. It’s available in the form of employment – or so we’re led to believe.
Employment has its own rules about where we need to be, at what time, when we can leave, when we can have time off, when / where we can eat, how hot / how cold we’ll be because the air con has packed up for the seventeenth time this week.
But we’re limited on what we can do if we want to work around school hours and holidays. Probably something that just scrapes the minimum wage.
Or we can of course work full time, but then half of our earnings – if not more – go to childcare, after school clubs, holiday clubs, and then all of that ‘purpose’ you were looking for in a career is eaten up, chewed up and eaten again by the enormous mum guilt, right?
But then we’re also carrying ‘work guilt’. Because….
If your child is sick who is the one most likely to be staying home to care for them?
School holidays need to change!
And another thing! School holidays need to change. I mean, come on, they were originally largely created to align with agricultural needs when most women’s ‘occupations’ were listed on the 1921 census as ‘Home duties’.
Single women and widows made up the vast majority of the female workforce. Only about 10% to 14% of married women were formally employed, as society heavily pressured married women to return to “Home Duties” following World War I. Around 49% of all women aged 15 to 60 listed their primary status as “Home Duties”. (Source: The University of Cambridge)
That doesn’t represent life today, and farming no longer drives the economy like it once did. But the school holidays and term structure are still in place.
The UK school holiday structure does not work in modern day. Aside from the fact it gives children zero understanding of what working will be like in the future – and why working is such a massive shock for us all – children get around 13 weeks off in a school year. Full time employees get 5.6 weeks holiday.
The maths ain’t mathing, is it?
Pregnant then Screwed found that during summer holidays, 1 in 3 mums reduced their hours, and 1 in 20 (5%) had to leave work entirely.
Reduced hours = less money into the family home at a time when more money is actually needed – albeit mainly for snacks, but also days out, and mundane things we don’t always consider like increased utility bills as more people are at home during the day. And if you leave work entirely the pressure on the family finances would be astronomical, the pressure on the other working adult in the house would be mentally hard too. Imagine if they wanted a sabbatical, time off for mental health, got made redundant. Christ, I feel stressed just thinking about it.
But what can we do? We can’t change the school holiday structure, we can’t find a harmonious balance of carrying the mental load overnight. How can we protect ourselves from this huge load we’re carrying, and be able to enjoy life?
If work revolved around life
I often wonder how different those years would have been if I’d known there was another way.
If only you could control your working day, the hours you work and not be devalued by the minimum wage.
If only that seesaw you’re constantly trying to balance didn’t become heavier on one side when the school mums’ WhatsApp group invites everyone to a birthday party, and you have to add present buying to your to-do list.
If only you didn’t need to take a day off unpaid because the school just phoned to say Jacob has once again drawn a willy on his brother’s forehead with a permanent Sharpie and both need to go home.
If only you could laugh when your child remembers at 8pm that it’s ‘dress up as a centipede day’ tomorrow. Okay, that’ll never be funny!
You’re not alone. You’re not failing. You’re not incompetent. You’re not doing anything wrong. In fact, you’re so normal there’s a whole article on why it’s so bloody overwhelming. ‘Why more women carry the ‘mental load’ – BBC. It’s a good read and was my inspiration for this blog.
The job I didn’t know existed: Virtual Assistant
Imagine if the skills you have could actually lead you to a life that’s less overwhelming.
One where you set the hours, the days and your own income ceiling.
One where you answer to no one (except HMRC).
Life is what you hoped it would be when you were that hormonal teenager who was fed up with not being able to do exactly what you wanted – despite having zero life experience.
Back in 2015 I had had enough. I couldn’t do it all anymore.
I decided to use the skills I had from working for 20+ years, and no doubt many skills I had acquired managing a home, child and life in general, and became a Virtual Assistant
A Virtual Assistant is a self employed business owner who supports other self employed business owners with various tasks and services
I don’t think we should ever have regrets in life because we make decisions in the moment based on how our life is at that moment. But, I do wish I’d found this way of working a long time before 2015.
I genuinely didn’t know there was another option.
If I’d known then that I could build a business from the skills I already had, work from home, choose the hours I want / need to work, and eventually earn more than I ever could in employment, I wonder how different those years might have felt.
It would’ve taken so much pressure off us both – my daughter and I.
I’m not telling every overwhelmed woman to become a Virtual Assistant and quit employment, but it’s worth exploring to see if it could mean life is less heavy, right?
→ Download my free ‘90+ Services You Can Offer as a Virtual Assistant’ guide and see all the services you could offer as a VA – oh, and by the way – we charge and get £35 an hour!
How life could’ve been different
- Being able to do the school run every day.
- Not having to ask permission for a hospital appointment.
- Being there when your child is ill.
- Doing some work at 7pm because you chose to read with your child so that they’re not behind their peers and can move on to the books with the red stickers!
- Being able to earn without every hour of your life being dictated by somebody else’s schedule.
- Less mum guilt.
- More time for fun with my daughter.
Will becoming a Virtual Assistant solve everything?
No. Self-employment brings different responsibilities. I’m not promising you a life where you can work one hour a day and be a six-figure boss babe with more volume in your hair than Beyonce. But it does give you more control over where the pressure lands.
Obviously we still have to remember the new colour PE kit for year 10, but it makes it a damn sight easier because you’ve got more time, less guilt, and you’re thinking about less people.
I just want to reiterate, I am in no way saying men aren’t doing enough, or that they are letting people down, there are many men who – as I said above – are doing their lion’s share of everything and the mental load is shared, and we can’t entirely blame those who don’t because almost none have seen it done when they were growing up. Let’s hope the next generation can break it down.