In this series on how to lighten our mental load, I’ve mentioned how this weight seems to affect women more often than men. But in my research, I discovered it can truly affect everyone.
Let’s consider the stay-at-home dads. My husband performed this role for well over 18 months at one time in our marriage.
A man from “across the pond” in the United Kingdom named John Adams wrote that the mental load is real and it’s not just borne by women. He stated in a June 2017 article in The Telegraph, “I’m a man. I am the main carer for my kids and have been since 2011. It’s my wife who fulfills the traditional role of breadwinner while I do the majority of the childcare and run the household (by my own admission, with varying degrees of success).”
“Regardless of gender, we all feel a Mental Load,” Adams continued. “The burdens may differ, but we’re all under pressure and we need to explain it, understand it and deal with it. There is an unseen, unrecognized, unfair mental burden involved in running a household.”
I also mentioned single dads in my series introduction, but any single parent has certainly got to be performing a great deal of mental labor. A therapist I saw online called it the “extra plus sized mental load.” To all the single parents out there, I desperately hope you get some great tips and help from this series. I admire you more than I can adequately express in this column.
Working dads certainly have their share of a mental load. I see it with my own husband who sometimes works more than 60 hours a week. One of our dear friends, Gary, travels for work at least two or three weeks every month and is often away from his wife and daughters.
Josh Levs, a leading American expert on working dads and the author of a book called All In, says men’s invisible load has to do with mental health and stress. It’s not that men have more mental health problems than women, Levs says. But men are less open than women about mental health issues. Men are more likely to keep anxieties, stresses, and depression problems to themselves, and they are less likely than women to seek out support for those problems.
To summarize, both women and men often experience this crushing mental load. How on earth did it get so bad in recent decades that we are losing sleep and becoming more anxious and depressed? We’ll start to answer that question next week.