Women are not only ahead in planning the family’s tasks, but they also remember (and organize) those of the rest of the family members: "Did you call the pediatrician?", "Did you find out if we can take the dog or where to leave it for the vacations?", and a long list of etceteras. This leads to what is commonly referred to as "hidden mental load".
And no, my friend, women do not have a factory setup that makes them better at these tasks than men. It's not much of a mystery: these are skills that are acquired and developed with practice. There is no special female biology, which men were denied in their DNA that comes with remarkable domestic or caregiving skills (or for everything we men don't do because they supposedly do it better).
More here:
On a global level, women do 76.2% of all of the care work which is not remunerated, dedicating 3.2 times more time to these tasks than men, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
As an exercise, let’s ask ourselves: Who is researching, looking for, finding, choosing and closing the deal on a specialist, pediatrician or therapist to cover the range of needs at different stages of childhood? Who skips work when a child gets sick and can’t go to school? And why is it like this?
A good start is asking ourselves several questions:
Why does one of us do the job better than the other? Do I have a natural talent for cleaning bathrooms? Why doesn’t the other one want to learn how to do that? And what’s behind it? A lack of trust? Reproducing co-dependency conditions? A rush of territorial control?
If what I do — remunerated work or knowing everything about my children — gives me a determined role and space in a relationship, what happens if I let it go? Can I become expendable, or less desirable?
As a father, I go back to the role of son for a while and discover things about my parents. Their music, habits and upbringing. Is it harder now to be a parent than it was before?
#fatherhood
