The Mental Load of Motherhood
“MENTAL LOAD”: the total sum of responsibilities that you take on to manage “the remembering of things.” also know as remembering every little thing for everyone even though you hardly will get a thank you; see “invisible worker” and “emotional labor”
Since my first child was born nine years ago, being a mother has become one of the prime tenants of my identity, primarily due to its status of forever putting another human being before myself. I have chosen and crafted a form of mothering that is inherently child centric, one in which I hope my children will later describe as hands-on, participatory, dependable and selfless (and, yes, I will be annoyed if they don’t). But I simultaneously want to ensure, unlike The Giving Tree, I don’t end up giving up so much of myself that there isn’t “anything left” when my kids are ready to begin on their path of independent adulthood. And that “anything left” applies in every direction: my career, my body, my personal goals, my friendships and the relationship with my partner.
While motherhood, for me, has been a magical experience in the good moments, it is also been the job I feel no matter what, I'm somehow still failing at in some capacity. My never ending to-do list often feels like death by a thousand paper cuts of things a mother is meant to remember (which some argue is a process that often begins at the start of heterosexual marriage, with the woman tasked to remember everything from family birthdays to running extra errands and managing the couple’s social calendar). It is the sensation that no matter how on my shit I am, something always falls through the cracks---as if the 1,000 other plates I do keep spinning are invisible to everyone in my family but me.
Academics and social scientists have put words to these aftershocks and reverberations of modern motherhood, with phrases like "mental load” and "emotional labor," which for most of us we will recognize in the soulfully exhausting feeling of having the existential weight of the world on our maternal shoulders. It’s not surprising that terms such as “postnatal depletion,” “second shift,” “motherwhelmed” are becoming key and defining phrases for a generation of mothers.
Many modern mothers feel they are judged not just for what they do, don’t do, don’t do “perfectly” but also for the million things they didn’t even know about---when it comes to our children, pleading ignorance of any of the many things that can negatively impact our children mentally, physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually is maternal suicide. The mental load can be so heavy it’s paralyzing.
As a mother I profoundly identify with this oppressive form of pressure and anxiety about my responsibilities in this role—which is important to note, a role I proactively chose. Words like "anxiety" and "failing" are far from words of female empowerment that I want for myself or that I want to model for my children. Yet it is this ever-present feeling that, for me, as both a mother and anthropologist, defines modern motherhood --- and last I checked this feeling doesn't make most women in the mood for sex.
These feelings have made me ponder: If generations of mothers sincerely felt like motherhood was so UNRELENTING (yes, it’s an all caps kind of feeling), how and why has our species continued? Is motherhood some kind of cover up or sadistic pyramid scheme? Instead, I have to believe our foremothers weren’t in on some sinister inside joke --- perhaps they actually experienced motherhood differently, and by extension motherhood today is a whole new beast—one that is tremendously impacting modern mothers experience of matrescence as well as their relationship with sex.
While it’s not to imply that motherhood in other time periods was a cake walk – we all know the experience of motherhood is profoundly shaped through economics, resources, security and freedoms--- what could it be, anthropologically speaking, that is making motherhood in this very moment in history unlike motherhood in any other time? And why is this version of motherhood having such a profound impact on women's happiness and mental health? And why is modern motherhood, despite feminist beliefs held by so many, so often in combatance with a woman's sense of self, sexuality identity and/or sexual satisfaction?
It is these very questions and their answers that are the heart of the mama sex revolution.
