It’s 11:30 p.m. and my house is quiet for the night. My husband and kids are sleeping, and I’m watching annoying people sell expensive real estate to other annoying people on TV. While I watch and wonder when wearing sky-high stilettos became a requirement to sell houses, I finish signing up my youngest for a summer gymnastics camp. I add the dates of that camp to the calendar on my phone and the paper calendar that keeps track of all the sports, camps, and activities the kids will do in the next six months.
I make another note to send the school soccer coach an email about when summer practice will be for my son and write "new cleats" on my list of things we need to shop for in the next few weeks. While the women on the TV screen talk about Botox and boob jobs (OK, fine, I admit it, I can't stop hate watching Selling Sunset), I check my email again and pay a few of the bills sitting in my in-box.
When my show is over, I’ll get ready for bed. I’ll brush my teeth, do the multistep skin care routine that I don’t fully understand, and grab a cleaning rag and quickly give the bathroom sink and counters a wipe down. I’ll go to bed having checked three more things off my to-do list and not a single person in my house will notice.
Although my husband and I are equal partners in many ways (shout-out to him for being 100% in charge of the laundry and dishes), there is no denying that I, like a lot of moms, am doing a lot of invisible labor.
I’m the one who handles the RSVPs and gift buying for birthday parties. I’m the one finding options and signing up kids for sports. I’m usually the one tracking who needs new shoes, which kid just had a growth spurt that turned all her shorts into hot pants, making the appointments for well-child visits, and knowing when we’re about to get the passive aggressive “We miss you!" card from the dentist’s office. I’m also the person who pays the bills, does the taxes, and manages our money for the short-term and the long-term.
Even though countless articles and essays have been written about the challenges that come with carrying the mental load for a family, the truth is that I do some of this work because I want to and it feels satisfying. For example, money management is my jam and I’m way too anxious about money to let someone else be in charge of it. Some of the invisible labor I do because it needs to get done, and, frankly, if I don’t do it or delegate it, it won’t get done.
Sometimes delegating feels like just another job I have to do.
Though my family will step up without too much complaining when I do delegate tasks such as dusting or cleaning the bathroom counters, sometimes it feels like it is just faster and easier to do the damn thing myself. For me, this is part of the crux of the invisible labor problem. I’m good at this stuff. I love a to-do or shopping list. I want my kids to have clothes that fit and activities to do and I want to make sure our money situation is handled.
I’m efficient and not especially great at relaxing, which is an ideal combo for accidentally ending up in charge of whole chunks of my family’s day-to-day life without anyone realizing or acknowledging it. I’ve recently begun to realize that I’m actually doing my kids a major disservice by being so good at getting so much stuff done.
I'm trying to make sure I’m raising good humans, so I’ve got to start showing them the invisible labor.
I have a son and a daughter, and I want both of them to grow up to be fully functional adults, capable of taking care of themselves and (someday) being good partners if they want to be. Part of how I train them to be good adults is to make sure that they actually know what it takes to make a household run. I also want them to be able to see and value the unpaid labor that people (often women) do to take care of the people they love.
So I’ve started working harder to make the invisible visible.
My first step was to hang a family calendar on the fridge so everyone can see how busy we are and that the knowledge of when the next game, birthday party, or dentist appointment isn’t a secret kept by the calendar on my phone. Having the calendar front and center has also helped make sure that my husband and I are dividing up the labor when it comes to getting kids to where they need to go and that we are all having conversations about how busy or chill our next week might look.
I also lowered and raised some expectations.
I made a list of household chores that my kids, at ages 10 and 13, are capable of doing. Now when I tell them that they need to do a chore on the weekend, they can choose one from the list. The list is long, which is also part of the point. There is always something to do, always a way they can help.
Does this mean that the bathroom sink isn’t as clean as it might be if I cleaned it or that the shelves aren’t perfectly dust-free even after someone has dusted? Yep. But perfect is the enemy of good, and my kids can’t get better at this stuff if I don’t give them chances to practice.
Invisible labor and carrying the mental load alone isn’t good for anyone.
I grew up in a family where money was a constant source of tension and where my parents struggled to make ends meet. We never talked about managing money, just about how little money there was to manage. I had to learn how to manage money on my own, and there was a lot of trial and error and anxiety around finances.
I’m in a stable financial situation now, but I’m still hypervigilant about money management. I don’t want to delegate money tasks to anyone else (nor do I think my 10-year-old has really developed investment strategies yet).
But I do want my kids to know that money is something we can talk about, something that requires some regular attention, and something that they can watch me do. So I pay bills and do the taxes at the dining room table during the day and not at my desk once everyone is in bed.
These changes may not seem revolutionary, but they are making me feel more seen.
Do I still have more to-do list than time? Sure. And I’m still probably doing some kinds of invisible labor that nobody but me really appreciates, but I’m finding myself feeling less frustrated by it all.
The increased visibility means I’ve gotten more help, more thank-yous, and more questions about how this whole adulting thing works from my kids. All of that makes the mental load feel a little bit lighter.
