How to juggle the mental load and share the burden - The Little Things

Dr Robyn Miller is fighting to ease the burdens placed on mums as a biological default. Photo / Getty

For the past five years, Dr Robyn Miller and The Mental Load Project have been advocating for a shift in how heterosexual relationships share the mental burden of living together and raising children.

The project’s ethos is perhaps best summed up in a line pinned to the top of their Instagram feed: “The ability to carry the Mental Load does not come pre-installed in the vagina”.

Speaking to The Little Things, the NZ Herald’s women’s health and wellbeing podcast, Miller said that the mental load - being the one to organise the house, the children and often the partner - has been ingrained in women for generations, and has not shifted even as more women enter the paid workforce.

“We’ve grown up watching our mothers be the ones who remember to buy the toothpaste or organise the family Christmas presents or organise what’s happening on school holidays.

“So girls from a very young age are trained that that is sort of their domain. And then the research shows that as soon as you start living with a male partner, you do take on that responsibility of being the one to RSVP to the combined wedding you’re invited to or work out what the dress code is for that event that you’re going to.

And just all of that mental load behind the scenes that really could be done by either partner and no one is, like, genetically or biologically better at doing it, but we form these patterns so that we become “better” at it. And then the expectation is that we’ll keep doing it.”

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A post shared by Dr Robyn | Mental Load Strategist (@mentalloadproject)

Miller set up the project five years ago, after she had her eldest daughter and started to notice that a gap had opened up between her and her husband. She told The Little Things that they had graduated school together and were advancing on their careers at the same rate until she became pregnant, and then noticed a shift in terms of domestic work.

“For me, it was definitely that idea that I couldn’t progress my career in the same way or have the same opportunities as my husband if that wasn’t fairly shared. If I had this amount of brain space that was always taken up with organising the next thing for the household when he just had that as kind of free brain space to concentrate on whatever project he had to think about at work, and I had that much headspace that was just devoted to all of the little menial tasks in our family.”

However, Miller wants to make clear that this isn’t about biological differences, nor are all men or women falling into these roles. Rather, it’s about breaking habits that we are all able to change.

She wants to view it as a division, rather than delegation, of activities.

“Do that in either a sit down and do everything, divide everything type of way, or just do one thing a month kind of thing and have the conversations at the point in time when you can both feel heard and both express how things are going so then you can see the change and be responsive to the change.”

Listen to the full episode of The Little Things for more from Dr Robyn Miller on what the mental load is, how to recognise if you are getting stuck

The Little Things is available on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. The series is hosted by broadcaster Francesca Rudkin and health researcher Louise Ayrey. New episodes are available every Saturday.