The Invisible Load of Parenting: How to Cope With Stress

As parents, stress takes on a whole new dimension. There is the everyday mental load: packed schedules, playdate planning, laundry cycles, and carpooling. Then, invisible in the background, there is the natural worry of parenting and all the problems we want to solve before they appear.

What is a mental load? “I would compare it to having 100 tabs open on your browser, all of which feel like they need your immediate attention,” says Katharine Reid on “The Stress Episode” of Munchkin’s StrollerCoaster podcast. “And we tend to carry as moms these essential bits of information or non-essential.”

“At any given moment, we're thinking, ‘Oh, I need to book swimming lessons. I have to make sure my six-year-old's pants are clean or he won't wear pants tomorrow because he only likes those pants. And here's how to blow a foreign object out of your child's nose,’” Reid says. “So part of the mental load is feeling this responsibility to be aware of any circumstance that might come up in parenting… and anything that could possibly go wrong so that you can get ahead of it… We're working behind the scenes. We're anticipating everyone's needs. We're managing schedules. We're always feeling needed. We're the ones that know where everything is kept. And, in addition, many of us have careers.”

So how can we cope with the invisible load? Reid has a couple of suggestions, including defining and practicing real self-care. (Spoiler: Taking a shower doesn’t count as self-care, although sometimes it can feel like a vacation to have 10 minutes to yourself while your baby is content in a bouncer or a swing.)

“Some of the things that are billed as self-care for moms are actually not self-care at all,” Reid explains. “They're just like the basic needs we have: showering, healthy meals, joyful movement, positive connection, you know, those are billed as, ‘Oh, that mom is really taking care of herself.’ It's called, you know, our basic rights as humans. I don't think I've ever met anyone who isn't a mom who would get in the shower and say, ‘Oh, I shouldn't be here.’ Set the boundaries with yourself to make sure that you're taking care of yourself.”

This could look like mapping out your boundaries, and then letting some things go. “If the mental load is that your kids leave their toys around or your husband leaves their socks on the floor,” Reid explains, “You could decide, ‘Oh, I'm just gonna do this experiment: I'm gonna leave that there and see what happens.’ And the reality is no one's picking it up. Everybody has the ability in my house to just walk right on by that pile and they don't notice it.” Maybe everyone walks by that pile a handful of times, but eventually someone else will notice — and even pick it up.

“You could apply that same logic to the play dates,” Reid suggests. “If you don't schedule them, are the kids gonna have a play date?” It’s worth stepping back from some tasks that fall under the invisible load umbrella, “even if we predict that they will end disappointingly, because it comes from a place of curiosity,” as Reid puts it. “And curiosity is always a better place to start than resentment.”