Your Relationship After Kids: Why am I so exhausted?
I absolutely love my female friendships. They are so rich and part of that richness tends to be the shared experiences that tend to be unique to womanhood. One of the things I love about my close girlfriends is that we are able to give voice to the invisible load of motherhood (and even just womanhood before we were mothers) in a way that doesn’t devalue our partners. It simply elevates our struggle so that we really look at it and hold space for one another. We can laugh and we can cry about how heavy, overwhelming, and complicated it all feels sometimes.
Over the years and in my clinical work I have had the fortune of bearing witness to women ages 18-100 (yes, I used to work in a nursing home so you read that right—-100 years old), I have come to realize we all our struggling with the same thread…a load that feels hard to explain. It feels intangible and devalued because much of it isn’t that “hard”, it’s just a lot.
In an era where we can vote, we can be elected president, we can become pastors and CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies… it’s insane that women that were born in 1922 sound similar to women born in 2000 when it comes to this particular thread. We now have language to describe this phenomenon.
Physical Labor- After baby comes, the physical workload increases.
Here are some examples…
-Bottle washing
-Changing the diaper pail
-Endless amounts of laundry
-Packing lunches
-Washing dishes
-Preparing food (that may or may not be eaten)
Mental Labor- Mental labor is the “cognitive effort involved in your work, relationships, a family, and your household.” Mental load is about managing all of the unnoticed (by other people), intangible tasks. Once again, the burden of this tends to fall on mothers. If we think of a household as a living organism mothers tend to be the executive functioning part of the brain.
Here are some examples…
Researching ALL the things having to do with baby/kids
Keeping up with removing the clothes your kids have outgrown and knowing when it’s time to purchase the new ones
Planning and executing the playdates
Keeping everyone on track and on time
Scheduling doctors appointments for the family
Paying attention to when important household items are running low (i.e., laundry detergent, trash bags)
Planning the date nights
Emotional Labor- This is all about managing other people in the household’s emotional well-being. It’s about supporting and attending to the emotional needs in relationships. It is also sometimes referred to as “worry work”, which really resonates with me.
Sociologist Arlie Hochschild coined this concept in her famous book, The Managed Heart (1983). She wrote “emotional labor has to do with who’s handling the tensions, who’s mindful of them, and who takes it as their work to make everything run smoothly.” It’s also about regulating our emotional responses to other people. If you picture highly skilled customer service folks, they carry a ton of emotional load and it’s that emotional attunement that allows them to do their job really well. Once again, when applying this to partnerships, this tends to fall on mothers. Noticing a theme here?
Examples of emotion load include…
Helping your kids through their big feelings
Comforting kids when they are in distress
Appealing to kids emotions in ways that increase compliance
Managing your own reactions so you don’t make things worse
Noticing your partner is low on patience and using strategies to head off any major problems
Is this only a thing after children?
Nope. Nope. Nope. This happens even in partnerships where there are no children. The same principles are at play. It might just show up as being the one that schedules all the vet appointments for the dog, doing most of the housework, keeping track of running low on shared household items, making the social plans, planning the pet care when you want to go on vacation, making the grocery list and meal planning, etc.
The load just becomes so significant after children that it’s more likely to feel intolerable. Of course, this doesn’t mean that this operating before kids is acceptable either. It just means that the disparity is less noticeable.
What about same-sex partnerships?
I was feeling frustrated when doing research on this article. Most discussions on emotional, physical , and mental labor are filtered through a highly heteronormative lens and focus on heterosexual couples. I kept wondering, how does this play out in same-sex couples? How does in play out in couples where one of both is transgendered? Not surprisingly, there wasn’t that much out there.
Here’s what I did find…
The long and the short of it is that this is happening in same-sex relationships and in transgendered partnerships, too. The labor we’ve been discussing tends to fall on whichever partner happens to take on the more traditionally “female” gender role within the couple. So that means that gender division of this kind of labor occurs in most cisgender lesbian and gay relationships, as well as transgender partnerships. It points to how much of what makes someone “female” or “male” is based on how well we are fulfilling these stereotypical roles in our couple and in society.
So does this mean are partners aren’t experiencing this increased load after baby?
Yes and no. They are experiencing the overload of life’s demands as well. They may even feel overwhelmed and are probably doing more than they once did. My husband’s overall tasks and work load absolutely increased once we had children. He is getting kids dressed for the day, doing morning drop-off’s, making snacks, etc.
Is the load still unbalanced in a way that feels overly burdensome to mothers? The answer is almost always “yes.” So it’s not about bashing our partners or about devaluing how they are contributing. Healthy partnership is not about equality, it is about balance.
What do we do about this?
Before we get into the advice portion, let me just say that I feel a bit peeved when even writing this section. It’s not because it doesn't have helpful tips, it’s because the majority of what we should do about this issue are things that the mothers are suppose enact, rather than putting the onerous on the ways our partners can change or shift, which may be where it rightfully belongs. Makes me a little salty (OK, A LOT salty).
With that said, I’m going to start with what your partner can do to reduce the disparity in labor.
A. Consume education about the topic- Read, read, read and read some more. Listen to podcasts, read blogs, and look at the research. Then talk to folks about how this is playing out in their lives and their partnerships. Knowledge is power.
B. Be mindful and observant of what your partner is doing and attending to for the well-being of the family- Simply start paying attention. Start asking yourself, what is happening that is making my life run more smoothly? Who is responsible for this magic?
C. Express gratitude (and be specific) for what you are doing- This is important because it makes invisible work visible. This is a powerful shift and has the potential to create both internal (i.e., discomfort with the disparity) and external change (i.e., doing more, talking about this with his friends).
D. Take on more labor- Reduce your partners load by taking on more yourself. This might sound like a terrible idea because it means your workload increases. There are benefits and those include, increased feeling of competence with your kids, increased connection with folks in your household through your nurturance, and greater relationship satisfaction.
Now for your part:
Pay attention to how you are spending your time and trim the fat- A lot of folks recommend keeping a list of all the labor you are performing. I think this is helpful because it gives you an idea of how you are spending your time. It makes you more mindful of your day to day. Then you can really take a step back and do a couple of things. First, you can really soak in and have compassion for all that you do and why you feel so worn out. Next, you can decide if there are things you can take off your plate. You may take things off your plate by realizing they are just extra and not necessary or you may decide they are things you can delegate.
Be mindful of maternal gatekeeping- Gatekeeping refers to when we don’t really even give our partners (and other caregivers) the opportunity to help. I totally get where this comes from because we get in our groove and feel like we know how to do it so we just do it. It can feel good and safer to stay in control this way. It’s effective in the short-term (i.e., things get done well and consistently), but not in the long-term (i.e., leads to maternal burnout and to partners feeling incompetent, etc.). In the long-term in just widens the labor gap between you and your partner.
Examples of maternal gatekeeping include…
-Literally hovering over your partner while they are trying to take care of the kid
-Offering instructions right away before they’ve even had a chance to figure it out (or maybe even just do it their own way)
-Being overly critical of how you partner is performing certain kid related tasks
Ask for help- Just because you can do something yourself doesn’t mean you should or that it’s the healthy decision. Delegate. Ask your partner for help with specific tasks. Maybe even decide ahead time about who is going to tackle what. A bonus of planning ahead is that y’all can divide and conquer based on what you like to do or based on your strengths.
Don’t set up your partner for success- Stop making lists for your partner. Stop trying to make it “easier.” Stop trying to overly control. Most of us are with competent partners that are making it through the world just fine. So let them make it through the world. Let them figure it out.
Educate your partner- When you are a member of an oppressed group inequality can feel super obvious. That’s not so true when it comes to folks who are in the privileged group. Sit down and talk with your partner about these concepts. Once we have the language for something, it can feel easier to tackle. Start a conversation and continue to talk about it. Sexism, just like racism, is always operating. So that means this conversation will need to continue and will need to evolve throughout your partnership. Share information in the form of blogs, research articles, podcasts, social media content, etc.
Get support from friends- Identify friends in your life that are experiencing the same thing. Honestly, pretty much every girlfriend that I have that is in a relationship can relate to how I am feeling (and we all have awesome partners). Sometimes it’s nice to just feel heard by someone who gets it. It’s nice to feel heard by someone who you don’t have to educate or over explain it to.
Allow yourself to feel your feelings about it- This stuff brings up ALL the feelings and that’s OK. We are allowed to feel both gratitude for our partners and resentment. We are allowed to feel anger at the injustice of how we’ve been socialized- how we’ve been taught to be a “good woman.”
Make yourself a priority- This is about investing in your emotional bank account. Add yourself to your list of things to do. Though your initial reaction might be, “I don’t have time for that” or “great, just another thing to get done”, trust me, you won’t regret it. What you put into your emotional bank account, you get back tenfold in terms of energy, patience, and even productivity.
Be mindful of high stress events/seasons- There are times that are emotional, mental, and physical load increases. This first thing that comes to mind here is the holiday season. This load can become even more disproportionate during this times and can push us over the edge. So le't’s plan head. Increase the self-care and trim the fat a head of time. Delegate and discuss with your partner.
Warning signs of burnout
Having a short fuse with others
Resenting your partner
Chronic fatigue
Lots of physical complaints with no medical cause
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Resources for this article
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-018-1001-x
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-017-0743-1
https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a32017759/invisible-labor-mothers/
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2015/11/04/raising-kids-and-running-a-household-how-working-parents-share-the-load/
https://theoutline.com/post/4972/emotional-labor-is-a-lot-of-work
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227503671_Women%27s_Work_Women_Partners_of_Transgender_Men_Doing_Housework_and_Emotion_Work
https://www.thebump.com/a/maternal-gatekeeping
