The cruelty of the default parent role isn’t the exhaustion. It’s the of the work. Because if you do your job perfectly, no one notices. The kids get to school. The socks match. The prescription is filled. The silence of success is the absence of crisis. And in that silence, the world tells you: See? It’s not that hard. You’re just relaxing.
It’s the ghost that lives in your skull, whispering reminders during sex. It’s the spreadsheet you run while you’re trying to enjoy a glass of wine. It’s the fact that I can tell you, without looking, that we have 11 wipes left, but I cannot tell you the last time I finished a thought. mutha magazine
The only way out isn’t a chore chart. Chore charts are just another thing for us to manage. The only way out is to stop being the server. To let the Wi-Fi crash. To let someone else reboot the router. The cruelty of the default parent role isn’t
I didn’t know I was signing up for a middle-management job where I’m the CEO, the janitor, the cruise director, and the emotional support animal. The kids get to school
And I snapped. Not because he asked. But because in that moment, I realized he had the luxury of asking. He was a user logging into the system. I was the system.
I tried to go on strike once. A quiet one. I stopped reminding. I stopped refilling the soap dispenser. I stopped mentally tracking the expiration date on the car seat. For three days, we lived in chaos. The four-year-old wore two different rain boots. The baby ate a cracker off the floor of the bus. My husband looked at me with genuine confusion: “Why didn’t you say something?”
MUTHA readers know the stats. We know that mothers still do triple the amount of “cognitive labor” as fathers. But let’s stop calling it that. “Cognitive labor” sounds like a white paper. Let’s call it what it is: