My husband and I both work full-time. We’ve divided up elementary school drop off and pick up duties. That way everyone can get where they need to be at the right time. I handle drop-off so he can start work. He handles pick-up so I can finish my workday later in the afternoon. It’s a fair way to split up the task. But the mental load of the school year is so much more than driving obligations.
My husband manages his share of the household labor in many ways, but when it comes to handling the back to school mental load, well, that falls to me. I doubt my husband knows which days we need gym shoes for P.E. When library books are due. Which weeks our family is in charge of providing the class snack. Whether our daughter’s school lunch account is set up. When we need to schedule backup care for school holidays… the list goes on.
The invisible tasks of the school year include a lot more than splitting the pick-up and drop-off—and like in my family, so much of it falls to the moms. So, what can we do to more fairly manage the back-to-school mental load that comes with school-aged kids? Here are some things I’m working on in my household:
Consulting ‘Fair Play’ to rebalance the work
For partnered parents, I can’t recommend Eve Rodsky’s bestselling book Fair Play enough. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a way to divide domestic labor into 100 concrete tasks that are turned into cards. You distribute the Fair Play cards between you and your partner, and whoever holds the card for a specific task owns the job from start to finish.
You can use this concept to distribute the school burden more equally by looking at the items above and turning them into cards. For example, maybe your partner takes over the school year’s class party task. They’re then fully responsible for signing up, showing up, and buying all the supplies.
One of the reasons this method works so well is that the cardholder completely handles that whole task. Not just parts of it—so it can actually be removed from the other’s mental load.
Distributing tasks to my child as they get older
I get into bad habits of doing too much myself because then I can do it my way and on my schedule. But it often means I take on too much when others in the household are fully capable of helping. Now that my daughter is almost 8 years old, I realize there’s a lot she can handle herself. It takes the burden off me and teaches her responsibility.
Take a look at what tasks you’re handling each day and if your child can take it over. Some examples could be packing a lunch, filling their water bottles, charging their Chromebooks, or laying out their clothes for the next day of school.
Auditing our schedule to see what we can streamline, outsource, or remove
If my schedule goes unchecked for a while, it ends up filling up with some unnecessary items. When I sit back and review what I’m doing, I can usually find things I don’t really need to do or things I can do in an easier way. Look at your list and see what can be changed. Can you remove packing lunch from the list and have your kid eat the school meals? Perhaps, you can automate the after-school payment. Can you switch the teacher gift from something crafted to a gift card?
I promise the time it takes to pause and make some small changes can help conserve your mental energy long term. We all need that extra energy. The school year’s only just begun!
Brigette Marshall, Contributing Writer
Brigette is a mom of two little girls and works full-time in project management, both at home and in the office. She loves book clubbing, antique shopping, watching documentaries, and convincing her husband to cook gourmet meals for her.
Feature graphic images credited to: Elevaé Visuals and Patty Schepel.
