I don’t know

There is that story that went around a few years ago that Mark Zuckerberg wears gray shirts every day to eliminate making a decision about what to wear. I have never identified with a rich person more (and its why I stay in my pjs until I absolutely have to get changed)!

I tried to Google how many decisions a mother makes and the answers weren’t really conclusive but this sums it up, I think. (The full post can be found here.)

Having (almost) raised 4 children, I can say this with confidence, it is not the physical labour of motherhood that is exhausting – it is the decision making that drains every last little bit of physical and emotional energy you have. Especially because those decisions are 90% of the time not even for you.

Even if your child or partner doesnt actually ask any of these, you, as the mother have to make the decision.

Whats for breakfast?

Who is picking up the kid from karate?

Is there enough food for school lunches?

Do I need to replace the rice/milk/bread/eggs?

Where are my shoes/shirt/hockey stick?

Let the friends know about a play date?

And so it goes on and on and on and ON for eternity.

It is exhausting and relenting. The more you answer the questions, the more it becomes the default.

My husband is very involved and takes and fetches kids and cooks etc but by the time he fetches a kid from karate, I have decided which dojo we are joining, what the class times on, bought kit and added the event to his calendar.

Sure some decisions are easier to make than others but each one still requires energy and a weighing up of the consequences – if karate ends at 17h00, can we do rock climbing at 17h30? What can I make for dinner that is quick because we only get home at 18h00?

The added unspoken pressure of these decisions is that we are making them for someone else. We have to decide on the swimming club, the dinner, the lunch box snacks, the school, the clothes we buy. As the kids get older they have more say but we are the ones standing at the till making the final decisions (because budget and responsible parenting).

Some days the gravity of it all hurts my head and leaves me feeling completely depleted.

Every evening when we sit together to eat and watch TV, Jack tells us some jokes but they are always in the form of a question. They make me want to cry, real, tired tears. So much so that I have banned them from asking me questions after 17h00. I don’t even care that I sound dramatic – until you have had to make 3923512452 micro decisions a day, you won’t understand what it feels like. You reach a point where even trying to decide whether to have an apple or a banana feels as huge as deciding whether or not not emigrate.

We have all had enough

One of the advantages of social media and a connected world is that women are now speaking up about all of this. We have a space to vent and aren’t shy to use it.

Recently one such movement caught my attention and I am loving it. It is called “sherlocked” and was started by a woman, unintentionally over the festive season. She decided to simply not cater for her nieces party – she just did nothing (like everyone else) and while she was doing nothing she was updating everyone on Threads and she went viral.

You can find the whole account here. I love reading it. I don’t love the way woman have been treated but at least now women are “fighting” back, staring at walls and calling out the weaponized incompetence.

I have made a lot of changes in our home when it comes to my mental load because there is absolutely no reason why my husband and my children (teens) can’t take on a lot of the load I carry on my own!