A look into the invisible load of motherhood and why if you feel like you're failing, you’re not alone
Smears of scrambled egg from breakfast stick to the bench and the floor. Someone should really clean that up. Too bad that someone is me. The baby is crying for attention and lunches need to be packed. Whoever said mealtimes are about embracing the mess clearly wasn’t the one doing all the cleaning. I accept a yolky kiss in exchange for a fresh stain on my top.
My mind moves to grocery lists, appointments, and work deadlines as I imagine slicing a (slightly skinnier) playdough version of myself into neat little pieces, enough of me to go round for everyone.
Fat chance. Truth is, there is never enough. Never enough time, never enough days, never enough of me.
According to a recent Helen Clark Foundation study ‘It Takes a Village’, 50% of new mums in New Zealand report stress and burnout in their first year of parenting. And that’s just the first year. That’s a lot of broken playdough characters running around the country hoping to catch a break.
You can do anything, but not everything
We’ve been served up the same tired message that ‘doing it all’ is a mark of success but I’m yet to meet a mum who hasn’t had to take up mental gymnastics to contort themselves into being everything for everybody.
If it feels like you are flunking motherhood with a capital F that's because THIS version of motherhood is failing us. Even the mums who may look as though they’re doing it all – they definitely aren’t!
Whether you are juggling a busy job with raising a family, you are a stay-at-home mum that struggles to ever get a moment to yourself, or you are chasing a mix of the two, it’s not easy. As mothers we are more educated and informed than ever before, yet we feel burnt out and drained as we crawl to the finish line of each day, lured by the reward of a choccie Digestive biscuit and some indulgent TV escapism before we do it all over again (okay, that last part might just be me, insert your own guilty pleasure here).
Modern motherhood works for everyone except mothers
Motherhood seems to come with so many more demands than it once did. Gone are the days when kids would stay in the car while mum did the shopping or were left to roam the neighbourhood until the lampposts came on and it was time to go home. The village it takes to raise a family is now often nowhere to be seen, granny doesn’t live next door anymore (and actually has a social life) and we are reliant on strapping our children into cars multiple times a day and lugging them across town to get anything done. Add to that rising housing and living costs requiring multiple incomes to sustain and you can see why it looks like we are all treading water without a floatie in sight.
If you are feeling drained by the day-to-day mental load of parenting, work and home life know you aren’t alone. Forget the floatie, we’ll all be needing giant rubber yellow duckies to keep from sinking at this rate.
Drowning in paperwork and housework
“We are neither consigned to the home nor released from it.”
- Petra Bueskens, Women’s Dual Identities, 2020
Which is scholarly jargon for ‘go be a girl boss, corporate ladder climber or whatever it is you want to do, just make sure the house is in order, the kids are looked after, weekend plans are made, and dinner is on the table at 6.30pm’.
To be a mum in today’s world means our mum hat and pre-children identity are constantly in a balancing act. I mean, mums are multitaskers, but we aren’t superhuman.
In 1996 Sharon Hays coined the term ‘intensive mothering’ to describe parenting that is child-led, expert guided, emotionally absorbing, labour intensive and expensive. Sounds familiar, right?
Now, two decades later, intensive mothering perfectly sums up the invisible labour that goes into running a family. We still find ourselves bearing the brunt of the running of the household, even when working outside the home. The parenting load has intensified, the workload has intensified, and the domestic load has stayed the exact same, surely something’s got to give.
Who are we and how are we wanting to help?
Kept wants to help mums get their lives back by removing some of the domestic load. We want to normalise mums not having to think that cleaning their house without their kids is a break. Or that showering alone, or grocery shopping alone is a break. We want mothers to spend their spare time the way they want to, doing what they love.
They say it takes a village, but they never tell you where to find it. Our mission is to build back better support systems for the modern mum and to reimagine how we can juggle running a home, raising a family, and earning a living, while still leaving room to look after ourselves.
We interviewed mothers across New Zealand and the resounding thing they spent their ‘free time’ on was cleaning, so we have built an easy way to book a cleaner through a marketplace that supports mums in business.
We want mums to spend their free time doing exactly what they want to do, whether that’s earning money, spending time with their kids, or, maybe most importantly, time for themselves.
Mums - you are not failing; the darn load is too heavy. From one Kiwi mum to another, let’s try to start drinking our coffees when they are still hot and making ourselves a priority again.
