1,956 thoughts on “You should’ve asked”

  1. Has anyone ever measured “mental load?”

    Maybe we can look at statistics on suicide, violence, substance dependence… If it were real, then men with shorter life expectancy must be bearing more load of some kind… At least in relation to their natural capacity.

    Therefore, it is rather unfair and illusory to say that the female gender has more of it without much to back up that claim. In fact, the evidence may point the other way..

    It is hopefully more agreeable if we say, as Buddha reminded us about 2600 years ago, that the world is full of sorrow (could that be another word for mental load), and the root of sorrow is “desire” (if only my partner shared more of the load and he should!). The solution? Question that desire. Uproot it.

    Love, not desire, mutual-understanding, not premature judgement, will conquer it all.

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    1. There are literally hundreds of studies conducted by social science researchers using time diaries and non-participant observation, as well as surveys and interviews, to document and measure these phenomenon. Google Scholar will point you in the right direction.

      Also, nice use of religion to justify ignoring social problems that affect women and people of color. (Never saw that one before.) “Oh, if only I could get past the feeling that I need rest and a sense of personal identity related to my own interests!” Great job implying that this is all in women’s head’s.

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      1. Which phenomenon specifically? Mental load? Maybe you also fear that this is all in your head? Attacking my “use of religion” will probably not free you from your fears.

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      1. So, maybe that explains why many women start resenting their husbands. I hope you are not in their number. Similarly, I suspect, women’s life expectancy shortens in direct proportion to the number of kids they bring to this world. I hope that does not make them resent their kids, too. As a recent book said: “All joy and no fun!”

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    4. My dad used to tell me that he’d noticed a pattern where in a couple, if the woman died first then the man would die less than a few years later; if the man died first, then the woman would live for many years. He took it as evidence that men love with greater intensity than women. He might have even said they love better.

      But I think (if it is true) that maybe it is simply because the women know how to look after themselves. We know from practicing. We look after ourselves and everybody else. I love my husband, but it’s work for me to live with him. He makes work for me because he doesn’t look after himself. If I stop thinking about dinner, I worry he’ll just eat chips and get sick; and that’s just the start. It seems like by expecting more from him, he gets better at doing it for himself as well.

      So it’s not all just about complaining that women have to work to look after the family, but also about creating a culture where men can take care of themselves. So that they live longer, are more resilient against suicide, can regulate their own emotions and not externalize it with violence, etc. All those things you say. I show my love by keeping my family healthy and clean. It would be nice if men would show love for themselves by keeping themselves healthy and clean too. It’s not just a burden to look after yourself. This practical stuff is not just boring and meaningless, but part of the love.

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    5. Premature judgement? Really? This isn’t a new phenominon women are dealing with. Your response that women should merely remove their desire for more equal distribution of household labor is offensive.

      Your assertion that their isn’t evidence to back this up is what is a ” premature judgement ” on your part.

      Even when First married ,and no children are in the picture , women’s caretaking role of men starts immediately. Repeatedly research has shown women upon marrying double their housework to care for him physically.

      Women’s roles in supporting a husband’s career is supported through research. Men expect and receive support from their wives that can be shown to have an influence on income and career advancement. I appreciate your concern for the “mental load “of each partner. To say that men would shoulder the greater “mental load” of a marriage while being while being oblivious to the physical load, and being less willing to participate in it seems illogical. How can a man carry a mental load over that which he lacks the knowledge of?

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      1. Which premise? How about the presupposition hidden in this article with which you (and many others) seem to be agreeing with: “Mental load” (or as you said mental anguish) is mostly a function of household and child caring chores. Further, men are not loaded “mentally” as much because they don’t do their fair share.. Please first question the premise that makes you angry and upset, before questioning the premise another may seem to hold..

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    8. You can’t uproot life, or all your desires, you can only change your relationship to them. In a fully lived life (vs. the spiritual bypass you imply), you identify your desire, e.g., sharing the grist of life, and ask for what you want. You might check into non-violent communication as a way to be both in the world, in your life, and kind.

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  2. Pingback: You should’ve asked | Bulent2k2's Blog

  3. An interesting comic, but attributing the issue to males alone strikes me as a little narrow minded. I can say with certainty this isn’t a male specific problem, having dealt with bearing the vast majority of the “work load” for several years living with my girlfriend.

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  4. This is why I am divorced. Reducing the household by my ex husband meant I no longer had to manage his life and mess – just mine and the children’s – and being a single mom has turned out to be easier than being a married one – at least in my cases.

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  5. Ok, but the question here is: do men WANT that?
    I mean, back in the day, feminists fought for the right to work because they wanted it, but they also wanted to stay home with the kids. However, it never seemed to be a concern if men wanted to stay home with the kids too. So it ended up with women taking Double journeys and men still taking only one. I’m sure some men would love to be as responsable over their kids as their mothers, do home chores and such, and those probably already do it. But if we don’t see men fighting for the right to stay home and all, it’s probably because they don’t really care about it and were confortable with women dedicating to the house. You can’t blame it on society because the society in which the first feminists grew was way more opressing and they fought for their rights anyways. So the thing is, if you wanna share the housework, you should make sure your partner wants it too. Make sure they’re aware they’ll be doing more than Just bring money home If you have babies BEFORE you have babies, because they may be expecting you to take care of everything and change their minds If you tell them otherwise.

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    1. Of course you can blame it on society. Can you imagine what would be said about a group of men who wanted to “stay at home?” and wrote congressmen and signed petitions? Especially here in the States? Good ol’ boy rules still apply and men, manly men, aren’t “supposed” to feel. Did it ever occur to you that what women were really fighting for was the choice? To work outside the home or stay at home? But the expectation is “your job is a nice little hobby but dinner better still be ready.” If you think that isn’t still the deep-seeded undertone of current society, you have completely deluded yourself.

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  7. Pingback: The Mental Load ft. ADHD | Tornadoes Anonymous

  8. A really nice piece, but I think asking men to ask women how much work they are actualy doing, is going to reinforce the idea that women are the managers of the house. I don’t know how to get around that, but I don’t think it’s the best idea. I wonder whether there are more things at play here than just ‘women are taught to do the houswork’. I think that there may be a difference in communication styles, or need for organisation.

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    1. I think its even simpler than that, and one that mimics a battle I currently am having with my kid “you live here too, you are part of this family, if you see something on the floor, pick it up”

      If its dirty, clean it.
      If its empty, jot it down to get more.
      If you don’t have something to jot it down on, come up with a system that makes it easy to jot stuff down on.
      If the trash is overflowing, empty it.
      The toilet holder isn’t just for decoration, if its empty, put more on it. If its the last one, see the 2nd line.

      It’s not asking what you should be doing, its assessing your own home and putting forth the effort to keep it in order.

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  9. Like this comic a lot. But, I’m curious, what is the image the woman is thinking about when she comes back and sees the table full again? I can’t make it out, but it looks like a noose? which, is confusing.

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    2. Uh, she’s thinking about tying the noose around her neck to kill herself because she is frustrated that she *just* cleaned the table and now it is covered in crap again. Clearly. That’s how I read it. Been there.

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  10. Something you didn’t mention: the woman asks for help and the husband replies (hardly looking away from his screen) “Why don’t you make the kids do it?” My blood boils just thinking about it. As if it weren’t its own, full-time, and incredibly important job, to teach the kids how to do the work of daily living — and yet another job he feels no responsibility for at all.

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  12. Brilliant cartoon. My one complaint is that you don’t seem to distinguish between women who work and women who don’t. Everything in the cartoon is spot on for working women, who should share household tasks equally with their partners.

    But if you’re a stay at home mom it’s very easy to underestimate the contribution your partner is making away from you at work. Of course that does not mean the stay at home mom should have 100% household manager responsibility … but they certainly shouldn’t have 50% either when they aren’t doing 50% of the work to support the family.

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    1. As a former working mom, schooling mom, stay at home mom and now work at home homeschooling mom, it’s my experience the last statement you made there is not at all indicative of the work load split EVEN when moms are stay at home. In all the jobs I’ve had as mom I can say with certainty they all are taxing, just in their own unique way.

      Im certain the next article about emotional load sharing will illuminate this more, but being a SAHM mom is a far cry from noshing on bon bons and watching tv all day.

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    2. Please calculate the annual salary of a live-in 24/7 housekeeper, a live-in 24/7 nanny, and hey, the bed antics deserve pay too, so even a 1/8th median annual salary of a worker in that industry, just to keep it fair and let me know if the man’s salary could cover it. If not, then his share is significantly less than said stay-at-home individual… male or female.

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      1. $652/Week = $34k per annum https://www.care.com/c/stories/4313/what-does-a-live-in-nanny-cost/
        No women works 24 hours a day. With modern household equipment, the job is a relatively modest paid job as little skills are required.

        Suggesting a woman should be paid for ‘bed antics’ suggests wives are prostitutes.

        Meanwhile…men pay three times the taxes that women pay and women receive more government services.

        http://judgybitch.com/2016/08/16/reblog-research-find-that-as-a-group-only-men-pay-tax/

        So, no, women don’t have it harder. Your perception does not fit with reality

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  14. Thank you so much for creating this. It serves as an instructive piece as much as it is humorous. While we are in a society that has come very far, I appreciate that your comic also addresses how we feel on an instinctual level, and what we can possibly to do overcome that. (Also, I totally do the ‘add this to the groceries list!’ way more often than I should ;))

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  15. The counterpoint — and this is a general rule in life, when it comes to delegating or divesting yourself of responsibilities — is that we have to accept that things will often be done in a way that’s not the way we’d want them done. Sharing the mental load also means giving up control, and being genuinely OK with solutions we see as imperfect or incorrect. Otherwise “sharing the load” really means “doing exactly what I want in the way that I want, without me having to ask”, which is relationship poison.

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  18. Thanks for the great cartoon, it brings back a memory of a story my mum once told me:

    When I was 5 or 6, my school allowed kids to bring toys from home to school one day a week. I brought a plastic clothes iron toy and when I was playing with it the female teacher scolded me and said, give that toy back to the girl you stole it from!

    Since then I didn’t wanna play with ‘girl’ toys anymore and preferred lego and cars… (yes, I do iron my own shirts, with reluctance)

    Luckily my mum (and dad) raised me to become a cooking, cleaning and clean up your own mess kind of man. But it took a long time to get the embedded idea out of my head that those chores are not very manly…

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  19. This is excellent.

    One minor translation thing — in panel 18, when the text is “the mental load is almost entirely born by women” — it should be “the mental load is almost entirely borne by women”. Born = birthed, bourne=carried.

    Thank you!

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  24. Pingback: You should’ve asked – jkpenney

  25. Ok, I am female.
    If you ask me “take X out of the dishwasher” I will take X out and leave the rest, thinking that perhaps you have a reason for being so precise.
    If you as me “empty the dishwasher” I will empty it.
    Easy.
    Why being complicated? This is a bit maddening….or am I stupid?

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    2. I was thinking the same thing… But then realized that I would actually ask a clarifying question. “Do you want me to take just the bottle out or empty the whole dishwasher?”. That way I could figure out if he/she was leaving the dishwasher full for a reason or if their mind was just on the bottle because it was an immediate need. If there was no reason for leaving the dishwasher full… I would empty it! I guess that’s why this comic is about sharing the mental load. By not asking a clarifying question, I’d only be following orders… Which means I’m not sharing the work I’m letting someone else do all the coordinating and planning of the work. And the planning is a type of work also.

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    3. If you see the dishwasher full, you know it needs to be emptied. If your partner is too busy to get the bottle themselves at the moment, you know they are also too busy to empty the dishwasher at the moment. So assuming there is nothing more pressing you need to do at the moment, and that you are not too mentally and emotionally exhausted for the task, what are you waiting for? Some green light to magically appear and say “Go!”? For your mother to show up like a fairy and tell you to do it? Or do you expect your partner to also ignore the dishwasher until one of you finally caves in?

      It’s something to think about.

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    4. Its about people having the mental capacity and care to think past a simple direction and consider how they can be of help to their partner. Shouldn’t one be able to just empty the dishwasher without being asked? If there is a house on fire on your block you don’t just walk past it, you call 911. Both partners should have the mental ability to look around the house, see what needs doing and do it, in equal measure.

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    5. It wasn’t that she wanted the whole dishwasher to be emptied (although that prob would have been nice) but that she wanted all the pieces of the bottle to be out and ready for the middle of the night feeding. Taking out the bottle without taking out the nipple/valve/etc. is not doing the task. And if you are the dad of an infant and don’t realize that, you have not been paying enough attention. It would be like if someone ask you to hand them their sneakers, and you handed them the sneakers with no laces.

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  27. This is absolutely the best summary of my life experience that I have ever seen. Many thanks for the mental, intellectual, emotional and physical work that went into producing this. It is much appreciated.

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  29. The point being that motherhood is truly a full-time job. Sadly, the feminist movement failed to realize that when women went to work, men would not step up to take on half the workload at home. SOMEONE still has to raise the babies. Is childrearing really something we, as a society, want to outsource to minimum wage workers? Is it reasonable to expect someone (man or woman) to hold down a full-time job or two/develop career/support family, and also carry the “mental load” described in this article? No…but why should we expect men to do it instead of women? I don’t think splitting the load is a good solution or even truly feasible. Rather than this author conclude that we simply need to end gender stereotypes so that women can go on working more outside the home, I wish she had placed more emphasis on the value of what is done as caretaker and mother. I would rather our economy return to one where we don’t all have to have 2 income earners to get by. I’ve watched far too many peers have to leave their babies and go back to work when they didn’t want to, but because they had to. It is sad to see so much denigration of women who do stay home, as if watching your husband go back to work while you stay home with the baby is the worst possible outcome and a total waste of your talents.

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    1. Except there’s plenty of women who don’t WANT to be a stay at home mother…so you’d still be alienating all of those who work, by choice, and still face the brunt of the housework and child rearing. I had to go back to work sooner than I wanted because of the need for income, but that doesn’t mean if I had the choice I would want to stay home full time.

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  32. Oh my god, this is so incredibly true. I’m speechless. Had to post this forward to approx 10 of my friends too because I believe they can relate. And then we are in our late 20s so we should be the generation where things start to change – even though they aren’t in this matter.

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  33. Emma this is amazing. Thank you. It puts into words what I have felt for years and haven’t known how to express. I’m curious always about mindsets or programs. Who created them and why are they here? Sometimes it’s a history of ‘what we need to do to survive’, sometimes it was ‘the best idea at the time’. Sometimes it was designed as a power over tool. Wondering which one this is!

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  35. This is decidedly true for a lot of relationships. It was true in mine for many years as well. The key thing that is not being discussed here is the complete lack of value the woman is placing on the ability of the man in their life to actually act like one. I get it, many of us get married before we are truly “grown” and have only traditional social influences on our ideas of what a married couple does day in day out. However at some point you need to be able to have an honest conversation about the value that each of your activities bring to the household. If that cannot be had, you (or both of you) have clearly made a bad decision getting/staying together and should seek other options. My wife confronted me over these issues, laid it all out and demanded that I give her contributions an honest evaluation (not something most men keep tabs on generally). I did just that, sat there and analyzed each task, its frequency, and overall value to the household we both agreed we would like to keep. It turned out she was right (extremely right) and I acknowledged and made corrections. We continue to this day to have reasoned conversations on the value of our, now, adjusted contributions. It will always be work to agree on what makes the most sense and what is most fair (not always the same things). Bottom line is guys are conditioned to not understand/deal with/properly value these things but if a man is worth keeping he can be reasoned with and will understand. And for guys who already do these things, as I am attempting to do, don’t just redirect with “well this doesn’t apply to me” talk to your friends socialization starts at home. If we just re-socialize the idea we can move to correct this without giving women yet another thing to remember i.e. “Harass my husband about getting even a modicum of domestic work equity…”

    Happy wife, happy life (while I don’t think this is a plausible state of being i will support throwing an “-ish” behind each usage of the word happy. It is possible!!).

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  36. This totally makes sense for why most of my SAHM friends, some working, are into the new weed craze and yet still feel they need to hide that just so they can be the perfect Pinterest housewife. (currently me…sadly)

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  37. Nah. That’s not it. We’re tired, like you, and when we say we’re going to bed, we’re just going to go to bed and we acknowledge that the other stuff will just have to wait.

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    1. This comment is the entire problem summed up in 2 lines. While the man gets to be tired and decide that the other stuff “will just have to wait,” what that really means is, “the other stuff will just have to be done by my wife.” I suppose it’s possible that some children would be content to skip meals and go to school in dirty clothes without lunch and then sit patiently after school for a few hours because their “stuff” just needed to wait until mom and dad weren’t tired anymore, but more often, mom is just expected to do the things dad decided could wait.

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  38. I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, statistically, but can’t help a need to be defensive. I believe my partner and I have shared not necessarily the chores – but the mental workload itself.

    I like your examples and I think they’re legitimate issues in many people’s families.

    The closest I can relate is a question of priority. We do experience tasks that are a personal priority but not a shared priority. Is it really as important as you think it is, because the other one just doesn’t seem to care?

    These priorities need to be communicated.

    The standard line that counsellors will say is to use the personal statements, “waking up to a clean kitchen is important to me, it sets the tone for the whole day” my partner feels the opposite and is content to start the day by cleaning the kitchen. I handle the bills my partner doesn’t, I handle maintenance tasks because my partner doesn’t see things falling apart because they weren’t stored properly. My partner will clean, and miss the fact that the kids are getting more and more anxious, beginning to fight and act out, and in that moment I see the kids as a priority they need attention even if it’s simply sitting in the same room while they’re nattering on about their unimportant , (but important to them), game. Times like that, sometimes the cleaning doesn’t get done but the kids go to bed happy.

    Anyway it’s a hard topic and despite feeling resistant to the feminist slant, you’ve said many good things and agree that statistically, your portrayal is on

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  39. some I agree with, some I dont’, no where does it mention home repairs, maintenance, maintenance of the vehicles, reno’s, yard care……I take care of inside the home my husband takes care of the outside, we were both hands on parents from day one, he fed them/changed bums, washed them as much as I did….pretty well divided equally in our home, guess I’m a lucky one

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    1. All of the things you mentioned are fully or partly my responsibility in addition to everything else. Home repairs, maintenance, and renos – I identify what needs work, arrange a contractor and pay him (and if something is not done right, I get blamed); vehicles – I take messages about scheduled maintenance, inform my husband, and make sure he gets there for the scheduled appointment (which reminds me that we have to change the tires from winter to summer ones, unlike last year); yard care – me, me, me, until last year when I found a company to do it and made my husband pay for it (does he get the credit?). Kids, cooking, cleaning, shopping, appointments – all me. And I do have a full time job. Yes, consider yourself lucky.

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  42. Dear Emma (oh how dear!), this text couldn’t get any better! We all need it SO MUCH!
    I wonder if you would authorize my translation for Portuguese, since we Brazilian women also carry a very heavy mental load, and many of us are still blind to that. Would you? I want to spread the word!

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  44. A similar document on “Emotional Labor”:
    “I often talk about emotional labor as being the work of caring. And it’s not just being caring, it’s that thing where someone says “I’ll clean if you just tell me what to clean!” because they don’t want to do the mental work of figuring it out. Caring about all the moving parts required to feed the occupants at dinnertime, caring about social management. Caring about noticing that something has changed – like, it’s not there anymore, or it’s on fire, or it’s broken. It’s a substantial amount of overhead, having to care about everything. It ought to be a shared burden, but half the planet is socialized to trick other people into doing more of the work.”
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0UUYL6kaNeBTDBRbkJkeUtabEk/view

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  45. I’ve got the flu and still do all the work. My soon to be ex-husband said “Let me know if you need any help.” I asked him to do the dishes and he refused. Well…now you see why I’m leaving him. Anyway…love your work.

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  46. Pingback: You should’ve asked | You Ask a Lot of Questions

  47. This articulates perfectly what I’ve been trying to convey to my husband for the past 4 years of cohabitation. Of course men don’t want to do this work. They grew up in homes where their mother did it all and their father modeled the “sure, just a minute” from the couch. Why would you volunteer to do more work at home if you didn’t have to? (and could hide behind a learned social schema?) The root of this is that wives have to encourage their husbands, and husbands have to be open to sharing home management. Until serious steps toward that are taken, this will continue to be an issue between parents/SOs. Thanks for such a great comic!

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  48. This articulates perfectly what I’ve been trying to convey to my husband for the past 4 years of cohabitation. Of course men don’t want to do this work. They grew up in homes where their mother did it all and their father modeled the “sure, just a minute” from the couch. Why would you volunteer to do more work at home if you didn’t have to? (and could hide behind a learned social schema?) The root of this is that wives have to encourage their husbands, and husbands have to be open to sharing home management. Until serious steps toward that are taken, this will continue to be an issue between parents/SOs. Thanks for such a great comic!

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  49. As a well-meaning partner similar to that portrayed here, I can say with confidence born of experience that the reason I started asking instead of just doing is because I got tired of being griped at for “doing it wrong “. And no, I paid careful attention to how she liked things done, but circumstances varied due to local variables that apparently only she had access to. Terribly frustrating, but apparently not that unusual.

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  50. I really love this comic, easy and meaningful! Thanks for creating such a good work. Would it be okay to translate this comic into Korean and post it on my Facebook page which deals with gender and feminism issues? Of course I will put credit to you.

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