Nothing Compares With The Mental Load Of Being Neurodivergent
Just about every week a story about the mental load of something or other drops into my Facebook feed.
The concept of a mental load is solid — it came from a lot of fed-up women looking for a way to account for the relentless but invisible labor performed in looking after children and running a household.
It’s powerfully subversive because it disrupts the mindset that women keeping the home fires burning is just the natural way of things; that it just happens. By breaking down this apparently effortless performance into its constituent parts, it becomes obvious just how much bloody hard work is involved.
It’s also a beautifully versatile concept: I can point you to articles about the mental load of Christmas; of throwing kids parties and even the mental load of selling things on Facebook Market Place (yes there’s a lot involved). Drill down and you’ll find the parenting/running a household mental load is comprised of a plethora of mental load sub-categories: of pregnancy, fertility, breastfeeding, parenting a toddler/school aged child/teenager. It’s become shorthand for I want you to know there’s a lot more to this gig that meets the eye.
