Mental load: fathers who don’t know how to dress their children aren’t nice, they’re toxic

“Mothers worry too much,” I told myself at the time, listening to the girls around me complain about their partners. How could they expect their men to take on their share of housework if they were disgusted by it?

Convinced that I had found the solution to millennia of domestic inequalities, I swore to myself that, when the day came, I would not be one of those who reproaches their partner for a child’s outrageously colorful outfit.

I lost my sense of humor the day I became a mother. Probably like all women, who are no longer moved by the mistakes of a clumsy father. Unless, after discovering what it means to care for a child, women realize that these cute mistakes are actually blatant declarations of incompetence. Everyone likes pajama pants instead of trousers, but when the responsibility lies with fathers.

Know this: the average father is a cute hero, the average mother is lazy.

Everyone has their own technique, everything is the same (no)

Patriarchy always brandishes excellent excuses when it comes to justifying internal inequalities. One of the most famous is to complain that women are never satisfied with the quality of their partner’s work and end up dealing with it directly.

We are all steeped in this discourse, who has never rolled their eyes at a friend who corrected their partner for a poorly worn hat?

Bad news for all fathers whose spontaneity cannot be satisfied by the monotonous baseness of the material world, there is only one way to prepare a bottle or close a diaper. At least if we want bottles and diapers to carry out their original mission correctly.

I’ll give you this, an overflowing diaper isn’t the end of the world. But everyone wants to avoid waking up at three in the morning to do the cleaning. Even more so when it’s not the one who changed the diaper who gets up.

When the way some people do things adds to the mental burden of others

One day, my son’s childcare worker warned me, looking distressed, that I hadn’t included a clean diaper in my son’s backpack. I replied with heartbroken tenderness:

“Oh sorry, my husband packed his bags this morning.”

It wasn’t true. I was the one who had prepared the little one’s things. However, I knew that in a case like this the sex of the culprit determined the nature of the accident. A mother who forgets is a distressing outrage. A dad who forgets is a dad who tried, and we thank him for this. Even if his wife could have checked. We know the dads.

If all the educational originalities of these free spirits are welcomed with a smug smile, it is not because they have revolutionized parenting. It’s just that, behind it, a mother was discreetly tasked with correcting the situation. Mental load: 1 – Mental freedom: 0.

The injunction to let go: the deceptive scam

We may decide not to pay attention to the innuendo-filled gaze of a nanny, or our mother, and simply “let ourselves go.”

Unfortunately, your child must regularly eat a balanced diet and high-dose screenings are absolutely not recommended. If fresh daron consumes the established quota, who stings with beans that no one wants to eat? The boring lady. Complaining that a partner “sent the kids chips again” isn’t just being a soporific, broccoli-addicted stepmother. This is a woman who would have liked to eat fried food the next day when she went out.

Letting go, the only solution offered to women, almost always involves giving up a bit of one’s mental serenity. In any case, this solution allows spouses to clear customs.

Strategic incompetence or candor?

When we see the gross nothingness of certain men, the question arises: do they do it on purpose? In his recent publications, the doctor and writer Baptiste Beaulieu goes so far as to assume that men were not women. If they don’t imagine it so clearly, many of them disrespect their family under the guise of “relaxation” and don’t want to worry about life. We can’t blame them, no one likes constraints. Some hate them so much that they prioritize their comfort over the well-being of their family.

The clothing issue is a great example. Many men deny themselves the implicit “knowing anything about clothes” – this girl thing. Most of these men don’t walk down the street in shorts in the dead of winter, or wear down jackets during a heat wave. Without wanting to offend these virile males, almost all of them are even perfectly capable of coordinating their outfit, according to what happens today in terms of trends. And when we met them while still single, we remember that their accommodation was clean and tidy at the time.

I only see a difference between their skills of yesterday and those of today, those of today do not concern them directly. They don’t even concern their partner, but she understood that having children meant taking care of them properly.

Listen to Apéro des Daronnes, Madmoizelle’s show that aims to break down taboos on parenting.