Domestic burden: would letting go be enough to preserve one’s sanity?

How do you take care of your mental health when you are a woman and take on a large part of the household burden? While a report of 19 studies conducted with 70,000 women worldwide establishes a link between poor mental health and women’s domestic responsibilities, the webzine Motherly questions ways to relieve mothers on a daily basis.

Domestic work, a women’s affair

It’s no secret that women still take on most of the household and family responsibilities. A report in The Lancet reveals that this unpaid housework would have direct consequences on the mental health of their women. The more these would be made to contribute, the more their psychological state would be degraded. Among the symptoms declared by the women questioned are hair loss, the appearance of autoimmune diseases, states of anxiety or depression, intestinal disorders or even insomnia.

While all of this tells us nothing we didn’t already suspect, a big question still remains: How do we preserve our sanity amid this lonely ocean of laundry to fold?

Let go and assume, a not-so-new and somewhat simplistic idea

maternal interrogated Eva Rodskymother and best-selling author Correctness, designed to solve the mental load. She suggests possible answers to help women identify the domestic mechanisms responsible for their overwork and get rid of them:

[Les femmes] they are conditioned to consider their time less precious than men’s time (…) we are then convinced that it is our job to take care of all the unpaid work in the house. (…) Men choose tasks that they can do whenever they want, such as managing money. Women, on the other hand, perform tasks that waste their time, such as picking up children from school when they are sick.

Eve Rodsky, for Motherly

The author then suggests to women to raise awareness of their own interests, to realize that time has the same value for everyone and to redefine their values ​​and standards. Write down your daily commitments to redistribute them in the best possible way, re-evaluate emergencies, define your priorities… Lots of advice that comes from common sense, but which still and always entrusts women with the coordination of housework and ensuring their limits are respected without the guarantee that the other family members do not cooperate.

The domestic emancipation of women is a complex issue that cannot be defined by a simple “imbalance” or be satisfied with the famous “letting go” by the first interested party. Because telling a woman to let go without doing anything to relieve her is like asking the parent of a newborn to be less tired without ensuring her nights: It’s uselessexcept we can wash our hands behind it and let the other drown without feeling guilty.

Photo credit image of one: YuriArcus