The Mental Load Katlynn Pyatt and Angie Cantrell

What transferrable skills does managing the mental load give moms?Today we’re discussing some of the valuable skill sets you get as a mom from balancing the mental load. I think we all feel stuck sometimes and focus a lot on the drain that the mental load causes and a while back, I listened to a podcast that was focused on skills that are unique to moms in the workplace because of motherhood and it felt like this awesome little pick me up, so I thought today’s topic would be a sweet little follow up and pep talk to why it’s hard to talk about the mental load to also look at some of the ways we can use it to our advantage. So that’s not to say that things shouldn’t change; they definitely should, but if you’re a mom who’s feeling stuck, looking to change jobs or just move in a new direction in life, our hope is that this episode makes you feel badass and see how you can apply some of the things you’re learning from being a mother to your goals and dreams in your own life. 
Anticipation = risk analysis and trade off
What is a risk assessment and how do you conduct one?According to UCLA: "In operations, financial reporting and compliance, risks need to be identified and analyzed. Assessing risk enables you better achieve your group's goals by helping you determine how pitfalls should be managed. Managers must determine the level of operations, financial and compliance risk they are willing to assume. Assessing risk enables managers to proactively reduce unwanted surprises.What questions do you ask  yourself when you conduct a risk assessment? These are direct from UCLA’s website. Do they sound familiar?What could go wrong?How could we fail?What must go right for us to succeed?Where are we vulnerable?How could someone disrupt our operations?On what information do we most rely?On what do we spend the most money?
After risks have been identified, an analysis should be performed to set priorities:
Assess the likelihood (or frequency) of the risk occurring.Estimate the potential impact if the risk were to occur. Consider both quantitative and qualitative costs.Determine how the risk should be managed; decide what actions are necessary.
Prioritizing helps departments focus their attention on managing significant risks such as risks with reasonable likelihoods of occurrence and large potential impacts."
Finding solutions = creativity
Making decisions = empathetic, creating buy in
According to Mural
"Build a compelling case - To do this, you should make sure that you’ve carefully identified the problem you’re looking to solve (remember: it’s not always so obvious!), understand your success criteria, and have gathered supporting data so you can test your idea.Understand your audience - know how involved they are and how to tailor your messageMake it collaborative - engage your stakeholders, co-create solutions, solicit feedbackAnticipate and overcome resistance - offer compromises and build consensus"
Monitoring = self awareness
Forces you to be introspectiveHelps you balance what was in vs out of your controlIs this the trickiest one for toxic positivity because we end up blaming ourselves too much?
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Mentioned in this episode:
Joy School Affiliate Link
https://thepathtojoy.thrivecart.com/melissa-blooms-joy-school/partner/

Sacrificing your sanity and being overwhelmed by the mental load at dinner isn't required.Be earth conscious, but don't feel guilty when you have to use paper plates to lighten the mental load every once and a while.
As a family of six, the mental load around dinner and chores related to dinner is never ending. And with summer approaching we'll be running the dishwasher multiple times a day. And while it's important to take care of our earth and we pride ourselves on being an earth-conscious family sometimes you just need to use paper plates and plastic silverware to save your sanity.

How the mental load takes over women's livesHow not to lose yourself in motherhood"I resent the fact that you (dads) get to maintain your individuality, while I do not."
The Mental Load often takes over women's lives leaving us feeling unfulfilled and like we lost ourselves in motherhood. It's a form of identity theft that nobody warns us about.
When you become a mom, everyone starts to view you as "{insert kid's name} mom" while dads don't become {insert kid's name} dad". Men get to retain their individuality while women are taught to only look at the positive of motherhood. That kids are a gift and you should feel blessed...all the time. And nobody prepares us for this identity theft that happens immediately. We're swallowed into motherhood and suddenly find ourselves lacking time and energy for anything but mothering. Which leaves us struggling to feel like we haven't lost ourselves.
In today's episode, Angie and Katlynn explore why, when we take on the mental load, it feels like we lose ourselves because:
We have less time to think of and anticipate my own needs so I feel blindsided by them (KP)We have no time to think freely or do something that feels luxuriousThere's no more time to do my own personal hobbiesOthers assuming that our only role and source of satisfaction is our childrenWe start feeling guilty that I have this huge privilege of raising kids but harboring this “secret” that we want more out of life than just being a mom

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The mental load and mother's dayFor men: Why moms care so much about Mother's DayJoin Katlynn from the Mental Load Podcast in this Mother's Day hot take.
Attention dads! Mother's Day for moms isn't necessarily about how big you celebrate it. It really comes down to being recognized for work that we feel is usually ignored.
The holiday's usually fall into the mental load category because there's invisible labor that goes into planning them:
- coordinating
- planning the logistics
- buying the gifts
The thing about the mental load is that it often breeds resentment because it's invisible. Mothers feel unrecognized, under-appreciated and undervalued. When the dads out there present us with last minute, not so thoughtful gifts, wait for us to tell them what to do, or put it on us to plan, they're essentially validating all the negative thoughts we have around the mental load.
Dads, Mother's Day is your time to step it up and own the process from start to finish. Don't promise her a "day off" where you half-ass or don't do the chores so she's behind when she wakes up Monday morning. Don't put the planning on her. Take the time to recognize her and while you're at it, take the time to plan the logistics if you celebrate your own mom. Don't assume your wife will coordinate and shop for gifts on your behalf. Your mom wants to feel appreciated and recognized by you. The mental load here is for you to own.

Preparing for maternity leave and the start of the mental load.Career coach to help moms navigate a career and children.Women deal with a lot of emotions and roadblocks going into and coming back from maternity leave. How do we better prepare ourselves, our workplaces and our partners so the mental load at home and at work isn’t as bad? We had a great episode a couple weeks ago with Sarah Reeves about how to help shape the workplace into one that is more supportive for caregivers, so today’s conversation I think is going to be a nice follow-up to how to prepare yourself for the changes that come with becoming a mother and taking on more of the mental load both at home and in the office.
Today's guest is Lauren Gordon. Lauren is a dual-certified life and career coach for working moms, and a former senior leader in human resources at a global financial services company. She specializes in helping working moms fully enjoy life with a career and children, without trading happiness for a paycheck.
Lauren runs her own coaching practice where she works one-on-one with working moms who are navigating a wide range of personal and professional challenges. Lauren's areas of expertise include helping women to overcome feelings of stress, guilt, and overwhelm; ending imposter syndrome by growing their self-confidence; addressing people-pleasing and perfectionistic tendencies; navigating career decisions; and more.
 Lauren lives in a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with her husband, Eli, and their three young daughters, ages 7, 5, and 3. When Lauren isn't coaching and teaching working moms, you can find her taking Peloton classes, reading, and continually trying to improve her cooking skills to keep up with the other members of her monthly cookbook club.
Visit www.laurengordon.com to learn more about how to work with Lauren, and follow her on Instagram @workingmomcoach for tips you can begin applying to your life today.
The mental load isn’t just something that shows up at home, it’s also something that creeps in to our work lives. In the workplace, women spend more time on “non-promotable tasks” than men, which is unpaid work related to social or administrative “office housekeeping.” These types of activities are vital to maintaining company culture and strengthening team connections, but are not valued as strategic — and therefore come with little to no recognition, appreciation, reward, or career advantage.
In this episode, we explore:
Where the mental load started for usWhat emotions women are facing personally and professionally going into maternity leaveWhat the mental load looks like professionallyHow we can better prepare women for maternity leaveHow the mental load perpetuates the stereotype that women are distracted or somehow not as good at their jobs after they have kidsHow men prepare for maternity leave and how it looks different than womenHow to prepare to return from maternity leave
Mentioned in this episode:
Joy School Affiliate Link
https://thepathtojoy.thrivecart.com/melissa-blooms-joy-school/partner/

How do countries outside America support families and therefore lighten the mental load?What do nordic countries do to support families:
Baby boxes with important newborn items to set families up for successPaid parental leave In Norway, parental leave is paid at full pay for the first 44 weeks or at 80% if parents opt to take 54 weeks. To encourage both parents to play their part, fathers must take at least six weeks' parental leave or risk the family losing payments for the same period.Free universal childcare from 18 mo - 7 yearsCapped childcare costsStrong gender equality in the workforce:Gender quotas legislate for a 40% female presence in the country’s parliament and on business boards, resulting in a strong female presence – Norway’s prime minister, minister of finance and minister of foreign affairs are all female, while women make up 41% of the C-suite.
What happened to America?
"Ronald Reagan: by 1980 the Moral Majority, the main Evangelical lobby, had almost half a million members (Diamond 174).2 These new activists had three priorities, and they were directly related to the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the issue of women’s rights: the denunciation of homosexuality, the fight against abortion (which was famously declared constitutional by the Supreme Court with its Roe v. Wade decision in 1973), and the rejection of the ERA (the Equal Rights Amendment) (Martin 162-166, 193-194). In the late 1970s, Ronald Reagan quickly understood the incredible electoral potential of the Christian Right."
These policies all hold women back economically by making childcare unaffordable (which means we have to puzzle piece it together).
Once covid hit, moms were spending five hours a day more on chores than menHit women of color especially hard bc there are stricter gender norms
When we’re faced with this onslaught of policies that harm more than they help, we decide to leave the workforce. 
The nation loses a major economic factor:
Household earnings therefore spending go downCompanies lose more workers and therefore innovation
Why don’t we view it as economically beneficial to support families?
America’s lack of family support rests on a false assumption: that providing help discourages parents from taking responsibility for their children.
And while other wealthy countries spend an average of $14,000each year per child on early-childhood care, the U.S. spends a miserly $500. Underlying each of these bleak truths appears to be the same, misguided belief: that government support for parents is at odds with parents being responsible for their kids.
Helping parents is not the same as parenting, and support does not replace real-life parents.
Why do we think tough love is good for families as policy?
Treating parenting with punitive punishment
What are the good things to come from supporting families and why should we care?We know that in countries with greater gender inequality just closing the gap in women’s labor force participation could increase economic output by an average of 35 percent. 
New Mexico used $77 million in American Rescue Plan Act dollars to create the Competitive Pay for Professionals (CPP) program to fund $3/hour pay increases for an estimated 16,000 child care staff.37 Iowa used $30 million to provide $1,000 and $2,000...