The mental load is the thing you couldn't name for years — the invisible mental load that means one adult in the house knows when library day is and one adult keeps asking. The one who anticipates, identifies, decides, and monitors, and the one who stands next to the dishwasher and shouts through to the lounge room to ask if it's clean. You've known the pattern for years. You've done the therapy. You've read the book. You've made the 1.2-metre colour-coded family planner. And he still texts you from home, from within arm's reach of the fridge, to ask about the Parmesan.

This week the ADHD Mums Facebook group broke open. So many messages, voice notes, and 4am DMs from women hiding in their own ensuites that Jane's had to split it into three episodes. This is Part 1 — the Admin Husband. Part 2 is the Gold Medal Husband next week. Part 3 is coming.

CHAPTERS

00:00 — The Facebook post that broke the internet

00:27 — Lisa. 4am. From inside her own ensuite. Husband asleep in the next room.

01:23 — Please stop asking us what time school pickup is

02:03 — Renee: 'I made the calendar. I bought the calendar. I put it up. I synced it to your phone.'

03:32 — Do men use Siri? A serious question.

04:59 — The 1.2-metre colour-coded family planner he walks past every single day

06:47 — He texts her the address of the program she set up, booked, paid for and drives to every week

09:26 — Parmesan. He's at the fridge. She's in Adelaide.

10:55 — The T-shirt drawer that hasn't moved in three years

12:20 — The 36-minute toilet holiday, and what he's actually doing in there

14:18 — Alison Daminger's four stages of the mental load — and which one he only turns up for

16:35 — Affordance perception: he isn't ignoring the crumbs. He genuinely can't see them.

19:16 — Same-sex couples don't do this. Which tells you something.

21:53 — 'Accidentally, lovingly raising the next man to look at a bench and just see a bench.'

22:36 — 'Just ask me if you need help.' Why that sentence is worse than no help.

What We Cover

• The Facebook post that unleashed more DMs and voice notes than anything else on the show — including one from a woman messaging at 4am from inside her own ensuite while her husband slept in the next room
• What Renee has done to try and stop her husband asking her what's on today for the seventh time before 9am — and why none of it worked
• The 1.2-metre colour-coded family planner one member has installed on her wall. Her husband walks past it every single day. He hasn't looked at it once. She's been tracking.
• Why he can find the remote. Why he can conduct a full detective investigation into a missing beer. And why the billboard is invisible.
• The Parmesan text. From another state. Not a rhetorical device — a real message.
• A sociologist who broke the mental load into four stages, and the one stage he actually turns up for
• Two philosophers on why your partner isn't lying when he says he doesn't see the bench. He's not seeing it the way you're seeing it — and this is the bit that stopped Jane in her tracks
• What the research on same-sex households is actually telling us — and it's not that men's brains are different
• The 36-minute toilet holiday. The medical event. What he's really doing in there.
• Why answering him when he shouts through from the kitchen is the exact thing that keeps you Siri
• The sentence a Facebook group member said out loud that Jane hasn't been able to stop thinking about since — 'I'm accidentally, lovingly raising the next man to look at a bench and just see a bench'

Free Resources

Household Family Meeting Template — for moving off stage-three-only and onto shared stages one and two — https://adhdmums.com.au/product/adhd-household-family-meeting-template/

The ADHD Mums Facebook Group — where this whole episode came from, and where Part 2 and 3 are being built right now — https://facebook.com/groups/adhdmumspodcast

Paid Resources

ADHD Mums Shop — https://adhdmums.com.au/shop/

Related Episodes (the mental load / invisible labour series)

The Invisible Job: Being the One Who Holds Everything Together — https://adhdmums.com.au/adhd-podcast-episodes/the-invisible-job-being-the-one-who-holds-everything-together/

The Invisible Coordination Load: Why ADHD Mums Carry the Work Systems Won't — https://adhdmums.com.au/adhd-podcast-episodes/the-invisible-coordination-load-why-adhd-mums-carry-the-work-systems-wont/

The Hidden Cost of Being the Good Girl — How the Mental Load Became Ours — https://adhdmums.com.au/adhd-podcast-episodes/the-hidden-cost-of-being-the-good-girl-how-the-mental-load-became-ours/

References & Further Reading

Daminger, A. (2019). The Cognitive Dimension of Household Labor. American Sociological Review, 84(4), 609–633. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122419859007

Affordance perception — a framework from ecological philosophy (originating with James J. Gibson, developed further in gender and household-labour applications). This is a philosophical framework, not a clinical psychology finding. Cited as one lens that fits the pattern, not as a settled explanation.

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-The Admin Husband: 'Do We Have Parmesan?' He Texted Me From Interstate to Ask

[00:00:18] Speaker: and it was titled, "What can't you say to your husband?" "

[00:00:27] Speaker 3: the DMs, the comments, the voice notes, My absolute favorite was a woman called Lisa, who messaged me at 4:00 AM from inside her own ensuite whilst her husband was asleep in the next room.

[00:00:44] Speaker: that was the majority of the messages

[00:00:49] Speaker: some of you have a wife or a partner or somebody that's a friend that doesn't fit in any of the boxes. if I run through every single different type of relationship, it's gonna be super [00:01:00] complicated to listen to

[00:01:07] Speaker 3: There was so much oversharing and information,

[00:01:14] Speaker 3: we're gonna start with part one My favorite, the admin husband.

[00:01:23] Speaker 3: Please, please stop asking us what time something is, which is a reoccurring appointment. The most common one that I saw was pickup

[00:01:41] Speaker 3: Now Christine, I see you. We all see you

[00:01:46] Speaker 3: To be asked the same thing over and over again, "What time is pickup?" like it's new information or it might change But don't snap because then you might be told you're grumpy. That is a whole 'nother can of worms which I'm not gonna [00:02:00] go into.

[00:02:03] Speaker: in the Facebook group.

[00:02:18] Speaker 3: I gave you the password. The password is your name and the year you were born. Because I knew, I knew that anything more complicated that you'd be asking me that too. Then you broke it, and I reset it up for you to still not use it." And it's not just one time today, it's all the time Yes, Renee, we all get it And then Samantha jumped in. She said I can't stand it when my partner says, "When's the birthday party?" however, he's holding his phone, which has his calendar in the hand, which is synced with all of the addresses and the times, which I spent time doing so you wouldn't have to ask me because it's so irritating.

[00:03:20] Speaker 3: when I read that one, I actually started to think to myself, " Oh my God, Samantha sounds like Siri." Like, is the original Siri actually like a wife-shaped device?

[00:03:44] Speaker 3: and so he turned to Samantha and said, "Hey, what time is the birthday party?" I mean, that's basically the function of Siri, isn't it? Except Samantha's unpaid She's probably irritated. She's probably got two other people talking to her at once And she's probably [00:04:00] pretty burnt out and over it, and he's choosing to ask her where the address is to the birthday party

[00:04:14] Speaker 3: And it takes me usually the whole calendar year until about term four, where I train him what day the library bag is. It's already been written on the wall and in the calendar, but that doesn't work. But he eventually gets it by term four. But by term four, then it changes, and we start the new year. So he only actually knows when library bag is for about four weeks of the year So she has spent the entire academic year training a grown man to remember one day a week, and the second she gets him there, The school changes library day, and she's back to zero That's basically Groundhog Day, except the groundhog never learns, and then you're kinda still doing his washing, so that seems even worse.

[00:05:16] Speaker 3: I've been tracking it, and he asks me what we have on every single day, which is there. I have spent so long color-coding it for each member of the family, so we can all update it. It is one point two meters wide." Now, that's not a calendar. That seems like a billboard.

[00:05:36] Speaker 3: But yet her partner walks past it every single day to the bedroom, and then he asks her what's going on. Probably I'd say when she's trying to dry herself after having a shower and she wants to have a few minutes to herself, I'm sure that's when he decides to visit her and ask her, " What's on today?"

[00:06:06] Speaker 3: He will have no stone uncovered when he wants to find his beer. But a one-point-two-meter color-coded wall, he says he cannot see it now it's easy to be aggravated by that, and I mean, I am. However, we are gonna come back to that because I do wanna go over some of the reasons why they can't see it.

[00:06:43] Speaker 3: I'm just saying that you should know that going in

[00:06:47] Speaker 3: Deep Ringing Whoosh Transition 5-5

[00:07:06]

[00:07:29] Speaker 3: It's just so many questions. Anyway, he sent her the address of the place as if she needs directions to the program that she set up. She's booked, she's probably paid for, she's probably organized all the sessions, and she's been driving there every single week for years.

[00:08:02] Speaker 3: Now, number four.

[00:08:15] Speaker 3: This is an anonymous comment in the Facebook group. She said,

[00:08:33] Speaker 3: Now in her comment, she said, "I don't know, mate. Open up the fridge and decide." I don't know if she actually says that back or whether she just says that in her mind. sometimes it's so exasperating that you just answer. It's hard to know what to do.

[00:09:05] Speaker 3: Like you could go to the fridge. Two, if she's had a sh*t day, chances are she probably hasn't got the dinner sorted, so maybe you could get the plan sorted whilst she's in the shower

[00:09:26] Speaker 3: But just to let you know, those are all the entrée until the main. anonymous member in the Facebook group wrote this comment word for word, " I was away interstate with my girlfriend, and he texted me from home Do we have Parmesan cheese? She's in a different state On a rare weekend away, and he texts her from home, inside the kitchen probably, within arm's reach from the fridge probably, to ask if they have Parmesan cheese.

[00:09:59] Speaker 3: That's [00:10:00] infuriating, that one. And she calmly, I feel like we should call her Saint Anonymous Member at this point

[00:10:24] Speaker 3: Why don't you open the fridge? The Parmesan's either there or it isn't, and there's no way she can help you from Adelaide or wherever she is. This is what I mean about Siri. They don't Google it. They don't look. They just ping whoever they live with, which is like a wife-shaped device over state lines for the cheese

[00:10:55] Speaker 3: Anonymous SMS

[00:11:18] Speaker 3: And it's really starting to feel like a lost tourist here. Like "Hey, can I have some directions to the male toilet over there?" Like, "Could you just let me know whereabouts the T-shirts are?"

[00:11:40] Speaker 3: He could just pull it open and check, and he calls from the kitchen to the lounge room to ask the woman on the couch whether it's clean when he could open it

[00:12:10] Speaker 3: And of course, I nerded out because I couldn't figure out why

[00:12:20] Speaker 3: Now, we have to cover one more area before we get to the why they can't see it. And we all knew it was coming, the toilet. You know the one where he disappears for a long period, Or he announces it like a very important appointment, "I need to go to the toilet."

[00:12:54] Speaker 3: the news Meanwhile, a lot of us, and I feel like there should be some kind of [00:13:00] record that we can write this down. A lot of us have not been to the toilet for longer than five minutes, even with postpartum heavy periods or birth-related trauma.

[00:13:25] Speaker 3: And it really does feel like a tourist again, that toilet holiday Right when you need them, they disappear. But you can't say anything because he's attending to important business, and you definitely can't time him or let him know that was a long time And then when they emerge, what do you know?

[00:13:59] Speaker 3: I [00:14:00] don't think a poo is a medical event

[00:14:15] Speaker 3: Okay, so why are there so many common themes here?

[00:14:19] Speaker 3: in the family that can check the fridge and know if there's Parmesan cheese? Why is there only one adult who knows what time pickup is or knows what day library is?

[00:14:41] Speaker 3: One, anticipating. Something's coming up. Two, identifying. What do we need? What shop? What day? Three, deciding. Four, monitoring. Did it actually get done? Does it need to have any changes? And what she found with research, not her opinion, is that [00:15:00] if there is two adults in one household, there is one that turns up for all four stages, and there's one that turns up usually for only stage three.

[00:15:19] Speaker 3: We anticipate, identify, decide, and check it got done. Without us, that process really can't exist, right? Which is why where is the Parmesan is such a perfect example because her partner has skipped stages one and two entirely

[00:16:35] Speaker 3: It's hard to get that out because I just think he must be able to fucking see it. How can he see his beers? However, there are two philosophers and they have a framework called affordance perception.

[00:17:37] Speaker 3: No surprises here, the girls get handed the inside jobs. I've got strong memories of that growing up, and I remember the injustice. Boys get handed the outside ones or nothing at all. And then decades of repetition train the visual system that encode the kind of action into our brain.

[00:18:07] Speaker 3: But the philosophers, the research says that the crumbs are genuinely invisible to him as a thing requiring action and they argue that he would see the crumbs the way that you see the wallpaper. Like it's just there. It doesn't require any action

[00:18:59] Speaker 3: Because [00:19:00] you can ask Siri a stupid question, and she can't say anything back. But you are tempting fate that that person is gonna go, " Open your eyes, can't you see?" And bite your head off. So makes me think that that research could be true, but it's hard to fathom

[00:19:40] Speaker 3: However, I'd argue that it might be that neither of them are the default So in a male and female relationship, generally people default back to the woman being the default and the man texting about the Parmesan cheese However, this is my opinion, that maybe [00:20:00] in those relationships there is no default, and they've actually had to talk about it and build it from scratch.

[00:20:21] Speaker 3: It, like, happened slowly and we didn't know how we got there, and the workload from kids just exacerbate the inequality that was already there. But when you actually have to sit down and talk about it and build it from scratch it really opens it up for it being more equal. So I don't think it's necessarily about males can't see things, males can't ever see the bench But it's more, I believe, about the way that we grew up and what script we got when we were maybe five or six years old about what we do around the house and what our role is perhaps

[00:21:00] Speaker 3: I don't think this is permanent. You can build this. This is something that can be trained. Yes, you might have picked it up when you were five or six.

[00:21:28] Speaker 3: Yes, I put it on last night. It's clean." Or, "No, I'm waiting for the breakfast stuff, and then I'm gonna turn it on." By answering him and giving him the answer, that is not gonna teach him to see. That is gonna teach him that you are a really good Siri, and he's gonna ask you and outsource step one and two and just come in for the decision-making I can't finish this episode without mentioning our sons

[00:22:13] Speaker 3: And I remember pushing back as a kid because I felt it was unfair, but in the end, I just sucked it up and did it. generally, even though we don't want to, a lot of us moms hand our boys less. We praise them more for the little that they do. We call it helping, but they might actually just be carrying their own plate to the sink, which is a requirement of life and being in a team called a family.

[00:22:44] Speaker 3: And this isn't all women. There's a lot of mums out there that are really doing their best to change it, and that's what we all want. I'm just talking generally. But it's very difficult if you have a partner that's still asking, "Where's the Parmesan? Is the dishwasher clean?" [00:23:00] To retrain that When you're still doing that role for them

[00:23:14] Speaker 3: So we can work with this, but it can be a bit tricky, And I suppose it's really a question that you need to ask yourself as to what you're prepared to answer, what work you're prepared to put in But if he's just seeing the bench or he's just seeing the dishwasher There is ways to work with that Now we couldn't finish this episode without this sentence Just ask me if you need help. Just ask me if you need help. Stacy said, " When my hubby asks me what can I do to help? it is the single most frustrating sentence because I have to work out what that involves.

[00:24:20] Speaker 3: But you can't actually boss them around too much and really be their manager because you have to be smiling while you do it and not be snappy, because then you could be getting grumpy, and I'm just asking you a question Another anonymous member in the Facebook group said My son desperately needs sensory socks, and I gave my hubby the task of buying the sensory socks. I told him, "I don't wanna hear anything about it. I don't care. Just buy the sensory socks." But then I'm trying to have a shower and get ready for the day, and then my hubby arrives and asks me what color they should be, what size, how many I should get, which shop should he go to, what price would they be And by the time I'd finished telling him all the details, [00:25:00] I was so drained. And then when he was driving there later on, he called me to confirm the details I'd already told him, and then called me because he didn't have any money in his bank account, and I had to sort that out too.

[00:25:55] Speaker 3: Nothing in the house is kind of communicating with him. It's like wallpaper. [00:26:00] Meanwhile, when we go into a room, it's all kind of screaming at us, "Bench needs wiping." Like it all has an action around it You might walk around the kitchen and know there's a permission slip due. There's crumbs on the ground.

[00:26:52] Speaker 3: We're gonna open up The Gold Medal Husband with a voice memo from Dani Who says a paragraph that I genuinely do not [00:27:00] have words for. please tune in for that next week.