Finding yourself overwhelmed by life admin? The Fair Play method might be the shake-up your family needs

Have you found yourself frustrated by being the only one to remember appointments, what’s most needed on the shopping list and how your toddler likes their snacks presented? If it sometimes (or always) feels like you’re juggling an impossible to-do list in your head while coordinating your whole family’s daily life you are probably taking on most of the mental load that comes with parenting. But, even when you recognise this in your family dynamic, how do you work towards sharing the stress more equally – and so feeling less distraught when someone suggests you might have forgotten to pick up their favourite cereal, or empty the dishwasher first thing? 

There are always times when the mental load of parenting will fall more heavily on one parent than another, and there are many reasons for this both personal to you and formed by the society we live in. It may be because of the way parental leave is structured, the expectations you feel most deeply as a mother or father or how you and your partner divided roles before children arrived.  

Before you know it, you have become the family expert – responsible for not only doing but also remembering, planning for and protecting every important task that keeps life on track.  

We do want to acknowledge that this can’t be escaped if you’re lone-parenting – in which case, this recommendation may not be quite right for you unless you have close friends or family members you can discuss the ideas with and ask to help you a little more with practical tasks. 

This push and pull between roles and responsibilities has always been at play in family relationships, but for the generation of parents raising children in our modern, COVID-19 shaped world, there is a new and hopeful movement of people working to reshape their expectations, family dynamic and relationship happiness. 

This shift is in part inspired by Eve Rodsky and her Fair Play Life movement, which advocates improving the balance of the mental load by talking openly, and playfully, with your partner to create a balance which works better for your whole family.  

Her Fair Play approach can be learnt about through her books (we’ve included a link to these at the bottom of the article), social media accounts and website. 

One of the keys to helping you address the mental load in your family is simply noticing all the invisible work you do, and making it visible to the people who need to know so everyone has a realistic understanding of what is, and isn’t, possible in the time you have.  

All tasks require multiple steps – your child won’t simply appear at the doctor’s at the right moment for their vaccinations, family celebrations need to be planned for as well as held, and even simple acts like washing up require a level of invisible work as you mentally calculate how long it will take, when it needs to be done by and how you will fit it in around all your other commitments for the day.  

Identifying, and sharing your expectations of what these tasks look like, can feel daunting to try and articulate – especially if you’re used to simply getting on and doing them almost without noticing yourself.  

That’s where we think Fair Play Life really comes into play – it makes the task of identifying, discussing and dividing the mental load into a game-like process which can be done in bite-sized chunks instead of feeling like an overwhelming, never-ending, conversation.  

You can find lots of information and ideas about where, and how, to start improving your family’s approach to the mental load of parenting through their social media channels, or in Eve Rodsky’s books Fair Play and Find Your Unicorn Space which are both linked below.  

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