Shedding light on the invisible load

There is a heck of a lot of life admin that comes with parenting. Some people call it the mental load, others refer to it as invisible – it’s all the details that sit in your head and keep family life running.

Often in a relationship there’s a ‘default parent’ who's carrying the majority of this load. Yes, it includes housework, laundry, cooking and supermarket shopping – but not just that. It’s also all the other less-obvious-but-still-important unseen tasks.

It’s remembering to buy presents for your child’s friend’s birthday party, working around orthodontist appointments, responding to sports team group chats, booking school interviews, coordinating drop-offs to after-school activities, juggling work when kids are sick, remembering it’s Book Week and whipping up a last-minute costume. It’s buying thank you gifts for teachers, Christmas presents for nieces and nephews. It’s organising who is bringing what to the BBQ. It’s keeping in touch with extended whānau and checking in on the needs of aging parents. You know, just a few minor details!

And let’s be honest – at the risk of sounding stereotypical, and while acknowledging that there are definitely exceptions to any ‘rules’ – most of the mental load is carried by women.

We often see this imbalance in Parent Coaching, as it really affects parenting dynamics. When one person is carrying the full weight of all the life admin, it’s like having too many tabs open at once – all the time. It’s stressful and impacts your sleep, your patience and, ultimately, how well you cope with the everyday demands of children. Carrying the invisible load unsupported also has a relational impact on partnerships. If one person is feeling resentful or burnt out, that really shapes the atmosphere at home. And kids pick up on it.

Often it comes back to what was modelled to us growing up. Many of us were raised in settings with more traditional gender roles, where mothers carried most of the responsibility for home and children.

We’ve certainly come a long way. We see a lot more dads who are really keen to be involved and share the load. But even now, there can still be quite a big gap.

I think it helps to realise that we’re all influenced by social conditioning. We all carry assumptions about whose role something is, often without even noticing. I caught myself doing this the other day. I was telling my sister how thoughtful it was that she’d bought such a lovely present for my son, and she said, “Oh, I don’t buy the presents – Joe does.” It really made me stop and think.

The first step is making the invisible load visible. We can’t share something we haven’t actually named.

This might look like writing everything down – and I mean everything. Some couples have a shared document where they add appointments and tasks as they come up. And of course there are apps to meet the scheduling needs of a modern family. PAM (made in NZ!), Cozi and Family Wall all come recommended. OurFamilyWizard is especially helpful for co-parenting through separation.

Some parents have a regular WIP (work in progress) – a quick weekly check-in so both parties know what is going on and what needs attention, and they can then decide together who is responsible for what. Others use a big weekly calendar so everyone can see what’s coming up.

A really important shift here is moving from ‘helping’ to ‘owning’. If one person is still holding all the responsibility and just asking for help, the load hasn’t really changed. What works better is each person fully owning certain tasks from start to finish.

So instead of helping with orthodontist appointments, one person becomes the contact and manages that whole thing, including rearranging work, driving to the appointments and scheduling follow-ups.

I also really encourage whoever is the default parent to be quite clear and assertive. It’s easy to think, “They should just know I’m stressed,” but most of us aren’t mind readers.

It can be as simple as saying, “Can you take responsibility for the nieces' and nephews’ Christmas presents?” or “Can you organise the BBQ this weekend and handle all the communication?” And then letting that task go. No micro-management, no swooping back in to critique progress or results.

Which brings me to my final point. When you do start sharing tasks out, it’s important to let the other person do it their way. They may not do something exactly how you would do it, but that doesn’t mean they’re doing it wrong. If we jump back in and take over, it makes it much harder for the load to genuinely shift.

At the end of the day, it’s not about everything being perfectly equal. Partners have different strengths and also interests – for example, I really like menu planning and enjoy cooking, so I’m happy to do the majority of it. Also, there will always be seasons where one partner has more capacity than the other. That’s why it profoundly helpful to be flexible and communicate often.

Ultimately, bringing the invisible into the light is about feeling like you’re on the same team as your partner. When the load is shared more fairly, it doesn’t just reduce stress – it creates a calmer, more connected home for everyone.