On Women's "Mental Load"

The household is hard-wired

One of the points I try to drive home as often as I can is that God’s way of doing things isn’t a series of arbitrary hoops for us to jump through that make our lives harder just because.

Rather, they make us happier and more fulfilled than doing things our own way.

It’s kind of like how following the IKEA instructions step by step make for a smoother process and a better finished product than throwing the booklet away and insisting we know what to do. Maybe the designer knows a thing or two about His own design, you know?

So, it makes sense that when we go our own way on an issue like gender roles, it only leads to frustration.

One clear example of this can be seen in the case of what is called “the mental load.”

Here’s how the UN defines it:

The mental load is the invisible mental and emotional labour behind handling life’s never-ending to-do lists, including caring for others, managing a household, and delegating tasks. It’s the energy we spend thinking about and anticipating needs and tasks, organizing them, and following up and ensuring they’ve gotten done.

So, it’s the day-to-day burden of making sure a household keeps running. One YouTube influencer put it a bit more succinctly by saying it means “you are responsible for knowing, and doing, and remembering everything that makes your home function.” And, of course, the bulk of those tasks generally fall to women.

So, is the mental load real?

It’s hard to argue that it’s not. But that just raises another question: is the mental load a bad thing, an unfair burden that’s been foisted upon women?

What the Bible says

Back to the beginning

When you go all the way back to Genesis, we see God created Adam first, and Eve second. This is not an accident, nor was it inconsequential. This order is drawn upon throughout the Bible.

Man is told to be fruitful and multiply and take dominion over the earth and subdue it (Genesis 1:27), and woman is the helper suitable to him in carrying out his tasks (2:18). Notice, she is not given a separate mission. They were designed with different bodies and different minds, two inseparable pieces of a puzzle. He leads, she submits (1 Peter 3:1-7). He tends the garden, she provides the children (1 Timothy 2:15).

By nature, their skills, focuses, and tasks are going to be different. Funny enough, the UN piece on the mental load tries to deny this: “These roles are socially learned, not biologically predetermined,” they claim.

If our roles were meant to be the same, men would be able to bear and nurse children, too. Since they can’t, the order of the household takes an obvious shape.

The Proverbial Housewife

Proverbs 31 fleshes out the role of the wife more completely than any other text. And when you start to look at a day in her life, it sure looks a whole lot like the mental load.

“The heart of her husband trusts in her” (v.11)
“She brings her food from afar” (v.14)
“She rises also while it is still night and gives food to her household (v.15)
“Her lamp does not go out at night” (v.18)
“She is not afraid of the snow for her household, For her household are all clothed with scarlet” (v.21)
“She looks well to the ways of her household, And does not eat the bread of idleness” (v.27)

So… she goes from early morning to late night working to feed her family, keep them clothed, prepare them for winter, manage business for her husband, and so forth. And it is for all of those things that her children rise up and bless her, and her husband praises her.

In other words… the mental load is the job. We have further confirmation of this in Paul’s writing.

Titus and Timothy to the Women

Paul famously wrote in Titus 2:5 that older Christian women are to teach younger Christian women to be “workers at home.” More on that in a minute, but for now I want to focus more on another verse in the so-called pastoral epistles.

In 1 Timothy 5:14, Timothy is told to instruct young widows to get married, have children, and “manage the house” (NKJV). This comes from the Greek word oikodespoteo, a compound of oikos for house, and despotes for ruler, from which we get our word despot.

In other words, the job of the wife is to be the ruler of the house. This doesn’t make her the head of the family. Notably, in the same chapter, it is men who are “worse than an infidel” if they don’t provide for their own (5:8).

Rather, for her, oikodespoteo is a job description of her role as the one in charge of making the household thrive. Once again, it’s basically the Proverbs 31 role. To sum up, in this text they were told to get married, have kids, and take on the mental load.

God wasn’t wrong

The world will say that this is further confirmation that the Bible oppresses women. Many Christians will look for ways to wriggle out of these Biblical teachings because they don’t comfortably fit with what our culture has taught them to believe.

But go back to what I said at the start—the designer knows a bit more than we do about how we operate best. The age of feminism hasn’t made women (or men) happier, hasn’t made families stronger, and hasn’t created a healthy culture.

As Christians, we of all people shouldn’t be surprised. God’s way fulfills us, even if it means women volunteer to take on the mental load.

But… there’s still a problem to be solved

As I wrote in agreeing with the monologue from the Barbie movie on the expectations placed on women these days, women do have too much of a burden to bear. In some ways, they are more burdened than ever with their work week, kids’ extracurricular activities, church and other social engagements, and more. And, by nature, they are still more oriented toward the matters of the house.

Barbie and the Impossible Burden of Feminism

So, in many households they end up with a huge weight to carry in the marriage, a weight that is too big, and frankly unfair. There is legitimacy to the mental load complaint.

We’ve just gone for the wrong solution

Funny enough, despite all the complaints that come from the mental load crowd about men not pulling their weight around the house, the stats actually say quite the opposite.

Today’s dads are more involved with their kids than previous generations. They are also doing more work around the house than previous generations. You could make the case that today’s husbands and fathers are doing more hands-on work in the matters of the house than any men in history outside of explicitly matriarchal societies.

But that might be an indicator that we still don’t get it.

70 years ago we started sending all the women into the workforce. They took on more and more duties all the time. This created a sizable mental load, as they now had to do part of what used to be the man’s job, and still do their own job.

As time went on, the man’s responsibility for providing was essentially split 50/50, while the woman’s responsibility for running the home was barely split at all.

So, our solution has been to identify the mental load and tell men to split more of the household duties. We’ve even lied to men to get them on board (“Nothing’s sexier to a woman than a man doing the dishes,” the ridiculous marriage advice goes).

Now, men are doing more. And the mental load complaint just grows louder, because we identified the wrong solution.

The right solutions

First, we’ll all be happier when we get back to the roles God gave us. When Titus 2:5 tells women to be workers at home, and yet the husband and wife are both out of the home for 40 hours a week, we aren’t obeying that verse. And when we disobey, we shouldn’t be surprised when we’re unhappy.

This means the man needs to take back his share of the responsibility and stop counting on his wife to carry his burden and hers. And, she’s going to have to take the step back and let him. She’s going to realize she can’t, in fact, “have it all.”

That might be a tough pill to swallow, but if she wants things to improve, that’s what it’s going to take. If we’re going to keep telling men to step up, at some point it’s going to have to include telling women to stand down, too.

But, doing more of her job for her is not the answer. It doesn’t earn her respect in the same way. And, it doesn’t really lighten the mental load, because she’s still going to think about those things anyway, because God designed her to do so. In other words, she’s not going to be happier if her husband become more of a woman; she’s going to be happier if he becomes more of a man.

If this all sounds extreme, just ask yourself: if the family goes bankrupt and gets thrown out on the street, who’s everybody going to blame? Who’s job is it to fix that? For that matter, who does the Bible blame for it?

Yeah… that tells you we all know who ultimately bears the responsibility of providing. When push comes to shove, we all know gender roles exist.

I realize how hard this is, especially in this economy, and that it’s not a change most couples can make overnight. But it’s worth praying about and working toward, even if it means cutting back. Dining out trips for my family are few and far between, and at least half of those trips are taken to the Costco food court for $1.50 hot dog combos. Allison and I can tell you, and hopefully our kids will someday agree—it’s worth it.

Second, we have to practice contentment. So much of the content geared toward women online is aimed at making them discontented with their lives. Your husband isn’t good enough, your life is too hard, hey, maybe you’d even be happier if you left him (a suggestion which is always among the top-voted answers on women’s forums).

Do not let your life be steered by bitter people with miserable lives who don’t know you or care about you or your holiness in any way.
Your husband probably isn’t perfect… but neither are you.
You probably have to carry a big mental load… but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t carry one, too.
Your kids probably drive you crazy some days, and your husband might not feel attentive enough, and there are certainly things to work on… but this is life.

This is how we honor God and find fulfillment, by doing things His way even when it’s hard.

Addressing this as the church

One final point on how we can help couples find more fulfillment and balance in these relationships as the church…

Somebody will inevitably ask if the woman working outside the home is a sin. Another will almost certainly make the laughable claim that the Proverbs 31 woman was actually a career woman just like we have today.

We don’t really need to go down either of these rabbit holes. We just need to stick to the good, better, best formula and maintain that the best thing a family can do is have dad go to work to provide, and mom stay home to manage the house.

We don’t have to beat everybody over the head. We don’t have to berate anybody. But neither do we need to shrink back and pretend that all choices are equally valid and Biblical. The pulpit should be encouraging men to provide, and women to have children and keep the home.

As a church culture, years of encouraging one idea as an ideal to strive for pays off. People come around slowly, but momentum builds. Peer pressure starts to take effect.

This is the kind of concept we should not be scared to elevate in our churches, not just because the Bible teaches it, though that’s certainly reason enough. But also because we love our people and we want them to live happier, more fulfilled lives. And they can do that best by aligning themselves with these Biblical principles.

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Notes

• Last week’s Think Deeper Podcast covered the Proverbs 31 woman, and this week we looked at Proverbs’ prescriptions for men. We covered some controversial ground with this one, especially with regard to self-discipline. Watch below or search Think Deeper on your podcast app