> New research shows that mothers take on 71% of household mental load tasks, including planning, scheduling, and organizing, while fathers manage just 45%

71% and 45%? What do these numbers actually mean? The article doesn't really make any of this make sense.

Additionally, something I'm going to note, I don't do any of these things regardless of the fact that I am not a father and live alone. "Scheduling, planning, organizing" are all things I detest immensely. I like to live simply and according to the free-flow pace of life. The kind of highly structured, bureaucratic life driven by 4th order Baudrillardian simulations of rituals which I find most people to live, if I'm being brutally honest I don't really consider that living at all.

For the last 5 years I've handled Christmas dinner for our family. The most planning I do is ensure my food stores are full. Day of I simply look at who's showed up to my house and start cooking with what I have, completely ad hoc. Considering I've been entrusted with this for 5 years at this point indicates I'm doing something right. The idea that one would RSVP for a feast, serve specific things in specific amounts... nope. Wouldn't do that in a million years. Where's the joy? To me it always seems like a lot of pointless stress and effort for a result that doesn't actually care if people enjoy it in the moment, you just want the picturesque trope. I'm not running a restaurant here, I'm spending time with family and putting good vibes in the air. Literally nothing else matters in the slightest.

Recently went on a roadtrip with friends. The planning? When are we leaving and where are we going and for approximately how long. That's a 2 minute conversation. I wouldn't do it any other way because it's always the most fun way to do things. You're free to simply enjoy the precious moments as they come. I remember structured trips and how hollow they always felt. I'm loathe to ever go back.

Now in some things, these things can't be helped. Interaction with the medical crap, certain things with work, interacting with a bureaucracy of any kind really, especially the government. I put up with these only out of necessity. If I have the control to not have to deal with the insane, anti-human, borderline demonic nature of rigidity and structure you better believe I'm exercising that control.

People just live their lives in ways that seem to add needless mental effort and expenditure of energy. Absolutely none of this would change with a child, unless I found it to be negatively affecting them. Which isn't to say raising a child isn't a care-free experience that can be done without immense mental effort and stress. Just the idea that a household and your life must be strictly organized is more than a little cap. Is that mental effort actually doing any meaningful good? Ask yourself if your ancestors, before they developed spoken language, would give a single rat fuck about the benefit. If you can reasonably be sure they wouldn't, chances are it's not a meaningful benefit. Food? Good. Comfort? Good. Family? Good. Min max optimizing time tables and having an hour-by-hour rundown of a plan? Not my monkey, not my circus. Your ancestors are expressing concern over your furrowed brow.