> New research shows that mothers take on 71% of household mental load tasks, including planning, scheduling, and organizing, while fathers manage just 45%<p>71% and 45%? What do these numbers actually mean? The article doesn't really make any of this make sense.<p>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 <i>immensely.</i> 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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.