Moms Out Loud V1: Paige Connell
Featuring a fellow mom carrying the mental load, and what they're doing about it
You’re reading Moms Out Loud: Moms carrying the mental load and what they’re doing about it. This series is brought to you by Stacy McCann, the author of this Substack and creator of Supermom Dropout Club. Join us in the virtual community, where we’re having these conversations every single day!
Today’s feature in our inaugural Moms Out Loud is
, creator of @sheisapaigeturner on Instagram and here on Substack. Paige is at the forefront of this conversation on social media and soon in your ear buds with the release of her upcoming audio course, How to talk to your partner about the mental load. I am so grateful for her time in answering these questions - please, give her a follow and support her work so this conversation will continue with force and veracity!Tell me about yourself - what are your family dynamics, work situation (paid or unpaid), and general routines like?
Our family is made up of my husband and I and our 4 kids. Our kids range from 2.5-7.5 years old and we have three girls and a boy. We both work full-time. I am currently self employed and work from home and my husband is a blue collar worker who works outside of the home daily with a fairly unpredictable schedule. I am the default parent oftentimes due to this since I am the "flexible" one. We have childcare so M-F our kiddos are in school and daycare and in the afternoons we run around to activities like Dance, Basketball, Etc.
If you had to assess the balance of the mental load in your home, what would you say? Has it always been this way or has there been a lot of sweat and tears to get here?
Prior to kids things felt pretty equitable (looking back they were not but it did not feel as heavy with just the two of us and our dogs). After kids the scales really tipped and I became the default. This happened rather quickly since we had 4 kids in the period of 2 years (2 adopted, 2 biological) and there was a global pandemic. I think this would have happened regardless but the shift happened pretty quickly. It tooks us about 18 months of really unpacking these dynamics and shifting them to come to a place of equity when it comes to the mental load.
What is one of your biggest struggles in relation to the mental load at home? How do you cope as a woman and mother?
The biggest struggle I had was simply articulating it at first. Once I was able to do this I believe it was easier for us to navigate. I did not cope well with it in the early days but I had a lot of tools and systems to manage it all.
What do you consider to be your basic needs, and how do you ensure they are taken care of regularly?
Sleep, friendship, family time, time to decompress. I schedule everything! I schedule in my time with friends, my time for yoga, time with the kids outside of running around. The calendar is the only way we make sure it happens.
What is one tip or trick you implement with your partner to ensure open communication and equitable mental load sharing?
We talk about it often; it is just part of our routine. We are always talking about how our home operates and how we can be supporting one another.
What are 1-2 resources you’ve accessed to support your journey through motherhood (favorite instagram accounts, books, podcasts, etc)?
Fair Play was a big part of my parenthood journey when I was in the thick of my struggles with the mental load. Outside of that I do not follow a ton of mom content as I try not to compare myself to others or fall victim to information overload!
What do you love about your motherhood journey so far?
My kids are so much fun and have the coolest personalities. I love watching them grow into their own unique people. It is so much fun to watch them grow!
What advice would you give to mothers who feel stuck, carrying the entire mental load and unsure of how to change anything?
My best piece of advice is to equip themselves with the tools to articulate the mental load. I often find that one of the greatest hurdles is simply describing it to someone else. The second I was able to do so I felt an immediate release! I would also encourage them not to view this dynamic as a failure! This dynamic is incredibly common and is often a result of not just our relationships but a system and society that is designed for this to happen. I believe when we view it as an individual failure it feels much harder to overcome.
What really stood out to me in this interview was the last piece about not viewing this imbalanced mental and physical load at home as a personal failure. This is so much bigger than each individual mother. This is a societal issue in which we raise girls and boys to meet gendered norms that work to support a patriarchy. When women enter motherhood, as Paige pointed out above, it becomes impossible to manage the intensity of the mental and physical load alone. And because mothers refuse to sacrifice their children, they sacrifice themselves.
But that ends now because as she said above, the key to this movement is verbalizing the mental load. Finding the words through resources like her new audio course, my community Supermom Dropout Club, and books like Fair Play, to talk about this intense self-sacrifice and complete mental overwhelm and burnout out loud.
Thank you so much to Paige Connell! We appreciate your work in this motherhood movement, and can’t wait to see what lies ahead for you.