You Were Already Carrying It
The girls’ trip.
You’re in a new city. Wine on the table. The bill arrives and, without discussion, it’s handed to the same friend. Conversation continues. Glasses are lifted.
She pulls out her calculator. She divides it by how many are there. She suggests we adjust for the ones who only had water. She calculates the tip. She announces the total, and no one questions it because it’s always right.
The rest of you are laughing. She is calculating.
Later, laughter spilling into unfamiliar streets, there’s the friend with Google Maps open. Head turning left and right, glancing between the map and the street signs, recalibrating when someone suggests a shortcut. The rest of you are taking photos. She is navigating.
And then there’s the organiser. She didn’t just suggest the dates. She compared the flights. She checked the cancellation policies. She sent the reminders. She followed up with the ones who’d gone quiet in the group chat. She turned the group chat into an actual trip.
The rest of you arrived. She made it happen.
Of course, sometimes all these people are the same person.
The workplace runs on the same logic.
It’s mentioned at the end of a management meeting. Someone on the team is going on maternity leave. First baby. Exciting news. Everyone smiles. There’s warmth in the room.
We should definitely do something for her.
Why is it always cupcakes.
It’s said brightly, generously — the kind of suggestion no one could disagree with.
The idea is floated. No ownership is taken. And then it lands on a woman to organise it.
There’s no formal handover. No sentence that says, would you mind taking this on? It simply shifts direction mid-air and settles where it always seems to settle.
She sends the email. She coordinates the whip-round. She follows up with the ones who were very enthusiastic in the meeting and have done nothing since. She orders the card. She remembers to bring it in.
I don’t remember a man ever organising a maternity leave gift. But they’re often the ones to suggest it.
And this is the quiet part: no one thinks anything of it.
Because it feels natural. Because she’s good at it. Because she always does it.
Because it has long been understood — without being said — who will pick it up.
And then you get home.
There’s no bread.
The face looking at me as though a crime had been committed. By me. Was I meant to get the bread? I can’t remember being asked to pick it up. Was I meant to just know?
The realisation settled over me. I quietly added it to my mental list. The list nobody gave me. The list I apparently agreed to keep. “I’ll get some,” I reply — annoyed, resigned, and inexplicably guilty for something no one assigned.
It wasn’t about the bread. It was about how easily something becomes yours.
The wedding. It’s every woman’s dream to plan her wedding. Or is it? Was that a lie sold to us? Choosing the dress, perhaps. The flowers, maybe.
But no one talks about the spreadsheet of guest addresses you build from scratch, texting cousins for postcodes at midnight and adjusting the table plan three times because two people suddenly “can’t make it.” No one calls it fun when you’re chasing guests for their RSVPs after sending two reminders and a wedding website link that could not be clearer.
That part doesn’t make it onto the Pinterest board.
The gift buying. Not just for your family, but now for theirs. Remembering their mother’s birthday without being reminded. Knowing which niece is suddenly into dinosaurs and which one has moved on to ballet — and adjusting accordingly.
Noticing the wall that needs painting in the corridor. Scuff marks seem invisible to anyone but me. They’ve probably been there for months. I’m the only one who sees them. I’m also the only one who remembers the exact shade we used last time.
First, you seem to be the only one who notices your partner needs new clothes. Then they look at you, incredulous —
“I’ve had this coat for years.”
Yes. That’s the whole point.
Then it’s “I’ve nothing to wear to this wedding/interview/event,” and you feel a brief flicker of sympathy for your mother for how many times you once said the same thing.
No one announces it. There is no meeting, no agreement. It just accumulates — and one day you realise you are the one who notices, the one who remembers, the one who carries.
Not by decision. By accumulation.
Sure she doesn’t have children, so she probably could do it.
It’s usually said lightly. Practically. As if it’s generous. As if capacity lives neatly in the space where children don’t.
The assumption sounds reasonable on the surface. Of course the woman with three small children is stretched. Of course the woman without them must have more room. More time. More energy.
But that logic quietly skips a step.
It assumes the load is about children.
It ignores where the load actually came from.
Sure hasn’t she great flexibility. Hasn’t she great capacity. Sure hasn’t she all the time in the world.
I’ve seen how that assumption plays out. In hospitals, for example. A nurse approaches a bedside, greets the son visiting his mother, and then asks — does she have a daughter?
Not because daughters love their mothers more. Not because sons care less.
Because experience has taught her who will take the information home, make the calls, coordinate the appointments, rearrange work schedules, chase consultants, and follow through.
The son will visit. The daughter will manage.
Everyone in the room already knows who will carry it.
The assumption isn’t just wrong. It’s layered. It adds a second expectation on top of the first — that women without children must have reserves that women with children don’t. Spare time. Spare energy. Spare everything.
As if the load were created by children rather than by who is always expected to pick up what needs picking up.
Mental load is just a female tax that is levied on women with or without children. Children can often increase this tax bill.
The tax was already there.
Nobody called it a role. Nobody wrote it down. Nobody said — from now on, this is yours.
It began before the bread. Before the wedding. Before any of it.
The load didn’t begin when you had children. It began the first time something needed doing and someone looked at you.