What's on Melinda Wenner Moyer's mind?
The surprising upsides of sharing the mental load after divorce
Welcome back to The Daminger Dispatch! Today’s post kicks off a new series I’m calling What’s on Your Mind? in honor of my forthcoming book about the mental workload of family life (which you can preorder now!).1 In it, I’ll interview authors, academics, influencers, and other interesting folks about the to-do’s we don’t talk enough about. If you’d like to nominate someone—or yourself!—for an upcoming interview, please reach out.
To kick off this series, I’m thrilled to welcome Melinda Wenner Moyer, a journalist and author whose new book, Hello, Cruel World!: Science-Based Strategies for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times, came out earlier this week.
I used to read parenting advice voyeuristically, looking for research ideas and newsletter fodder. Now that I’m a parent myself, that same advice hits differently. Ideas that sound great in theory often stress me out: here’s one more thing I need to optimize, one more task I need to add to a mental list that has already lengthened exponentially.
Melinda is one of the rare parenting experts who doesn’t stress me out, because she’s often suggesting that I can actually stop trying to parent more intensively. As she wrote in a newsletter earlier this week:
In today’s intensive parenting culture, we’re told to put our kids first in so many ways, and some of these cultural expectations are unnecessary and even, frankly, harmful. Both for us and our kids. I wrote Hello, Cruel World! to cut through the intensive parenting noise and help parents understand what the research really says about how to raise kids who can survive and thrive in this rapidly changing world. Because often, it doesn’t align with what we’re being told.
Amen! Read on to learn more about how Melinda handles the mental labor of parenting (kids and pets!) with her ex and why camp forms are currently the bane of her existence.
Who do you carry mental load for – and who do you share it with?
I carry the caregiving mental load for my two kids — my 10-year-old daughter and my 14-year-old son. I share it with my husband. We separated last August; I have 60 percent custody, while he has them the other 40 percent of the time. It’s been amicable.
I carry the mental load for taking care of my 5-year-old rescue dog, Ozzy, too. During my marriage, this mental labor was shared with my husband, but when he moved out, Ozzy’s care primarily became my responsibility. (My ex still pays for half of the vet costs, and takes him occasionally when I travel, but everything else is on me.)
I also now carry the mental load of the various tasks and finances associated with home ownership. This used to be shared with my ex.
What tasks, issues, or problems are occupying your mental real estate these days?
I am worrying a lot about finances right now, because separation is expensive! Even though my ex and I separated through mediation (rather than going to court), there are still a lot of costs — mediation, lawyers, and now paying for a mortgage and house maintenance by myself. We also separated right after finishing a home renovation, which was of course costly and has increased my property taxes and property insurance costs. I’m also in the process of trying to officially “assume” my home mortgage — to take my ex off the mortgage and deed — which is a process that involves a lot of paperwork and planning.
I’m a freelance writer, and my income fluctuates, which feels scary. In some ways it’s nice because it feels like my income is somewhat in my control (the more stories I pitch and assignments I accept, the more money I can make, in theory) yet it’s also not really in my control (assignments still end up being decided by editors, not me). So it can all feel a little unsettling.
I have a book coming out this week, too, so that’s also occupying quite a bit of mental real estate! It’s called Hello, Cruel World!: Science-Based Strategies for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times. It’s a book that digs deep into the science of what parents can do to help nurture key skills in their kids, including resilience, self-compassion, empathy, curiosity, open-mindedness, media literacy, and financial literacy. It just got a great review in New Scientist magazine.
Right now I’m deep in book publicity, which involves recording a lot of podcasts, TV and radio interviews, doing in-person events, pitching the book to outlets I hope will cover it, and more. There are so many publicity related decisions that take up mental real estate, too — what should I wear to each event? Which ones should I say yes to, and which ones should I decline? What other producers should I reach out to? Etc. And there’s the mental load of planning and writing my Substack parenting newsletter, which I’m trying to keep up with during the book launch, too.
If you could find a way to offload one mental labor task (or category of tasks) to someone or to some tool/service – and, critically, you knew it would be handled well - what would you most like to let go of?
I think this is only because it’s spring and I’m steeped in them, but CAMP FORMS. Especially the ones you have to get signed by your pediatrician. I hate them so much!!! I understand why they are needed, but sometimes they feel redundant.
Meal planning would be up there, too. I do not love deciding what to cook every week and buying all the ingredients.
What’s one mental labor task (or category of tasks) that you’d want to hold onto, even if you had the opportunity to let it go?
I realized recently that one aspect of travel planning that I always like to “own” is planning where we will stay. I’m quite particular about space, location and design, and I really enjoy hunting around for our home base! It gets me excited for the trip. I do not like planning out itineraries, though….. That I’m always happy to hand over to others. I think that’s in part because it’s hard for me to weigh everyone’s interests and inclinations. I want to please everyone all the time (hello, gender socialization) and that’s impossible.
Do you feel like your current division of mental labor matches your ideal? If not, what are the biggest obstacles to reaching that ideal?
It’s been so interesting to experience the shift in the division and experience of mental labor that comes with marital separation. When we were together, my husband and I both worked, but he worked outside the home, with a long commute so he was gone long hours, and I worked at home, with more flexibility. So I always handled a lot of the mental labor, and much of physical caregiving labor too. He would try to pick up some extra labor in the evenings and on the weekends, but he also had a lot of exercise-related hobbies that took him out of the house on the weekends. It was a lot, and there was a build-up of resentment over time on my end.
Things have changed a lot since we separated. I still have the kids 60 percent of the time, so I definitely carry a lot of mental labor. But when they are at their dad’s, it essentially disappears. I don’t really know what they are up to (unless they tell me), so all the planning and logistics are out of my hands. It’s really, really nice (and sometimes, honestly, a little weird! It can be hard to let go!). I also don’t find the solo parenting time, when I have the kids, to be particularly difficult, because I was so used to doing most of the caregiving anyway. And I’ve noticed that my ex has offered to take on more parenting-related tasks now that we’ve separated. He offered to do most of the camp forms this year, for instance. It feels much more evenly split. But there are also other areas where I’m definitely carrying more mental labor. Like with travel planning: My ex used to always plan our itineraries, and now, when I travel with my kids, that’s up to me (although my kids are starting to help!).
I think perhaps the most wonderful shift is that there’s no more resentment. When I have the kids by myself, I don’t feel frustrated that I’m doing all the work — it’s just the way it is, as I’m the only adult there. All the marital resentment is gone — that feeling of “I wish my partner were more involved and present ” — and it’s very emotionally freeing.
What are your favorite tools or techniques for managing household logistics with your partner (or whoever else you share the load with)?
We use shared Notes a lot to keep track of tasks and other shared information. And we use our Google calendars (and app Fantastical) for scheduling. All the custody details — who has the kids, when switchovers happen, who drives where, etc — are on the shared calendar, as well as all kid-related events and appointments. We do a lot of dividing and conquering, too, where he’ll say “I’ll do A, B and C forms for school, if you can do X, Y and Z.” It feels fair, and like the division of labor is pretty equal. And we text a lot, too.
I’ve also been inspired by other Substack authors who ask lots of people the same questions about their paid work, their home life, or how the two intersect. Somehow it remains interesting time after time, perhaps because everyone puts their own spin on the prompts. If you, too, like this sort of thing, I recommend checking out Nancy Reddy’s “Good Creatures” series (about the intersection of caregiving and creative work) and Lindsey Stanberry’s “Division of Labor” series (featuring a day-in-the-life of an interesting person or couple, including how they handle chores). Anne Helen Petersen has also started an occasional feature along these lines, focused on how people manage their work lives. If you know of others in this vein, let me know - I live for this stuff!