Burnout is everywhere. It’s in the news. In the workplace. In our heads. If you spend your day working in any sort of fashion, chances are you’ve felt the effects of burnout like a bad water cooler joke. You have to laugh just to silence the sorrow resounding in your soul. But burnout does not exist solely in the conventional workplace. For parents, it is ever-present at home too. It’s called parental burnout because duh. And because as this Motherly article points out,
You don't have to be engaged in paid work to be burnt out. The unpaid work of parenting can take just as much of a toll as workplace stress.
Combine workplace burnout with parental burnout and...eesh, right? But why? Why are we all so done with everything right now? Why are we burning ourselves to the ground? And why are we all so damn tired all the time? Question mark, question mark, question mark. Question mark.
So many reasons. From inadequate parental leave to inflexible work schedules to the constant gong show that is our social media feed, it’s hard to NOT spiral down into a garbage heap of anxiety when you start thinking about all the reasons why you spend 95% of your time feeling like a burnt piece of toast. But just in case you’re not submerged in a flaming hot dumpster fire of emotions quite yet, here’s one more reason why you should be: most of us are trying to live up a picture of parental perfection that’s just. not. possible. Motherly notes:
...In the age of continuous parenting, when parents are spending more time with their children than previous generations did, parents are also expected to pretend as if they don't have children when they get to work in the morning and live up to an impossible standard of parenting in which life looks like a Pinterest board, every snack is organic and no one ever forgets their sunscreen.
That ol’ double standard sounds pretty familiar, doesn’t it? Especially to those who have lady parts. To be a woman worth her stripes in the today’s world, you are often expected to have kids and shower them with all the attention, spend all the money on them, do all the things for them and spend all the time with them. But also show up to work and perform your job to a level of perfection that suggests you don’t really have kids at all, which means you need to go to the office happy hour (or not be perceived as a team player) chip in for Rob from accounting’s birthday gift (or be perceived as unfriendly) make up the work you missed during happy hour after happy hour (or be perceived as uncommitted to your job) be assertive and informed but only in the right amounts (or be perceived as bitchy and difficult) and stay abreast of the latest fashion hair and makeup trends (or be perceive as “too old”). Oh, and don’t forget that as a modern female, it’s also your duty to close the wage gap, fight for equality, abolish violence in schools, cure global warming and generally make this world a better place for your kids...who you don’t really want anyone at work to know that you have.
The harder we try—and fail—at attaining the unattainable, the more we end up feeling neglected, which in turn causes us to neglect ourselves, which in turn causes us to neglect our offspring, which in turn causes our offspring to feel neglected and then we feel like shit because our kids feel like shit. So we try harder. And so it goes. Crash and burn. It seems burnout is a lot like being stuck in a revolving door. Even science agrees:
According to the new study…Parental burnout and neglect seem to have a circular relationship in which burnout leads to neglect which leads to further burnout. This makes parents feel worse and even more burnt out and traps them in a horrible cycle.
Alright. So, how did we get here and, more importantly, how do we get off of this crazy train? Well, society would tell us—mothers in particular—that in order to quell our burnout yet keep all of our household and workplace plates spinning, we simply need to make time for ourselves, right? Riiight. As if society wasn’t already a bit of a C U Next Tuesday with all the standards holds women captive with, she tells us that while we’re busy feeling spent from all the stuff we’re already doing, now we need to pencil “self care” into our calendars. Only self care will make us better humans, better women and better mothers.
The problem? Self care won’t pay my bills, scrub my toilet or drive my kids to school. Self care won’t do my job, get me to the meeting on time or tell my boss that I gotta stay home because my kid is sick. Again. Sure, self care might sound good, especially in the ears of those who are spouting its virtues like a ranting crazy man on the street corner of some small town somewhere, but it’s really an empty solution placed on the shoulders of those who are already time strapped. It’s just another contributing factor to our already burned out bodies and minds. Motherly says it best:
There is no bubble bath that will hush the constant underlying buzz of anxiety. There is no nap that will revive the energy poured into balancing a career with motherhood. There is no glass of wine that will ease the accumulating effect of all the ailments we "haven't had time to see a doctor about.
A to the (wo)men, sister. 🙏 🙏 🙏 Can we all just agree that society needs to just stop with the self care talk already? Nobody got time. It’s just another industry that wants to take more of what we have the least of: time and money. Don’t get me wrong. Massages, facials and pedicures feel fantastic. Wine is delicious. Buying a meditation app sounds like a super nice and even adult-ish thing to do. But why have we all agreed to operate under the illusion that self care is a commodity? Why are we buying the story that self care is yet another thing we have to get and do, not only to make ourselves be and feel better, but to make our families better too? Why do we continue to assume the role of the multi-tasking superburntouthuman?
Maybe—and hold on to your hats here—it’s time that society started taking better care of us instead. Maybe if we had better maternity leave, true work-life balance in all lines of work, better support for at-home mothers, a health care system that actually made sense, among a whole host of other things, maybe we would feel so burned out in the first place. Right, Motherly?
Society needs to take proactive steps to prevent parental burnout instead of expecting exhausted mothers to advocate for themselves and commit to self-care when they are already drowning in care work.
The thing is, society is basically like your spouse who puts the dishes on the counter ON TOP OF the dishwasher or the dirty clothes on the floor NEXT to the hamper—it’s not likely to get woke on taking care of mothers like they tell mothers (those who work both in and outside of the house) that they should take care of themselves (and everyone else) anytime soon. It’s going to place the burden juuust far enough away from itself to look good on the outside but be totally ineffective on the inside—it’s going keep putting it on us for a while. So what do we do with it? I honestly don’t know. But here’s what I do know: burnout isn’t going away (sorry) and the self care solution to burnout is as fake as your high school’s mean girls (not sorry). My advice? Stop trying to sit at their lunch table. Instead, start redrawing the lines of where the bullshit ends and your sanity begins, for yourself. If self care didn’t have to occupy a slot on your to-do list or a line item in your budget, what would it look like for you?
I think I’m just starting to figure out what it looks like for me. Here are 5 ways I drop burnout like it’s hot and take real, honest, attainable moments of self care.
1. Just say no. More and more, I’ve been trying to use this beautiful two-letter word without feeling bad about what I’m saying no to, provided that it’s not life threatening or anything. If it’s something I really don’t want to do, “no” is the answer. And then I watch Netflix.
2. Let everyone have desert. Despite my popular belief, deep down I know that a sweet piece of something isn’t going to deter my kids from being good humans—even if they didn’t eat their carrots. But it will earn me major brownie points and it’s one less dinner battle I need to fight for a night. Now, if I could just convince myself that a bowl of ice cream won’t instantly put 5 pounds around my waistline, I’d really be in business. But baby steps.
3. Turn the radio up. Or not. Because headphones are the international sign for, “Please leave me the fuck alone.” So when I’m at work, I often stick a pair of buds in—even if there’s not any music or podcast playing inside them—and watch as people approach and then recede away from me, approach and recede, just like the ocean’s waves. Ahhhh.
4. Give something away. Few things are as satisfying as grabbing something in my house that I hate or just can’t look at anymore—that plastic-dollar-store-birthday-gift-bag toy we parents insist on burdening each other with, my husband’s 2003 fantasy football trophy, that shirt I’ve been hanging on to since The Dave Matthews Band was cool. During my daily laps around my house, I simply snatch up said item on and either throw it in the garbage or start a giveaway box. Literally no one in my house will know it’s gone but me and don’t secrets feel good?!
5. Unsubscribe. Every once in a while, I’ll open some promo or marketing email in my inbox, scroll down, click “unsubscribe” and kill it. It’s like telling that really annoying person that you don’t want to see or hear from them again. Ever. Good day, sir. (But please don’t take this as a passive aggressive way to tell you how to unsubscribe me. That would be bad.)
Happy Friday, burnout bitches. 👊 👊 👊
Here’s to feeling slightly less crispy this weekend.
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