Why Re-Delegating Chores to Kids Creates Mental Load

The Mental Load

When husbands pass chores off to their kids it creates more mental load for women.

In today's hot take, Katlynn discusses why passing the buck on chores might seem helpful and like husband's are teaching kids a lesson, but it really just keeps the mental load in place.

More and more, men are realizing and becoming aware of the need to lighten the mental load in their households. Especially when it comes to daily chores and tasks. A new trend we've noticed emerging however, is that, when men are asked to do a task or chore, instead of taking it on, they re-delegate or pass the buck, to their kids.

Here's how it plays out:

Husband: deep fries chicken for dinner (yum!)

Wife: can you clean up the grease off the stove before bed?

Husband to oldest child: go clean up the stove for your mom

Mom: has to supervise cleaning of grease

The problem with re-delegating chores to kids is twofold:

1. It sends the message to kids that they can get out of doing household labor by simply passing off the work to someone in the house with less authority than them.
2. It doesn't actually eliminate the mental load - it forces women to re-acquire the mental load by either having to supervise or teach a new skill instead of focusing on what they originally set out to do by asking for their husbands to take on the task.

Passing the buck doesn't help the mental load, it creates more or at the very least, keeps it in place.