Stress in the Advent season: "The trick, ladies, is called Ausitzen"

She writes shopping lists, looks for spare clothes for the kindergarten, is taken unsolicited in parents WhatsApp groups, bakes waffles for the school festival and attends parents evenings. Even though many fathers today care much more about their children than before, most mothers manage the company family. It is they who keep track and think of every little thing, so many suffer from the so-called "mental load", the mental burden. Now, just before Christmas, many mothers rub themselves to exhaustion every year, after all, the advent season is the culmination of the family organization.

In the article "Advent, Advent, the mother runs" the SPIEGEL dedicated itself to this topic and asked readers to report on their experiences. The reactions are amazing:

• Many male readers disagree with the picture of the overloaded mother, they complain about an antiquated understanding of roles and sometimes even feel personally offended.
• Many readers write: "Very true." "Many thanks." Or: "The humorous article hits the nerve."

The male and female SPIEGEL readership does not seem to know each other, let alone mate. But men and women may also perceive extremely differently who does what in the household. Or - third possibility - maybe only emancipated men and overworked women responded to the article?

Woman at the stove, man in the office

In their emails, men describe how they get involved: "I see and feel my role in the household and in the family not as a 'supporter' or 'helper', but rather as a motor and putty," writes one man, but possible that is not without a common cloud calendar with the woman, without regularly renouncing friends and sports. Even a single father describes his everyday life, which logically includes everything that arises in family life.

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Such mails show that men can just as well take care of the area of ​​"family and the whole fuss" shaped by former chancellor Schröder like women - but hopefully no one seriously doubted that either.

The feedback from women, however, often suggests a very classic, cemented role model:

• "This mother has been running for 35 years for 5 children and a successful career, there are 21 years between the 1st and the last child, in which nothing has improved to my feminist fright GAR The family world works exactly as you describe it they have to provide children, careers and beauty these days. "
• "I'm a self-employed veterinarian, my partner is self-employed in the IT industry, doing 90 percent of housework, such as doing laundry, sorting, putting in and out of dishwashers, shopping, cleaning and cooking."

The majority writes - often resigned: She has arranged with the role as the sole family organizer. Even if the mothers take a break, they plan everything in advance for their absence.

Even more suffer from the women who have already developed physical symptoms due to the stress:

• "I myself am in a treadmill that I can not get out of after 10 years - despite 1.5 years of couples therapy - meanwhile I give myself over in the evenings - because everything gets too much for me. how my husband does nothing and still complains about the few moves. "
• Older women also responded: "I was the woman who was underweight because she simply forgot to eat, who was no longer sleeping, because the day and the restlessness of the day did not just settle down and developed the feelings of guilt and failure, because The day just did not have enough hours to meet all the requirements perfectly, I had long forgotten what it feels like to have needs, not have strength for something, or just not want to, I simply have not taken place, and always the feeling of not giving enough, nowhere to suffice. "

Does everything always have to be perfect?

Again and again, it's about the mental burden that women carry, because they all hold the strings in their hands, but also about the demands they place on themselves and the family - and especially on Christmas.

More on the topic - Arguing at Christmas

Christmas Better argue

Not only men write that one can hardly do it to some women and in the end they grab everything. Women also recognize the trap in which they tread with this behavior. "Just screw your own claims down," advises a reader. "Calm down!" and "Do not rush," write others. Advent calendars would only spoil the apartment, at Christmas you should just go out to eat, grab a raclette or ignore the party completely.

Why does everything have to be perfect? For Instagram? For whom is the five-course meal cooked? Do you want to prove to other women what you can do? Or do you do the whole effort for the children's eyes (which also shine with fries and a single LED candle)?

"Caught!" a reader writes, "We've had a bad fight over toast lately, so we're so eaten up by our role that at some point we really think nobody else gets it well enough."

When the environment is stressing

A reader writes that she stresses the environment more than the double burden. Many mothers know this: it is the reproachful looks of some kindergarten teachers when you pick up the child at the last minute, the confident looks of other mothers bringing the self-tipped fruit hedgehog for the school buffet, the horrified looks of relatives when a mother explains that she is on business for two days.

However, the real catalyst for mother overwork is neither careless men nor perfectionist women: our world of work has changed, but our children have not changed - they are still not growing big by themselves.

Most men also work full-time after starting a family. At the same time, the majority of women return to work at least part-time when the child is still a child. As a result, a mother who works 20 or 30 hours has more "free time" than the husband - and so she takes over the tasks that go along with the family organization.

The responses to the article show that it needs tools and tricks on how to better organize everyday life and distribute the mental burden on an equal footing. In the next article we will discuss what therapists and experts advise and what the policy has to do for parents.

Here are practical tips from readers:

"There are baked TK pretzels"

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