The Mental Load Working Mums Carry: Why It’s Not a Personal Failure (And How to Reduce It)

4 Mar

If you’ve ever thought:

“Why does this feel so relentless?”
“I’m doing everything right. So why am I still exhausted?”

You are not weak.
You are not inefficient.
You are not bad at coping.

And you are DEFINITELY not alone!

You are likely carrying the mental load working mums carry every day, and you have been running it so well that it has become invisible.

And when something becomes invisible, it becomes normal and we stop questioning it. We just carry on.

Why the Mental Load Feels Relentless for Working Mums

The mental load is not just tasks.

It’s the remembering.
The anticipating.
The tracking.
The noticing.
The emotional smoothing (and soothing!)

It’s knowing when the school trip form is due.
Remembering the birthday party gift.
Anticipating that your child might struggle with the next transition.

Remembering to update your expenses tracker
Sensing tension in your team and adjusting your tone in a meeting.

It runs constantly in the background of motherhood and career.

Most (I’d actually argue all) ambitious working mums are highly capable. Which is part of the problem.

Because when you’re capable, you pick things up.

And when you pick things up consistently, people assume you can carry them.

Over time, the invisible labour and emotional labour expand. Not because you volunteered for all of it. But because competence invites responsibility.

No one officially handed you the system.

You absorbed it.

Why the Mental Load in Motherhood and Career Often Goes Unseen

The mental load feels heavy not only because of volume, but because it is unseen and yes, when something is unseen, it often goes unacknowledged.

Including by you.

You might say:
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not that much.”
“I should be able to manage this.”

This is how ‘self-unkindness ‘becomes normalised.

Nothing newsworthy, just quiet minimising of your own effort.

Over time, that minimising becomes your baseline and you stop recognising the weight of what you are carrying. The thing is that if we’re not seeing something clearly enough, we can’t take steps to change it.

This is often where burnout begins. Not with an ‘out of the blue’ collapse, but with slow, invisible over functioning.

Making the Invisible Mental Load Visible

I want to share an exercise I developed to use in corporate settings and with ambitious working mums.

It’s all around bringing clarity to our mental load because when we do this, we can choose to do things differently.

Why this matters

We all carry responsibilities others can’t see, the mental to do list, the emotional labour not forgetting the logistics running constantly in the background.

These invisible tasks impact our wellbeing, productivity, and sense of fulfilment.

When we name them, we:

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Recognise our effort
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Reduce unnecessary guilt
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Communicate more clearly
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Invite support
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Or simply breathe
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This is about awareness, not judgement (or resenting those around you!). It’s about giving yourself the kindness of being seen, even if only by you.

A 5 Minute Reflection: What Are You Actually Carrying?

Use these categories to prompt your thinking.

Planning and Remembering

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Birthdays
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Appointments
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School forms and uniforms
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Childcare arrangements
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Groceries and meals
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Household and Domestic

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Cooking
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Laundry
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Cleaning or coordinating help
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Household admin
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Caring and Emotional Support

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Children’s emotional needs
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Elder care
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Supporting your partner
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Emotional support at work
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Work Related Invisible Load

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Informal mentoring
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Organising socials
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Being the go to support
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Extra meeting preparation
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Managing team dynamics
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Business Owner Invisible Load

For those building their own business, the mental load does not switch off.

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Pipeline tracking
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Cash flow forecasting
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Client delivery and emotional labour
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Content creation and marketing
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Tech troubleshooting
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Holding the long term vision
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Carrying financial responsibility
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When you run your own business, you are not just doing the work, you’re holding strategy, risk, reputation, and often, income stability for your family.

On paper it can look flexible and yes, great things can come from that (in fact I’m writing this after a boozy Friday lunch with some friends) though flexibility does not mean light.

You

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Rest and recovery
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Medical appointments
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Fitness and wellbeing
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Worries no one else sees
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Now take five minutes to:

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Jot down what you carry
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Mark what feels invisible to others
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Identify one thing you would like to make more visible

This is about awareness for you, there is no ‘task’ to share it though why don’t you use this as a point of reflection for your own situation. Is there anyone you’d like to share this with or even use it as a way to open up a conversation? What would you want to come from that?

I’d caution a word of advice here that if you do step into those conversations, think about your approach first as what you don’t want (I’m assuming here!) is it to turn into a resentment fuelled “I do everything, you do nothing” conversation and instead one that might lead to some shifts.

A More Sustainable Way for Working Mums to Carry Responsibility

Most of the women I work with are not looking to abandon responsibility.

They care deeply. About their children. their careers or businesses, their financial security, their teams.

HOWEVER, there is a difference between responsibility and over functioning. A difference between being capable and being the only one who sees what needs doing.

Self-kindness in this context does not look like spa days.

It looks like:

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Naming what you are carrying
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Stopping the automatic minimising
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Allowing yourself to adjust
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Inviting shared ownership where possible

The mental load is not proof you are failing at motherhood and career. It’s often proof you are competent in systems that were never designed to be carried alone.

You Do Not Need to Run the System Alone

In summary, the mental load working mums carry is not a personal flaw, It is often a system you have been running quietly, efficiently, and alone.

Capability without awareness turns into over functioning.

And over time, over functioning turns into burnout.

Making the invisible mental load visible is not about blame it’s about self-leadership.

It is about recognising the system you have been operating and deciding what still serves you and what you choose to change.

This is the work I do with ambitious working mums within Kindness For Success.

Not removing or hiding from responsibility but carrying it in a way that is sustainable. Because you don’t need to prove your worth through exhaustion and you don’t need to keep running invisible systems alone.

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About Kim: Supporting Working Mums to Build Sustainable Success

I’m Kim, a coach, working mum, former HR leader and founder of Kindness for Success. I support overwhelmed, ambitious working mums to reduce the mental load, redefine success on their own terms, and move from frantic to fulfilled, without sacrificing their wellbeing.

If you’d like to explore what your all could look like:

Kindness Kickstarter: a complimentary 60-minute 1:1 session, book HERE.

Frantic to Fulfilled: my small-group programme for mums ready to build sustainable success

You can also subscribe to The Kindness Chronicles, my newsletter for honest reflections and practical tools for modern working motherhood, with self-kindness at the heart.

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