I’d rather drop the balls myself

Last week, my partner and I performed a familiar ritual of modern co-parenting: I told him that I felt overburdened by mental labor, and we made a plan to adjust. The logistical work of managing our kids’ lives has recently ramped up steeply, and while we’d been sharing the hands-on work equally, a lot of the ramping up had fallen into the category of family managerial work that can get out of whack without anyone meaning to shirk or to let-shirk. The challenge, of course, is that managing and feeling responsible are often invisible. But there’s more to it than that: You could easily miss that you’re not doing a full half of the managing and feeling responsible because even without doing a full half, you are still doing a lot of managing and feeling responsible! There’s just so much to think about, keep track of, and hope to avoid fucking up. It’s a challenge for even two earnest people to tend to it all with enough time left over to just enjoy the adventure of living with and raising…