The Mental Load // Why Summer Holidays Hit Working Mums Hardest

Ask any working mother what summer holidays actually feel like and you'll rarely hear "relaxing." You'll hear about the six weeks of camp logistics booked back in March, the constant renegotiation of who's covering which afternoon, and the quiet exhaustion of running a household's entire schedule in your head while still showing up fully for your job. This is the mental load, and summer turns the volume up on it more than almost any other time of year.

It's not the childcare itself, it's the managing of it

Most working mums aren't struggling with the actual hours of childcare, they've usually got camps, grandparents, or help in place. What wears people down is the invisible admin sitting behind it all: remembering which day needs a packed lunch, which camp needs a permission slip, whose swimming kit is still in the wash, and holding all of that alongside a full work calendar. It's coordination fatigue as much as anything, and it rarely shows up as a single big task you can tick off, it's dozens of small ones that never quite stop.

Why it lands disproportionately on women

Even in households where both partners work full time, research consistently shows women carry a larger share of this invisible planning, regardless of how equally the physical tasks are split. It's often described as being the "default parent," the one whose brain is quietly running the household's operating system even during a work call. Recognising this pattern for what it is, rather than a personal failure to cope better, is often the first real relief people describe.

Small shifts that genuinely help

Moving logistics out of your head and into a shared, visible system, a family calendar both partners actually check, a running list on the fridge, does more than any single "get organised" tip. Even more useful is explicitly handing over entire categories, not just tasks, but ownership. "You own booking and packing for swim camp" creates far less mental residue than "can you help with the swim camp stuff this week," which usually just adds you to the list of things you're still tracking.

It's fine to lower the summer bar

A huge amount of summer mental load comes from an unspoken pressure to make the holidays feel magical, curated activities, days out, memories in the making. Most kids remember the feeling of a relaxed summer far more than they remember the itinerary. Giving yourself permission to have genuinely quiet, unplanned days, without guilt, is one of the most protective things you can do for your own capacity to get through the season.

If summer holidays leave you more depleted than a normal working week, that's not a sign you're managing things badly. It's a sign you're carrying a significant, largely invisible workload on top of your actual job, and that deserves to be named, shared, and occasionally, simply set down.