<!-- bryant-content-generator:start --> # In August 2026 the New York Times reported that... > In August 2026 the New York Times reported that couples are fighting over invisible household management badly enough that a market has appeared for mental-load coaches, one of them a self-described recovering man-child who now charges other husbands to learn what their wives have been holding in their heads; a research article this spring measured the mental-health and relationship damage of cognitive and emotional household labor; and the divorce threads run in one direction, with women describing a single sentence that ends marriages, _I am carrying another adult_, while the men underneath describe a single sentence of their own, _nothing I do is ever counted_. A recurring detail in the testimonies is the task stopped at eighty percent, the dishwasher loaded but not run, the laundry washed but not folded, the appointment agreed to but never scheduled, and the still more recurring confession, offered almost shyly by divorced women, that single motherhood turned out to be less work than the marriage had been. {{When a woman reports that raising the children alone is easier than raising them beside her husband, the husband was not a partner. He was a dependent with a salary.}} {{The mental load is the ledger of a household, and the fight is never about the chores. The fight is about who was made to hold the ledger and who arranged to be excused from it.}} **Source:** [[books/Chimping Out|Chimping Out]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “In August 2026 the New York Times reported that couples are fighting over invisible household management badly enough that a market has appeared for mental-load coaches, one of them a self-described recovering man-child who now charges other husbands to learn what their wives have been holding in their heads; a research article this spring measured the mental-health and relationship damage of cognitive and emotional household labor; and the divorce threads run in one direction, with women describing a single sentence that ends marriages, I am carrying another adult, while the men underneath describe a single sentence of their own, nothing I do is ever counted. A recurring detail in the testimonies is the task stopped at eighty percent, the dishwasher loaded but not run, the laundry washed but not folded, the appointment agreed to but never scheduled, and the still more recurring confession, offered almost shyly by divorced women, that single motherhood turned out to be less work than the marriage had been. When a woman reports that raising the children alone is easier than raising them beside her husband, the husband was not a partner. He was a dependent with a salary. The mental load is the ledger of a household, and the fight is never about the chores. The fight is about who was made to hold the ledger and who arranged to be excused from it.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-august-new-york-who-arranged-excused ``` <!-- bryant-content-generator:end -->