Parents Aren’t Doing It All. We’re Just Damn Good at Deciding What Matters.
Parents are not doing it all.
We’re just damn good at being decisive and prioritizing efficiently.
And if that annoys you, I get it. Because from the outside, it can look like parents are thriving. Like we’ve cracked some secret productivity code. Like we’re out here “having it all” with a label maker and a color-coded calendar.
That’s not what’s happening.
People without kids already feel like they don’t have time to do it all. They feel behind, overwhelmed, stretched. So no, parents aren’t magically doing more life in the same 24 hours.
We’re just making ruthless choices. Constantly.
Also, quick reminder: tomorrow is Spirit Day. Nobody told you until 9:47 p.m. The theme is “Dress Like Your Favorite Artist.” You have one sock, a glue stick, and a vague sense of doom.
Parents Aren’t Doing It All. We’re Triaging.
If you’re a parent, you’re running constant prioritization math with imperfect information and zero margin.
Not “balancing it all.” Not “having it together.” More like:
deciding what can slide without consequences
doing the urgent thing over the meaningful thing (again)
keeping the wheels on, even if the rest is chaos
choosing the minimum viable version of ten things so you can show up fully for one
This isn’t laziness. It isn’t a lack of discipline. It’s not you being “bad at managing life.”
It’s triage.
And if that sounds dramatic, you’re probably not the one who has to figure out:
how to make dinner out of vibes and one questionable zucchini
whether a “slightly sore throat” is a normal day or the beginning of a household plague
why a school form requires printing in the year 2026
The Mental Load Is Not Just Tasks. It’s Decisions.
When people talk about the mental load, they picture a long to-do list.
But the mental load is bigger than tasks. It’s the nonstop decision-making behind the tasks.
It’s:
noticing what needs to happen
predicting what will break if it doesn’t
choosing what to do first
remembering constraints (time, money, energy, school rules, social expectations)
coordinating the who/when/where
following up so it actually happens
And most of it is invisible. It lives in your head until it leaks out as stress, irritability, or that familiar feeling of: I cannot take in one more piece of information.
This is why parenting can feel exhausting even when you “didn’t do that much.” Because you weren’t just doing. You were deciding.
Why Parents Get So Good at Prioritizing
Kids don’t just add “more.” They add complexity.
More inputs. More deadlines. More dependencies. More people relying on you. More curveballs.
A single day can include:
a school email with hidden urgency
a last-minute schedule change
a kid who is sick but “not sick enough” to stay home (until they are)
a work meeting that can’t move
an activity that requires a specific item you do not own
a form that must be printed, signed, scanned, and returned (again: why)
So parents adapt.
You get fast at pattern recognition. You learn what’s noise and what’s a landmine. You become efficient at making calls with incomplete information. You learn to cut corners strategically.
That’s not “doing it all.”
That’s executive functioning under pressure. That’s cognitive load management. That’s “I can hear the dishwasher beeping from three rooms away and I know exactly what that means for the rest of the evening.”
The “Doing It All” Myth Is a Trap (and it’s not even flattering)
The line “parents do it all” is usually meant as praise. But it creates an impossible standard.
If the story is “good parents do it all,” then anything you don’t do starts to feel like a moral failing.
But the reality is: nobody is doing it all.
Everyone is dropping balls.
Parents are just dropping them on purpose.
We learn quickly which balls are rubber and which ones are glass. Then we try to keep the glass ones in the air while someone requests a snack they do not want, made with ingredients you do not have, served in the wrong bowl.
Decision Fatigue Is Real (and it explains a lot)
Parents often feel exhausted even on days when they “didn’t do that much.”
That’s because the work wasn’t just physical tasks. It was cognitive load.
It was constant evaluation:
What matters most right now?
What can wait?
What will bite me later?
What requires a response today?
What is the simplest version that still counts?
When you make that many decisions, your brain burns fuel. That’s why parenting stress can feel so intense. That’s why small interruptions can feel enormous. That’s why you can snap, then feel guilty, then snap again.
It’s not because you’re broken.
It’s because you’re operating at decision capacity.
A More Honest Definition of “Success” as a Parent
Parents aren’t doing it all.
We’re doing:
the most important thing
the most urgent thing
the thing only we can do
and whatever prevents tomorrow from being worse
Everything else becomes “later.” And sometimes later never comes.
That doesn’t mean you failed.
It means you prioritized.
Parenting Is Not the Problem. The Admin Is.
Parenting is messy and human and unpredictable. That part is normal.
What’s not normal is the endless operational drag wrapped around it.
The school systems with too many portals. The apps. The registrations that open at 9:00 a.m. on a Tuesday like nobody has jobs. The paperwork. The coordination. The expectation that a parent has the time, attention, and emotional energy to be the family operations manager 24/7.
Overwhelm is often a systems problem, not a character flaw.
How to Reduce the Mental Load (without becoming a robot)
This isn’t about hustling harder. It’s about reducing the number of decisions you have to make.
1) Identify repeat decisions
If you decide the same thing every day (lunch, clothes, after-school plan), simplify it.
2) Turn choices into defaults
Defaults reduce cognitive load. Pick a “good enough” routine and let it run.
3) Share the tracking, not just the doing
A partner doing a task helps. A partner owning the tracking helps more.
4) Use tools that reduce steps, not add steps
If a tool requires more input than it saves, it becomes another job.
Your life doesn’t need another dashboard. It needs fewer tabs open in your brain.
Why this matters
When we pretend parents are “doing it all,” we normalize a workload that isn’t sustainable.
Parents don’t need more pressure to optimize. We need more support, better systems, and fewer unnecessary decisions.
Because the goal is not to become an even better family project manager.
The goal is less brain clutter. Less invisible labor. More room for the good stuff.
