Mom’s Rant About the Mental Load of Halloween is Scarily Relatable

Connell pointed out that compared to her Halloween experience as a kid, simply going out trick-or-treating, Halloween as a mom looks a whole heck of a lot different. She listed several taxing demands that Halloween requires of parents, such as:

• Helping your kids decide on a costume
• Making or purchasing a costume
• Being prepared if the kids change their minds about costumes (because we all know it happens)
• Signing up for various snacks and treats in the classroom and daycare parties
• Remembering to purchase or prepare said snacks or treats
• Organizing who can attend the classroom or daycare parties and costume parades
• Rearranging work that still has to be done because you had to take time off to attend the costume parade and party
• Packing costumes and dressing children for Halloween events
• Volunteering at classroom parties and community trunk-or-treats
• Fitting candy into the budget for trunk-or-treats or trick-or-treating
• Doing the work of actual Halloween night and trick-or-treating
• Managing the Halloween “hangover” the next day with young kids who are overtired and over-sugared

While not always the case, Connell noted that all of this very real work “disproportionately” falls to mothers.

Moms commenting on her video immediately agreed with her.

“Yes, costumes, candy, timetables, planning of all the events. My husband doesn’t even know what our kids are going as. I have done it all,” wrote one. 

A few commenters also pointed out that the mental load for modern-day mothers is much higher than it was for mothers parenting even 10 or 20 years ago. Back then, a pillow case, an old sheet, and letting kids loose in the neighborhood alone was perfectly acceptable. Today, Halloween is a month-long event, complete with multiple events, school parties, trunk-or-treats, and costume parades.

And of course, that’s before we even talk about all the other fall and Halloween events and activities, like visiting a pumpkin patch, carving or painting pumpkins, decorating the house, and hosting spooky movie nights.

The solution, says Connell, is not to tell moms to opt out of these things for their kids — because both the kids and their parents want them to have fun and participate fully — but simply to expect fathers to play an equal role in managing it all.

“Men can participate in making the holidays magical, because it is important for our kids to see us caring about their happiness,” she says.

Some critics want to tell mothers like Connell to stop “making a big deal” out of the holidays by focusing on the work involved. They accuse mothers who talk about the mental load of sucking the joy out of it, or complaining too much when everything they’re doing is a “choice.”

But Connell counteracts that argument with the simple fact that fathers are often praised for minimal involvement in holidays, like being lauded for wearing a costume to the kids’ classroom party or put on a pedestal for wrapping presents. Yet, no one ever praises mothers for working so hard to make the holidays magical for their kids.

Connell is a believer that noticing the very real work involved in making the holidays special for kids does not take away the magic; it simply acknowledges what is primarily invisible, exhausting work from mothers.

“It can be both things,” she states. “It can be work, it can be fun, it can be magical, but the holidays are here, and let’s remember that this work does not have to disproportionately fall to women.”