He didn't even know where the dog food was.
The moment I realized I was complicit in my own overwhelm as the default parent...
I’ve been thinking so much lately about just how much I manage for my family.
I am the default for everything.
Here’s a perfect example. It was maybe six months after we got our labradoodle, George. I wasn’t home to feed him dinner and I called my husband to ask him to do it.
I had to tell him not just how much food to give him.
I had to tell him where we kept the food.
He didn’t even know where we kept the food.
And I want to be really clear about something, because this is the part that took me a while to sit with: that wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t a reflection of him being lazy or checked out or unwilling. It was the completely logical outcome of me letting every single responsibility for that animal fall entirely to me. My family had been trained — by me — to expect that I was going to handle it. And because everything was handled, it wasn’t registering as a problem for anyone. If he doesn’t see a problem, it genuinely isn’t an issue that needs his attention.
The box is checked. Mom’s got it.
That is what it means to be the default parent. Not the one who does the most. The one everyone assumes will handle it.
For years, my way of dealing with this was to make excuses for everyone. It was just quicker if I did it. The kids were already so busy. I told myself I could routine my way out of the overwhelm if I just found the right system, the right chore chart, the right approach.
I made those excuses for a long time. Until the resentment started to build.
For me, resentment is always the signal that something needs to change. Not a crisis. Not a blowup. Just a slow, quiet accumulation of moments where I looked around and realized I was the only one keeping count.
When I finally got honest about it, I realized the problem wasn’t the tasks. It was that I had been complicit in defining my role as the person who does all the things. It was a coping mechanism that worked for a long time — until it didn’t. And no system or chore chart was ever going to fix that, because the problem was never organizational. It was that I had stopped being a person and turned myself into a function.
The real change wasn’t going to come from a better plan. It was going to come from deciding to stop being the default.
That is easier to say than to do.
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With my kids at 10 and 12 now, I am genuinely in the messy middle of redistributing the load. Not the ideal version — the real one. The version where it takes five days for someone to clean up the laundry basket they dumped out in my closet, and I wait without nagging because I said I would wait, and eventually they handle it. The version where I leave the kitchen a mess on purpose sometimes because I have learned that when something is visible and unhandled, my husband will step in. The version where on weekends, picking up the yard and walking the dog is the kids’ job — not my ask, not my reminder, their job.
It is slower. It is more uncomfortable. There are days when it would genuinely be faster to just do it myself.
But default parent burnout is real, and I have lived it — not as a breakdown but as a slow, quiet drain on everything I actually wanted to be present for. And I did not come here to be the most efficient person in the house. I came here to have a life alongside the people I am building it with.
So I am making the trade. Short-term efficiency for long-term shift.
And in the space that is slowly opening up — the time I am not spending managing every single detail — that is where I am finding myself again.
If you are moving through your day feeling the low hum of resentment about how much you are carrying, I just want you to know it is normal. And you are not alone in it.
Before you reach for a solution, just try this first: get curious.
What is one thing on your plate right now — not because anyone assigned it to you, but just because it always has been?
That question is usually where it starts.
Talk soon,
Erin
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