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Episode 9

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Published on:

27th Jun 2024

Weaponized Incompetence - Hot Take

The mental load and weaponized incompetence.

In this hot take, Katlynn discusses what weaponized incompetence looks like after women have been gone for a short or extended period of time from their homes.

When we leave our home whether to travel for work or for time away for a little bit of self care, it's unfair to come home to a messy house and kids that are completely off schedule.

Why is it that when we're out of town our husbands get to parent like they're in survival mode? But when we're home alone for anything length of time, we're failures if we aren't maintaining the standards.

Here's they hypothesis: women know they will be judged on the state of their house and parenting when they have to do it solo whereas men don't know they have the privilege of being free from that judgement.

Is it nature or nurture? Probably a bit of both when it comes to housekeeping. Men weren't raised to care about it and they may also come from households where that wasn't the vibe or priority. But, the thing is, if your partner has expressed how much they need the household to be maintained in order to move smoothly throughout their day and you simply choose not to do it? That's weaponized incompetence. As adults we are all capable of learning; we do it all the time in our jobs, so by you opting out of learning how to support your partner, that's a clear sign of opting out of supporting them.

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About the Podcast

The Mental Load
Breaking a generational cycle to create equal households
Two millennial moms explore the mental load. Here’s the deal, we’re the first generation of women who saw both of our parents work outside the home. And, because kids are oblivious to how much work it takes to actually raise them, we naturally assumed that our parents split everything else it took to run our households. Then we grew up, got married and were like what the f***? You know this conversation. You probably have it with your mom friends all the time. It’s your never ending to-do list. The perception that you’re the household manager and keeper of all the stuff and the things. The mental load is so much more complex than delegating out chores and duties or telling women to practice “self care” or “take a day off”. We don’t want a day off, we want husbands who are more “switched on” throughout the day. How do we have this conversation in our household? What systems keep the mental load in place? Why does the mental load even exist? We’re here to explore all of these topics and really dig into the small and large changes that need to happen in order to better support women and therefore, families in America.
And we’re here to bring this conversation to the forefront and help break a generational cycle so that as we raise girls AND boys, they know what it means to truly have an equal household.

About your host

Profile picture for Katlynn Pyatt

Katlynn Pyatt

Hi! I'm Katlynn. I'm a mom of three kids: Hudson, Nora and Willa. I might be biased, but they're pretty amazing kids. I'm super proud of myself for making them! I also have a very loving and supportive husband, Eric.

I'm a marketer from 9-5 but a creative soul all day every day. I love painting with watercolor, sitting on the porch watching the sunrise and meditating. I've always loved to talk, so podcasting is a natural fit for me and over the past year, I've spent a lot of time diving in to mindset and manifestation work. It's changed my outlook on life and made me a lot less high strung.

When I'm not wearing my mom, marketing or spouse hat, I enjoy exercising. Sometimes I'm motivated enough to look like a snack. Other times, I just like eating snacks.