The Emotional Fatigue Of Being Needed Constantly By Your Family

My text alert goes off before I’m out of the driveway. It’s been 7.9 seconds since I left my husband and son, so something must be wrong. I imagine worst-case scenarios involving beds as trampolines, sprained body parts and glitter explosions. I check my phone. It’s a message from my husband.

“What should I have for lunch?” It’s 9:30 in the morning.

The next text from my 11-year-old reads: “When should I start my homework?” Huh. Life-or-death — not so much.

Still, the urgency behind their words doesn’t go unnoticed, and more messages fill my screen before I can finish typing my answers. Then my phone rings. My son needs help navigating a hitch in his friend group — and I haven’t even pulled out of the driveway.

Welcome to my day. I’m honored to be the go-to for my crew’s latest question or crisis, but the emotional fatigue from constantly being needed is already sitting heavy in my stomach, along with my morning coffee.

If this sounds like a normal morning in your life, then you know how it feels to carry the emotional load of your family. When it comes to household responsibilities, women perform far more cognitive and emotional labor than men, the BBC reported, citing outside research. Back in 1989, sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild first discussed the concept of emotional labor and how mothers take on the bulk of it in her book “The Second Shift.”

So, why are mothers still and always riding front and center on their family’s emotional rollercoaster?

Moms are still seen as the primary caregivers and emotional anchors in a family, Supatra Tovar, a clinical psychologist, confirmed.

“Even in families where responsibilities are more evenly divided, there’s often an unspoken expectation that mom is responsible for keeping track of and anticipating emotional needs,” Tovar said. This pattern has been culturally ingrained over generations.

And women themselves carry the expectation that they should bear the family’s emotional weight. “In families, there can be an internal belief for women that this is what they should do and what’s expected of them,” said Whitney Goodman, author and licensed psychotherapist.

This deeply embedded belief comes from many sources, including a person’s own parents, societal standards and social media. It guides behaviors and responses even when both parents are present.

Just as the mental load of…