"So lucky": the truth about neurodivergent motherhood and domestic life

What executive dysfunction looks like under patriarchy—and why botching the “wife job” doesn’t make you a failure

If ruminating were an Olympic sport, I’d go undefeated. This is not a humble-brag—it’s devastating to think about how much of my wild, precious life I’ve spent over-thinking. It’s a waste of time and energy. But it’s how I’m wired.

My husband is wired differently and generally lives in the moment. One Saturday we were in Perth visiting his parents, and he announced he was going to start packing to go home. I was confused because we were planning to stay put til Monday. But I’m regularly confused by David’s home-making instincts, so when he asked me if there was anything I still needed, I listed the items.

Since we had two full days of things to do, I still needed a bunch of stuff. (We worked out later that David thought it was Sunday—that we were leaving ‘tomorrow’ and the question was moot). So I listed everything I would need for the next two days. I looked up to see my mother-in-law gazing at me meaningfully.

‘You’re very lucky,’ she said.

Photo by Dustin Humes on Unsplash

My instinct when something like this happens is sarcasm. ‘I’m very lucky my husband is packing our bags one day into a three day trip?’ But this time David (who values his life and knows his wife very well) interjected: ‘We’re both lucky’.

I have a lot of feelings about the implication that I’m lucky my husband takes more than a passing interest in parenting and caring for our family. They are thus:

1. This isn’t luck. I married a man who believes—as I do—that raising a family is a shared job. Neither of us believes I should be taking sole responsibility for child rearing and I knew that before we had a child together. If, when we’d discussed it before marriage, David showed a hankering for a marriage with traditional gender roles, I wouldn’t have married him.

2. Also, we’re not leaving for two days. I’m lucky because my shit’s all going to be packed away for the rest of the trip so I have to live out of a bag, hobo style? Why doesn’t this man know what day it is?

3. Deep down, I feel judged. Because when she uses the word lucky, my brain hears ‘you don’t deserve this’.

Packing two days early aside, I’m grateful that David does so much in our partnership. Of course I’m grateful. And I guess I do wonder whether I deserve it—which is sad. So when my mother-in-law says ‘you’re so lucky,’ I wonder if she means:

• You should be doing this yourself

• You’re not looking after your husband

• I wish I didn’t have to look after my husband

• I wish I didn’t have to do everything myself

Born in 1941 and 1929 respectively, my in-laws’ relationship is based on ‘traditional’ gender roles. David’s father worked and the home was his mother’s domain. This remained the case even when she was also in paid employment.

My parents had a very different set up. They both worked full time and it seemed (to me) like there was a fair division of labour. I grew up seeing both parents cook, do laundry, keep the house in order, and care for my brother and me. This is the setup that feels normal to me.

Before David and I had kids, he did most of the cooking in our relationship. I’ve never loved cooking and the executive functioning that goes along with it. When Henry came along, I remember thinking it was a bit much to expect David to keep up full cooking duties when I was home all the time. But deciding what to eat, procuring the ingredients, and actually turning them into a meal was such a strain on my baby-addled brain.

I started meal planning, but would go to the shop and come back with nothing but the ingredients I needed for the planned dinners. It never occurred to me to see what else we needed (you know, for other meals). When David innocently asked ‘Did you get yogourt?’ I’d hear ‘You’re not a real grown up.’

I felt like a bad adult. Like I was letting the team down. Like I should be able to do this. And the thing that upset me the most was this: I felt like a bad woman because I couldn’t hold and handle all the excruciatingly boring tasks society had allocated to me, the stay at home parent.

Meanwhile, every skerrick of my brain power was dedicated to getting Henry to fall asleep. Leaving the house for any reason meant gathering the baby detritus into the car, worrying that he might fall asleep on the way, finding things in the grocery store (an impossible task), and getting home.

I didn’t know when to start cooking. I didn’t know when Henry was going to be asleep. I worried the cooking smells would wake him. I worried that having onion on my hands would irritate his skin. I worried I’d miss a step. I’d worry and worry and worry. I’d realize halfway through that some essential ingredient remained on the supermarket shelf. I’d practically collapse into myself with shame. I’d Google a substitution and maybe we’d have it.

An hour before David was due, I’d put Henry in the carrier and go for a walk. Most nights, I’d be waiting for David on our driveway when he got home. Always smiling. Always so happy to see us. I’d often be teary after the dinner debacle, and he’d say ‘hi honey. Thank you for taking care of our boy today’.

I wish we didn’t live in a world where a woman has to feel lucky when her partner—the person who chose to make a home and a baby with her—was appreciative and engaged. I wish I didn’t feel like a failure because the tasks traditionally allocated to the wife character are outside of my zone of genius. I wish we weren’t the first generation to raise the parenting standard for men from literally donating sperm to actual fathering.

I survive as a neurodivergent mother because my husband and I contribute to our household equally. Neither of us considers child raising and home management my job alone. If we did, the wheels would have fallen off a whole lot earlier.

The misdiagnosis of it all

Like many women, it took me years to be diagnosed with ADHD. And it happened completely by accident. After a decade of stomach issues, I made an appointment with my friend’s brother—a GP. During our first appointment, I told him about my history. He asked about my stomach problems, as well as the anxiety I was diagnosed with after having kids. He asked me to describe it and I described feeling ‘really overwhelmed and overstimulated.’ It felt like I was under siege.

At this point, I’d already been a parent for TEN YEARS. Sometimes I imagine turning back the clock to 2013, when I went to the doctor as the mum of a one-year-old. At the time, I owned a business, we were building a house, I was struggling with disordered eating and over-exercising, and my toddler was being treated for hip dysplasia.

I’m not saying the doctor wasn’t compassionate. She was. But I left the appointment with an anxiety diagnosis and a prescription for medication. Over the next 10 years, I repeatedly asked if there was anything else we could consider. I’d been taking anxiety meds for ages and it didn’t seem to be helping. On top of that, I developed a sneaking suspicion that I wasn’t actually anxious. After Will was born, I asked a male doctor whether it was possible I had something other than anxiety and he asked ‘have you tried yoga?’

YOGA.

As women and mothers, we don’t have the luxury of collapsing. So I masked my struggles out of shame and created strategies to work around Autism and ADHD. And they worked—until they didn't. After my second child came along, the demands exceeded my ability to work around them.

Getting help took a doctor listening to me, believing me, and spending extra time with me. That doctor referred me to a psychiatrist who understood ADHD in women. He made sure I got in to see the psychiatrist in a timely manner. He told me ‘when your strategies stop working and things fall apart, it’s distressing. But there are so many things we can do to help you”.

Gender roles rules

In case I haven’t made this clear—my husband is better at adulting than I am. When Henry was eight months old, David spent four months as the primary carer. He kept us all fed and watered and wasn’t falling apart and ruminating on traditional gender roles. He never—not once—met me at the end of our driveway in tears when I got home from work.

Somehow, he planned meals and shopped for them. Somehow, he knew when we needed yogurt and when we were out of lentils. I’d marvel at his ability to look after the baby and also accomplish other things??! He could go to run errands, tidy up the garden, and get stuff for a party on the weekend. And he did it all without questioning his worth, his intelligence, and his place in the world.

Meanwhile, I was paralyzed with worry that our son would be poisoned by toxic masculinity. I was angry that my body was ravaged by childbirth. When Henry slept, I laid awake reexamining a social interaction I’d had, Googling ‘can a baby die if they barf too much?’ or—later—obsessively tracking my daily calorie intake.

Writing for The Guardian, Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett observes:

‘It does not do to be too intelligent about motherhood. It undermines a deeply held notion that it is the preserve of instinct, that mothers dwell in a place of ingrained nurturing, and that to critique it is unnatural’ (Cosslett, 2022).

If relentless tasks are motherhood and motherhood is natural, what does that say about me?

If I rail against the patriarchal system that thinks I should thank my lucky stars that I have a supportive husband and an equal partnership, I’m dismissed as a raging feminist—someone who thinks about this stuff too much. If I point out how thankless and boring parenting is, I’m ungrateful. If I prioritise my own goals, I’m selfish.

Intellectually, I know it’s a privilege to have spent so much time thinking about toxic masculinity, infant massage classes, playgroups, and the feminist implications of parenting. Our family’s physiological and social needs were being met. I never had to worry about where our next meal was coming from. Or whether I had enough money to put fuel in the car. Or whether my husband would murder me.

But (also intellectually) I knew the expectations placed on me were unnatural. Sure, I felt an ingrained propensity to nurture my baby. But I also felt an ingrained need to do…other stuff. After giving up my entire pelvic floor I couldn't—wouldn’t—give up the understanding I felt in my bones:

What we’re trying to do isn’t possible. We’re being set up to fail. This system is made to sideline women. And it’s been working this way forever.

#notallmen

The bottom line is this: women and girls are stuck negotiating a societal system that wasn’t made to elevate them. We only have to look at the pervasive gender pay gap, staggering levels of violence against women, and treatment of women in the media to know that.

Thanks to the patriarchy, neurodivergent women often find themselves managing all of the executive functioning in a family, while also living in a body that is less likely to be diagnosed. Lots of people find discussion of the patriarchy #triggering, but facts are facts. I can’t imagine you’d still be reading if you didn’t already accept this, but a patriarchy is a system of government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it. Naturally, it privileges masculinity and subordinates women, non-binary people, and men who don’t conform to masculine ideals. In terms of identity, the further a person deviates from the “ideal” white man, the more marginalized they become.

Sure, things have gotten better. But patriarchal ideology colonised the whole world—and it is sustained through cultural, institutional, and social norms that perpetuate male dominance. #notallmen, of course.

A brief history of patriarchy

The patriarchy is based on strict humanist ideas, which work to categorise people and things. In fact, the whole point of humanism is defining that ‘single, unique factor’ that lets us identify someone or something and ‘group it with others of its kind’ (St. Pierre & Pillow, 2000). It’s what makes us put people into Mean Girls style groups: the Art Freaks, Band Geeks, Mathletes, Unfriendly Black Hotties, Nerdy Asians, Cool Asians, JV Jocks, and Plastics represent the perfect modern understanding of humanism.

Humanist categories soon became rules that covered all of the important parts of human life. According to Michel Foucault (aka. The Grandaddy of Discourse Analysis), this included rules about language, reason, knowledge, discourse, power and truth. As rules tend to be, they are rigid and always tied to a value judgement (Foucault & Rabinow, 1991). People who follow the rules are deemed to be “acceptable”—so they’re elevated. People who don’t follow the rules are punished.

After a while, these rules turned into rigid societal structures and expectations. People who accepted them were considered ‘good,’ and those who didn’t were ‘bad’. Good/bad is a binary—a simplistic way to categorise people, behaviours, and ideas. But here’s the thing about binaries: they’re notorious for discounting the stuff that makes us human, like complexity, nuance, and context. They’re handy when you’re writing algorithms, since computers don’t need to sleep or see the sun. But they’re useless when it comes to encapsulating our humanity.

When we're talking about human beings, it doesn’t make sense to ignore complexity, nuance, and context—but we did it anyway. The good/bad binary naturally led to rational/irrational, mind/body, and subject/object. Not to put too fine a point on it, but here are a few more: logical/hysterical. Objective/emotional. Pragmatic/idealistic, ambitious/self-sacrificing, controlled/chaotic.

Remind you of anything?

In binaries, the first term is usually “male and privileged,” and the second term is female and disadvantaged (St. Pierre, 2000). Over the course of many centuries, binary ideas became “normal” and “natural,” and it became “difficult to think and act outside of them” (St. Pierre & Pillow, 2000).

This is the scary part. Because once a certain behaviour is accepted as “natural,” it becomes dangerous to step outside it.

Later, the poststructural feminists helped us understand the trouble with humanism. It turned out that humanism accepted patriarchy, racism, homophobia, ageism, and sexism as natural (which we know is bullshit). This meant that the humanist worldview was dangerous to women and other marginalized groups (Spinosa & Dreyfus, 1996).

From binaries to biases

After centuries of patriarchy, humanist binaries became biases. And they allow us to decide whether someone is good or not within seconds of meeting them. We do this based on things like age, sex, gender identity, skin color, ability, education, and income. This is troubling on the individual level. But the fact is, people are categorised like this everywhere, all the time. And the further a person deviates from the white, male “ideal,” the harder life is for them.

Simone de Beauvoir was a philosopher, activist, and author of The Second Sex—one of the foundational texts in feminist theory and philosophy. Published in 1949, it’s a feminist phenomenological study. That means it works to understand women through their lived experiences. Instead of working towards quantifiable, generalisable results, phenomenological study works to understand the rich, subjective meaning of individual experiences. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no other way to truly grapple with human beings.

Incidentally, de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, and Hannah Arendt (three known women) are all dismissed in dominant philosophical traditions because their research approaches centred on experience and empathy. Too “emotional”. Because as we all know…bitches be crazy.

In The Second Sex, de Beauvoir looks at real women’s experiences across their life. Just like Taylor’s Eras tour. From being a girl, to coming of age, to exploring sexuality, as well as life as a wife and mother and culminating in what can only be described as the Crone Era. She examines biological differences, stories about womanhood, and myths of femininity.

Again and again, de Beauvoir (and arguably Swift) found that the humanist system of beliefs, values, and cultural practices that prioritise men and male experiences as the default is dangerous. It creates a system of oppression that positions and traps women in the role of Other.

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” -Simone deBeauvoir

In The Second Sex, de Beauvoir insists that women are not born to play second fiddle. We are shaped by our upbringing and socialisation, which conspire to make us well behaved, well mannered, and well manicured.

De Beauvoir is clear: there are biological differences between men and women. But society values “masculine” over “feminine” traits. This means women are ultimately praised for being passive and putting themselves secondary to the needs and whims of others—namely men. Women only become women, she says, because of how they’re socialized. A woman is what society says a woman is—making it easy to punish girls and women who deviate from what is expected (De Beauvoir, 2011).

For de Beauvoir, this has real consequences. The societal structures that constrain us deny our full personhood as well as our creative potential. To explain how, De Beauvoir borrows the ideas of immanence and transcendence from classical philosophy.

Immanence is when a person is confined to repetitive, passive activities that don’t allow for self-acutalisation or meaningful engagement with the world. Think: domestic labour, caregiving—cyclical tasks that don’t produce a legacy.

Transcendence is the opposite. The opportunity to go beyond the self. The time and space to engage in meaningful projects and to forge your own path. The patriarchy encourages men to pursue transcendence through their careers, interests, and hobbies.

Thanks to societal expectations, many women become stuck in immanence and forced to let go of transcendence altogether.

Even though we have the same capacity for greatness, we often find ourselves in a passive, repetitive existence, where creative pursuits and intellectual growth are undermined by grinding monotony.

I’m looking at you, school lunches.

For neurodivergent women, societal expectations have an extra edge. That’s because neurodivergent brains are wired for transcendence. Confined, repetitive tasks—following a recipe, folding the same socks again and again, making the meals, nursing the hurts, refereeing the squabbles, making the lists, remembering the forms, maintaining the relationships, buying the birthday cards year after interminable year are just not what neurodivergent brains are made for.

Thanks to ADHD, I have an interest-based nervous system. I’m a divergent thinker. Creative. Imaginative. Funny. Good at problem solving. But my mind wanders. My attention is inconsistent. I struggle with time management and boredom = death. My brain recoils from it and wanders off to find stimulation while dinners go unplanned, the laundry ceases to exist, and kin remains unkept.

And when the jobs remain unfinished, Shame comes out to play. She’s right there, making super helpful observations like ‘a better mother would be able to make dinner without getting overwhelmed,’ and ‘a real adult would know how to use her own fucking oven’. No matter how many times my husband or friends highlight things I’m good at, I still feel like a failure—as an adult and as a woman—when I can’t do the things that are supposed to come naturally to me.

Enter internalised ableism. Even though I understand that women are set up to fail, even though I’m diagnosed with a disability that makes it harder for me to live up to traditional standards of womanhood, I can’t let myself off the hook. Despite having a supportive husband who reassures me all the time, I still worry that I’m a burden. I still beat myself up about all the things I can’t do well enough.

Do I think a man has ever laid on the kitchen floor and cried because he didn’t know how to use his own oven? Absolutely not. And it isn’t because there aren’t hard things about being a man. But when societal markers of success for women are so inextricably linked to tasks of executive functioning, it’s hard not to feel like a loser when I can’t live up.

As if this isn’t enough, neurodivergent women do all of it in bodies that are less likely to be diagnosed. Countless medical professionals don’t understand how neurodivergence presents in women. They don’t understand the extent to which the condition affects our lives. They don’t understand the skill of a high-masking woman to behave as though everything is fine.

When it comes to the average GP, this lack of understanding compromises their ability to judge whether the patient in front of them is coping.

Still lucky

As we know, I’m lucky. I eventually got diagnosed. I wasn’t misdiagnosed with Bipolar or Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder. I wasn’t forced to undergo electro-convulsive therapy. (One of my Autistic special interests is medical history, which means I know for a fact that if I were born 60 years earlier, I would have been lobotomised. Want to know about Typhoid Mary or the first public hospital in New York City? I’m your girl. Want me to prioritise my own tasks? Fuck you.) Thanks to my personal privilege and circumstances, I’ve never presented to hospital in a suicidal state. But there are so many women and gender non-conforming people who can’t say the same.

This part of it isn’t luck, though. It’s deliberate. David and I are creating a world in which we each do what we’re good at. Our life isn’t gendered because binaries are stupid and nuance exists. He does the shopping. I do the existential dread. He gets the health insurance. I advocate for our Autistic children. He organises Christmas lunch. I turn our kids into bleeding heart radical leftists. He makes the breakfasts and I bring the fun. I make traditions. I create the culture of our family.

Sometimes it works and sometimes our lives are an absolute nightmare. Sometimes I’m intense and annoying. And David is rigid. And we stress about money and tidying and food prep and parenting.

But when we accept our challenges as well as our gifts, it means we can meet each other where we are. We can live the life we have, instead of pining for what we expected. And we can be who we are, instead of who society tells us we should be.

There is power in being seen for who you truly are. In abandoning rules that stress you out. In creating a safe, neuro-affirming home for your family. I’m finally starting to recognise the beauty—and necessity—in all of it.

Despite not knowing how to use my fucking oven.