The Mental Load Grows Up: From Baby Days to Big Kids

The mental load doesn’t disappear when your baby starts sleeping through the night or your toddler finally heads to school—it just changes.

The bottles and nap schedules give way to school forms, birthday parties, activity sign-ups, doctor appointments, carpools, social dynamics, summer camps, and an entirely new calendar of things someone has to anticipate, remember, research, schedule, and manage. As kids become more independent, the invisible work behind family life can actually become even more complicated.

Join us for The Mental Load Grows Up: From Baby Days to Big Kids, an honest and practical conversation about how the invisible work of parenting evolves as our children grow—and how families can build better systems before one parent becomes the default keeper of everything.

Featuring Dr. Morgan Cutlip, psychologist, relationship expert, and creator of BetterShare; Jennifer Mickel, JD, MBA, Founder of The Third Shift; Paige Connell, content creator, writer, speaker, and advocate for more equitable parenting; and Emily King, Co-Founder & CEO of Faye. Together, they’ll explore why the mental load can be so difficult to see and share, how it changes as our kids grow, and what families can actually do to make it lighter.

Together, we’ll discuss:

• How the mental load changes from babies and toddlers to school-aged kids and beyond
• The mental, emotional, and physical components of the care load
• Why parenting can become more logistically and emotionally complicated as children get older
• The difference between helping with a task and actually owning it
• Why one parent so often becomes the default family project manager
• School emails, activities, appointments, camps, birthdays, forms, and the endless family calendar
• How to share responsibility more equitably between partners
• How to talk about an unequal load without falling into defensiveness or scorekeeping
• What kids can start taking ownership of as they grow
• What to automate, outsource, delegate—or simply stop doing
• Creating systems that give parents back time and mental space

Whether you’re currently tracking nap schedules or juggling three different school portals, this conversation will help you understand what’s taking up so much space in your head—and find practical ways to carry less of it.

What is Auggie? The most trusted community for parents to find the answers. Inside the app, parents get stage-specific guidance, expert content, on-demand events, and a supportive network that reduces the mental load of figuring everything out alone.