The 5 PM Rage: Why Being the "Default Parent" Is Breaking You (And How to Stop the resentment)

There is a specific, silent type of rage that bubbles up when your partner asks, "Do we have any ketchup?" while you are simultaneously sauteing onions, signing a permission slip, and answering a Slack message from your boss. It’s not about the ketchup. It’s about the fact that I am the only one who ever seems to know if we have ketchup. For a decade of my life, I lived in a state of high-functioning exhaustion. I was climbing the corporate ladder, managing a team of fifteen, and yet, my brain never actually clocked out.

I’d be in a meeting, presenting quarterly projections, and a ticker tape would be running across the bottom of my mind: Did I switch the laundry? Does the 10-year-old have cleats for practice? We’re out of milk.

I call this "The mental load," but back then, I just called it "being a good mom."

I remember one night vividly. It was 11:14 PM. I was standing at the kitchen sink, scraping dried oatmeal off a bowl because I hadn’t gotten to the dishes earlier. The house was dark. My husband was asleep. The kids were asleep.

And I felt... hollow.

I looked at that bowl and thought, If I disappeared tomorrow, the entire infrastructure of this family would collapse.

We tell ourselves that we do it all because we’re "efficient." We tell ourselves it’s easier to just do it ourselves than to explain it to someone else. But if I’m being honest, and we’re friends here, so I’m going to be...it wasn’t just efficiency.

As a survivor of domestic violence, control was my safety mechanism. If I managed everything, nothing could catch me off guard. If I was the "perfect" mother and the "perfect" manager, no one could yell. No one could criticize.

But the resentment? It was eating me alive. I was angry at my partner for not noticing the laundry, but I was also angry at myself for never letting him try. I had trained everyone in my life to treat me as the infinite resource.

I see you doing the same thing. You are the "strong friend." The one who remembers birthdays. The one who organizes the office potluck. The one who carries the mental map of the entire household in your head.

And you are tired. Not "I need a nap" tired. You are soul-tired.

Here is the hard truth I had to learn: Resentment is not a sign that you are a bad mother. Resentment is a sign that a boundary has

been crossed.

You cannot nurture your family from a place of depletion. Being the "Default Parent" isn't a badge of honor; it's a role you were cast in, and it is time to rewrite the script.

The next time the "ketchup question" comes up, don't answer it. Don't get up. Don't check the pantry.

Look them in the eye and say, "I’m not sure. You should probably check."

It starts with the ketchup. It ends with you getting your life back.

Slide into my DMs on Instagram. I want to know: What is the one chore that triggers your "5 PM Rage"? Let’s vent it out so we can move past it.