A few weeks before her son Oliver turned eight, Jessica Koosed Etting found herself trapped in a familiar and exhausting cycle. The preparation for the upcoming birthday had quietly taken up residence in her brain, consuming her thoughts alongside work, school schedules, evening meal planning, and the constant hum of domestic management.
They were not aiming for anything particularly extravagant. The plan was simple and rooted in traditions they had built together over the years: extended family coming over for dinner and cake, breakfast in bed with balloons, unwrapping presents, quality time with grandparents, and Oliver’s favorite meal to close out the evening. At the very end of the night, following a family custom, everyone would go around the table and share three things they loved most about the birthday boy.
These small, intentional rituals had organically become the beating heart of their family’s special occasions, creating a distinct kind of childhood magic. Yet, as Etting noted, those magical moments do not simply materialize out of thin air.
In the weeks leading up to the celebration, her mind was running through an endless logistical checklist. She had to figure out what Oliver wanted, plan the menu, handle the grocery shopping, wrap the gifts, source decorations, coordinate with extended family regarding wish lists, order the cake, ensure his brothers had small tokens to give him, and remember to buy the specific brand of cereal he wanted for his morning surprise. She was executing all of these tasks while simultaneously juggling her professional responsibilities, academic commitments, and the standard daily operations of a bustling household with three children.
When the big day finally arrived, the celebration went off largely as planned. Oliver was thrilled, his brothers were excited, and the family gathered to celebrate. At one point during the evening, when the boys were playing and laughing together with their grandparents, Etting felt a natural pull to go sit down and join them in the moment.
Instead, her internal cruise-director brain immediately took over. She reasoned that if she did not start clearing the dinner table right then, they would serve the cake too late, which would throw off the schedule and cut into the time designated for opening presents.
Prompted by this internal pressure, she stood up. She set up the cake and dessert station, tracked down the candles she had purchased weeks earlier, rounded everyone up for the singing, and managed the photography. That milestone was immediately followed by another wave of physical labor: clearing more dishes, gathering discarded wrapping paper, and attempting to settle three over-stimulated, tired children into bed for the night.
Later that evening, once the house had finally grown quiet, Etting sat down on the couch and scrolled through the photos she had captured on her phone. The images showed everyone smiling together, capturing the exact aesthetic of what society tells parents is "the good stuff."
Yet, looking at the screens, she realized a stark and painful truth: she could not remember a single moment from the entire evening where she had genuinely relaxed, enjoyed herself, or felt truly present with her son. Worse still, she recognized that birthdays were not the only occasions where she felt this hollow sense of detachment.
The mental load of making memories
Etting had always anticipated being the type of mother who reveled in creating elaborate, fun memories for her children. However, until she stepped into parenthood herself, she had no conception of the sheer volume of invisible labor required to manufacture those storybook childhood moments.
Tooth fairy visits, elaborate holiday traditions, meticulously planned family vacations, and spontaneous weekend outings all share a common prerequisite. They require someone to look ahead, forecast needs, anticipate problems, and plan the logistics well in advance. In the vast majority of households, that designated planner is the mother.
To be entirely clear, Etting emphasizes that she genuinely loves creating joyful experiences for her family. While event planning and tradition-building are not universally beloved chores, it was a role she willingly chose and did not want to abandon entirely. But as she surveyed the emotional toll it was taking, she realized that something fundamental needed to change.
While she was busy planning, managing, and executing the entire experience from behind the scenes, she was never actually participating in it. When she took her children to the beach, instead of feeling the sand between her toes or listening to the waves, her mind was already calculating who needed their sunscreen reapplied, what groceries needed to be picked up for the following day, or which email to the children’s sports coach needed a prompt reply.
Some of that cognitive load is an unavoidable byproduct of raising children. But Etting realized with increasing clarity that all of it did not have to belong exclusively to her.
Learning to be present in the moment
Etting admits she wishes she could report that she simply made a quick decision to be more present and instantly cured herself of the habit. In reality, it took years of intentional effort to build healthier boundaries around how her family approaches planning and divides domestic labor. Even now, she occasionally catches herself slipping back into autopilot mode.
However, as the founder of Jam—an all-in-one family calendar and organizational application designed specifically to reduce the mental load of modern family life—she has dedicated a significant portion of her professional and personal energy to analyzing how families manage invisible labor. Over the years, she has explored various strategies to alleviate the pressure, particularly during milestone moments when the temptation to micromanage is highest.
The core challenge, she found, lay in recognizing that the relentless pursuit of perfection often crowds out the very joy it is supposed to protect. The pressure to curate an immaculate childhood often robs mothers of the ability to experience it alongside their children.
Enjoying the magic moments that happen every day
Over time, Etting came to another vital realization: some of the most profound and memorable moments with children require absolutely no planning or production value whatsoever.
They happen during slow Sunday mornings when no one has anywhere to be and pajamas stay on past noon. They occur during a few extra minutes of cuddling and back-scratching at bedtime, or in the lingering quiet of a summer evening before the machinery of real life kicks back into gear.
Yet, those unscripted, everyday moments are remarkably easy to miss when half of a parent’s cognitive bandwidth is already living in tomorrow. When the brain is constantly scanning the horizon for the next task, the present moment slips away unnoticed.
Developing an awareness of the constant pull of the mental load allows parents to consciously press pause. For a working mother of three, acknowledging that a certain level of chaos and scheduling is unavoidable is a necessary baseline. But recognizing that childhood is fleeting changed her perspective on what truly matters.
There will always be another task waiting on the to-do list, another meal to prep, or another schedule to coordinate. But waking up to the reality that she did not want to spend her children’s formative years constantly preparing for the next phase rather than living in the current one altered her daily approach. Sometimes Sunday morning is an appropriate time to get ahead on the weekly administrative tasks—and sometimes, it is decidedly not.
When Etting looks back at the photographs capturing her family’s milestones, her goal is no longer just to admire the carefully orchestrated scenes she produced. She wants to look at those images and vividly remember what it felt like to actually be there, fully inhabiting the space alongside her children.
