We recently hit a scheduling snag at my house and needed someone to take my daughter to soccer practice. I asked my husband to message another dad and suggest a little quid-pro-quo: “Hey, can you take her today, and we’ll take your daughter next week?” He told me I was overcomplicating things but agreed to send the text anyway.

The other dad’s response? “Dude, we’ll take her but why are you making it awkward?” So yeah, my husband was right.

But this exchange got me thinking…do moms keep score more than dads?

When I asked my husband about this, he wholeheartedly agreed. “Dads just don’t think about it that way,” he said with a shrug.

I immediately started rifling through my mental Rolodex of mom interactions. There was the mom at the bus stop who recently handed me a packet of bamboo forks because we’d both complained about our kids losing utensils in their lunchboxes. I thanked her, of course, but then I felt like I owed her something back and so I gave her a cookbook of packed lunch ideas the next day because I remembered she’d told me that her daughter was sick of sandwiches.

Then there’s the mom friend who chauffeured me to my son’s back to school night last week. The PTO meeting is next month so I’ve already made a mental note to offer her a ride (even though she’s much better at parallel parking than I am).

When I relayed the story of my daughter’s soccer practice at work, my mom colleagues jumped right in. “I would never ask someone outside of family to help with kids without offering to help with their kids!” said one, adding, “Part of the keeping tabs isn’t just to point fingers but to keep things equitable!”

And it’s true—there isn’t anything malicious necessarily about keeping score in this way. It just…feels like the right thing to do. But is this just one more version of the mental load we carry? I mean, moms are already juggling permission slips, doctor appointments, Halloween costumes and what to make for dinner tonight. Do we really need to carry around an invisible “IOU” list for every mom in our orbit as well?

Meanwhile, my husband will casually give away a baby glider to another family or pick up another kid’s soccer uniform on opening day, all with zero expectation of repayment. A friend drives him to the dad league every Thursday, and he’s never once stressed about returning the favor. His day-to-day life is filled with transaction-less exchanges and, well, I kind of envy that.

So maybe the dads are onto something. Maybe not every favor needs to be repaid, not every gift requires a thank you card and not every playdate demands to be returned. Maybe sometimes, the point isn’t to keep score at all…but to just take the win.

What’s Working (for Now)

The school year has barely started and already my calendar is a blur of extracurricular activities, birthday parties, PTO meetings and more. To keep the chaos (somewhat) under control, my spouse and I started doing a five-minute nightly huddle. I set a timer and we quickly run through what’s on deck for tomorrow and assign any must-do tasks. It’s basically a bedtime work meeting, except the coworker is the person I also share a mortgage and three kids with.

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