A 'multitasking mom' went viral at a baseball game. Her balancing act ignited a debate.

"The definition of a multitasking mother." "An Olympic champion." "Mom of the year."

These are the praises that ESPN commentators had not for an athlete — well, not a professional one, anyway — but for a woman in the stands at a San Francisco Giants game on Sept. 23. TV cameras found her expertly navigating the crowded stands while wearing a backpack and balancing three containers of food with her baby in a carrier strapped to her chest. She tiptoes to her seat next to a man who stands briefly as she sits down.

The camera cuts away for a moment, and the next shot shows the man eating his meal while the mom balances the remaining two trays of food on her lap and carefully unstraps her child from the carrier. "She'll be the last one to eat, too," one of the ESPN analysts says.

A 30-second clip of the multitasking mom went viral on TikTok , where commenters — largely women — saw themselves in her herculean solo efforts, took out some anger on the man next to her. "How do I divorce someone else's husband?" one asked, while another praised the ESPN analysts who "put him on BLAST."

Some took issue with how the sportscasters framed the situation, however well-intentioned they may have been. "A baseball game is being played, but the camera has found another endurance event in the stands," Olivia Howell wrote on Substack . The commentators are "calling the play-by-play while she performs it. Look at the balance. Look at the coordination. Look at the stamina. Look at mama go!"

But Howell says we are "watching a mother carry everybody's food back to a grown man while a sports commentator casually remarks that she will probably eat last." It's a line, she says, that has been "sitting in my stomach ever since."

Of course, a brief video of unwitting strangers lacks context and can easily be misconstrued. In her post, Howell imagined that the woman might respond by explaining that viewers had misunderstood the situation altogether. The mom in the video, Erika, recently reached out to Yahoo Creator Alesandra Dubin to share the real story behind the video: She had gone to the game with her husband to mark the loss of his close friend (who had played baseball). She wasn't hungry at the time, and her husband had offered to help every step of the way.

Still, the entire scene clearly struck a chord. The video is "like a Rorschach test," Barbara Greenberg , a psychologist specializing in parenting, family and teens, tells Yahoo. "We see an ink blot and then interpret what it is to us."

Erika may not have been what many online commenters called a " married single mom . " But what many women saw in the clip speaks to a familiar experience: the tendency for mothers to become the "default parent" in their relationships.

How did we get here? Why is the do-it-all mom such a familiar sight — and what would it take to lighten her load? We spoke to two psychologists to find out.

As the ESPN commentators noted, a woman who juggles work, motherhood and errands — in this case, a concession stand run with a baby in tow — can look like an ultra-capable "Olympic champion."

But, "sometimes competence becomes the punishment," Facebook user Rissa SoFar wrote in a response post. "The more capable you are, the more everybody around you starts treating your capability like unlimited capacity."

Greenberg says this reflects a common cultural stereotype: the "'super woman,'" she says. But appearing to have it all under control and actually feeling that way are not the same thing, she adds. Highly competent women, including Greenberg herself, may think: "I'll just take care of it myself because it'll get done well, and it will get done now," she admits. But, Thornton adds: "Just because you can doesn't mean you should ."

Until the middle of the 20th century, child-rearing and caring for the home were the typical full-time jobs of women. Structurally, we're long past that: Most women now work outside the home . More than half of moms and dads both worked full-time in 2025 , compared to just 31% in 1975. It's worth noting that men in the U.S. are doing more household labor than ever , at a record 100 minutes a day. But women are still doing 40 more minutes of chores per day than their male partners, and most parents agree that moms do the lion's share of child-care tasks .

But culturally, we haven't moved past the old norms. "The ways that mothers and fathers are socialized are very different," parenting psychologist Amber Thornton tells Yahoo. "If we're not careful and aware of the societal and cultural expectations that impact our families, we can accidentally fall into these roles that feel really prescribed and sometimes unequal."

The majority of child care and chores often fall on moms' plates. "In many cases, they've been the primary caregivers, so they continue with that role — and everything else" even while juggling work, says Greenberg. As a result, "a lot of women feel like they're carrying everything, literally and figuratively, like [the woman in the video] is," she adds.

Both psychologists I spoke to suggested that women might get more help from their partners if they ask for it. But, they also acknowledged that's part of the problem, because many women are already frustrated that "the onus is on them to change this dynamic," says Thornton.

That was the thesis of one scathing response video: "Women are married to men who are always happy to help," said Paige Connell , cohost of The Just Us Girls Podcast , in her Instagram post. "This is a guy who's probably happy to help….He would've gotten the food. All she had to do was ask," she says, sarcastically. Her point: Sure, many men will step up when asked. But why isn't taking on that work as intuitive to them as it is to women?

That's how many women become what Thornton describes as the default parent. "We shouldn't have to ask — we'd like to live a life where there's a natural consideration," she says. But, "a father may not realize and understand that; he may have to go through and [analyze] his own beliefs about what a mother is."

Thornton says that men need to ask themselves if their expectations for who does what at home are really fair. "Have those conversations with the women and mothers in your life," she advises men. "Talk to your partner, but also your mother about her experience and what she desired and some of the unspoken expectations she might have had."

Asking what you can do to help or, better yet, looking for an opportunity to pitch in and taking the initiative will "improve your partner's mental health," says Greenberg, "and it will make the family stronger, too."

Women, meanwhile, need to clearly communicate what their boundaries and needs are, Thornton says, "because if not, society has led us to believe that women have no limits and boundaries."