Congratulations to everyone because we are one step away from overcoming September, which would be like a huge Monday in which everything starts up again to, most of the time, stay right where it already was. If you have children in your care, you will have experienced an extra point of stress because, as Laura Camps wrote in this newspaper: “The bureaucracy of child-rearing is a job in itself, the fourth workday.” Especially for mothers, because care is a feminized task to which, says UN Women, they dedicate 2.8 hours more per day than men do. With this, I don't think I am revealing any exclusive, because sometimes we can call statistics science, but also confirmation. However, let's talk about the why. Is there something that compels us, women, to care more? Popular culture, always one step ahead in terms of spite, speaks of a “nothing box” that allows men to “go blank” and not think about anything for certain periods. But this, let's be fair, has no scientific evidence. What has been studied are the differences between male and female brains and the conclusion, grosso modo, is that we cannot conclude anything because science, as Jorge Wagensberg summarized in one of the aphorisms he wrote when he was not designing sensational museums like the CosmoCaixa, is “to observe to investigate, to investigate to know, and to know to live in uncertainty.” One example is enough: an article in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews from 2021 analyzed three decades of studies on male and female brains and concluded that the differences do not go much further than size (11% larger in men). But a commentary published shortly after responded that, although it agreed with many ideas, it would be necessary to take into account other factors (hormones, social experiences, environment...) to analyze it properly.

In life there are small misfortunes that happen periodically: catching a cold, losing socks in the washing machine, a potato rotting in the pantry, and if you live in Barcelona, stepping on dog poop. The one the other day was a pointed turd, as my young son pointed out to me while I was dealing with the incident at a fountain. That innocent comment made me go from cursing the responsible party (human, of course) to analyzing the animal's health according to the Bristol Stool Scale, which is a clear example of my brain's erratic rambling: sometimes I don't remember my children's ages, but I know the scale was published in 1997 in theScandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology and it serves to classify human feces into 7 categories, from the most intense constipation to the most watery diarrhea. It is a visual, detailed, and even creative instrument in its descriptions: it uses terms such as sausage, snake and spongy. Look for it, go.