Mothers aren't supposed to get angry. At least that's what writer and mom of two Minna Dubin thought.
So when she experienced extreme bouts of anger so intense that she had to remind herself not to lay a hand on her 3-year-old son, Dubin channeled her feelings into an essay for The New York Times titled "The Rage Mothers Don't Talk About." The 2019 essay immediately went viral, prompting a follow-up essay and even a "Primal Scream" hotline for mothers to vent, releasing some of their pent-up anger.
Dubin had no idea that she was tapping into a cultural phenomenon.
"It was just a personal essay," Dubin tells TODAY.com. "I mostly felt like I was bad. And that my anger was a personal problem."
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The feedback from moms who were grateful to Dubin for giving voice to their own feelings persuaded her otherwise. And so she began writing "Mom Rage: The Everyday Crisis of Modern Motherhood," which was published last month.
"The book is an investigation into what I have come to understand is actually an international hidden emotional crisis," says Dubin.
What exactly is mom rage?
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To an outsider, mom rage often looks like this: a hungry 4-year-old accidentally drops an open bag of Goldfish on the floor of the grocery store, making a giant mess. The child has a tantrum, and Mom screams at the 4-year-old and drags them out of the store in a huff.
Onlookers may assume that this mom has had an outsized reaction to a simple mistake.
But what you don't see is that the child has been waking Mom up every night at 3 a.m. for comfort; that Mom's parenting partner leaves for work at 7 a.m. and returns after bedtime; that Mom already fought a giant battle to get her 6-year-old to school with a coat on and hair brushed; that the babysitter is sick so Mom had to call out of work; or that Mom happens to be three months pregnant with her next baby.
After 50 in-depth interviews with women with self-proclaimed "mom rage," Dubin arrived at this definition: "Mom rage is the uncontrolled anger that's common for mothers to feel that stems from the impossible expectations of modern motherhood, combined with a deep lack of support from the societal structures and in the family systems."
Although mom rage is more likely to occur when women first become mothers and feel their identities "flatten," it is not contained to those first years in the trenches. There is no time limit on when mom rage might appear.
Mom rage is cyclical in nature. There is a long, slow steady ramp-up period in which women "mommy perfectly," Dubin says. This is followed by the "emotional whack-a-mole" phase when we have "some irritation or annoyance or frustration, which are called sub-anger." We push those annoyances down until they explode into an episode of extreme anger, followed by a shame spiral in which we "feel terrible" about the rage, Dubin says; finally, we enter into "short-term repair" when we take responsibility for the outburst with those who felt the impact.
How can parenting partners help lessen mom rage?
To eliminate mom rage, we would need wholesale policy changes like universal childcare and extended family leave for all types of parents, Dubin says. But in the meantime, we can make smaller shifts at home to help women individually.
Immediately after an episode of rage, moms can talk to their partner or their children to take responsibility and attempt to adjust their triggers, Dubin notes. And that parenting partner needs to take the time to understand what mom rage is.
"Mom rage is a really difficult thing to explain, especially if you're explaining it to your partner and your partner is someone you rage at," says Dubin.
Taking a careful look at the division of labor in the house can go a long way to lessening mom rage, Dubin explains. If bedtime is an issue, maybe parents can alternate nights so Mom isn’t the only one dealing with nighttime stalling. If packing lunches is the trigger, maybe Dad can take that on, or the family can decide to purchase school lunches.
Moms tell Dubin that there are two things their partners don't do that they really wish they would do: make dinner and wash the dishes.
And what moms really mean by this is that their partners should "make dinner from the real start to the real finish," Dubin says. "I'm talking about the emotional labor that's invisible that goes along with making dinner."
Standing at the stove for 45 minutes and cooking the meal is actually just a small part of the task. By tackling the dinner execution, a parenting partner might think that they're helping, but if the mom meal plans, makes a shopping list, drives to the store, unloads the groceries and washes the dishes, Dubin says, "The wife is still holding on to that task because she's doing all of the surrounding labor to make that task possible for him to do."
What about dad rage?
“At almost every single reading I’ve done a man raises his hand and asks this question,” says Dubin. “I say that while dads can of course experience rage because rage is an emotion and doesn’t discriminate based on gender, the gender politics that set us up in society make dad rage a very different experience than mom rage.”
For example, Dubin continues, men are often rewarded for their anger. She cites a study in the book that concluded that “angry men” are perceived as having a higher status in the workplace while people perceive “angry women” to have lower status.
“When we see a man who’s angry, we assume it’s situational, like his kids were being annoying. We put the blame on the situation, not the person. Whereas when a woman rages, we put it on her and we say it’s a character flaw,” Dubin says.
She describes the many ways in which women take on “mother” as an all-consuming new identity, while “father” does not become a man’s entire being. When a father yells, it isn’t seen as rage. He is simply being the disciplinarian. When a mother yells, she is a “bad mother.”
“It’s fairly complicated,” says Dubin.
How do we find long-term solutions?
Dubin suggests that major policy changes would need to occur to truly make a dent in mom rage.
"We absolutely need universal childcare so that parents who work full-time — or parents who just don't want to parent 100% by themselves all day long — have the option to have support. And also having paid family leave for a year for both parents, regardless of biological connection to the child," says Dubin. "Right now there's so many loopholes with the paid family leave or family leave that comes from companies. It's really hard for so many people to get it."
Though making sweeping policy changes feels overwhelming, Dubin says that it really boils down to a simple mindset shift: "It's really about valuing mothers and care work and having fathers do care work."
This article first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
