'A warranted reaction to oppression'

Minna Dubin's 'Mom Rage' gives a loud voice to the quiet anger simmering inside so many mothers

Minna Dubin, a Berkeley-based writer and a mom, is author of “Mom Rage: The Everyday Crisis of Modern Motherhood,” out now from Seal Press. You may have read about “Mom Rage” in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Lit Hub, Parents or elsewhere. I was so delighted to talk to Minna about what it’s been like to bring this often hidden anger out into the light.  

Tell me a little bit about how this book came to be: 

I’ve been writing about identity for a long time, and once I had kids, motherhood was the identity I was obsessed with. I was already writing about motherhood, and was working on a collection of essays. One of them, “The Rage Mothers Don’t Talk About,” was about maternal anger and this fury I felt during my early motherhood years. It was a pretty intense essay, and very personal. I was very afraid to publish it and I got a humongous response. It went viral. All these moms wrote to me from around the world saying, “This is my story. I’m not the worst mother in the world. I’m so relieved to read this.” 

I actually didn't know that I wasn’t the only person in the world to experience that. From that essay, and another one that I did during the pandemic almost a year later where I interviewed moms about their rage, I started to realize that this was basically an international emotional crisis. I was convinced that this was one of the many books that mothers needed. 

What are some of the ways that mom rage shows up in your own life? 

My examples are different from other people’s examples. For this book, I interviewed 50 moms, and it shows up in so many different ways. My rage is not everybody’s rage. In the first chapter, I interviewed a mom who internalizes her rage, and it comes out as self-harm. Rage can come out in all kinds of ways. 

But my rage is very loud. When I start to get on the road to rage, it’s often because I feel like I’m being belittled or I feel powerless. A lot of my rage has triggers that are around patriarchy, like if I’m feeling that my son expects me to clean up for him because I’m the woman in the house. If that is what it feels like, I’ll get triggered around that kind of thing. He’ll leave stuff out and I’ll be like, Who do you think is going to clean that up?

What stands out to you that you know or understand about rage now that you didn’t know before you wrote that first essay? 

I had a zero societal overlay in that first essay. I did not connect it to any sort of neglect of mothers. I was pretty sure I was the worst mom in the world when I wrote that essay, so I feel like I’ve had a really big learning curve in the last couple of years and understanding that, not only am I not alone, but that this is fairly common. It’s not even niche. It’s pretty rare that I’ve talked to a mom who is like, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

In writing the book and doing all this research about motherhood, I could see how it became what you would call intensive mothering, where we’re with them all the time, and it’s just so very involved. And that motherhood wasn’t always this way, and that mothers weren’t always the primary parent. I’ve gained some understanding of the history and how we got here, and the fact that the motherhood I’ve experienced is a socially constructed motherhood. And also that our society, specifically American society, is like a setup for mom rage. That our fury is actually a warranted reaction to oppression.  

I feel like I have gone along a similar journey to you. I remember being up for the millionth time to put my daughter back to sleep and feeling like, Surely it has not always been this way. And I realized that, Wait a minute, it hasn’t always been like this. Things have not always been this intensive in this specific way. And it is rage inducing. 

And it was a job. Being a full time mom or a housewife, that was considered your job. And now that’s sort of considered a job, at least in feminist educated circles. There’s almost a shame to it. Except that that’s all that you’re seen as. You need to always be putting your children first. Whereas fathers are not asked to put their children first. So you can’t really be the very best at your job and go the farthest you can in your field if you’re always putting your children first. 

And don't you think too that the meaning of putting your children first has radically changed? What it would have meant 100 years ago would have been much less intensive than it is today. So not only do we not respect it as valuable labor, it’s also true that putting your children first is going to mean hundreds of things that it never did before.  

Including in pregnancy. I remember being pregnant and somebody giving me Baby Mozart. I was already supposed to be making them smart and cultured in pregnancy. That’s how insane intensive mothering is. And teaching them baby sign language, and getting them into immersion schools because they should be learning other languages, and be in toddler soccer at. There’s expectations of this very particular educated middle and upper middle class intensive mother.

And I think schools act like everyone is that parent. Schools are structured as if everyone can come to the parent teacher conference in the middle of the day and pick their child up at 2 in the afternoon and everyone has time to volunteer for the PTA and everyone can get to the board meeting and the open house –

– and chaperone the field trip. 

Right, and chaperone the field trip! A lot of the expectations of school assume that you have the resources and the leisure of the upper middle class, and it’s insane. 

The entire structure of public schools is resting on the hope or the understanding that there is a parent at home — who is obviously supposed to be the mother — who is taking care of everything. If men were the primary parent, school and work wouldn’t end at two different times. Who’s supposed to be with the kid from 2 to 5? There’s 181 school days. All the other days in the year, who’s in charge of the kids? The mom.

And summers? I just did my first summer with two school age kids and I cannot believe how much money that just cost. If I don’t stay home with them, I could spend $10,000 easy. I live in Berkeley, in the Bay Area, which is super expensive as well. But I use an expression in the book that our care infrastructure is “money or mommy.” Those are the choices. 

Are there ways you’re parenting differently compared to how you were parented? 

I think I do some things differently, and I think part of that is part of mothering during this intensive mothering period versus custodial mothering during the 80s, which is the period that my parents were raising me in. I am more involved and more intensively parenting than I think my parents did. And I feel it when they come to visit and they just, like, sit on the couch watching while I’m on the floor and so involved.

And I also think that I set my kids up with play dates more. I don’t remember my parents setting me up with play dates. I would ask, Can I go hang out with my friends? I don’t remember my parents orchestrating that. 

That’s definitely true for me too, but what’s been harder for me to figure out is why. I don’t necessarily know why I’m parenting more intensively than my parents did, so I’m curious if you feel like you know why. 

It felt like this expectation of me: This is what mothers do. I don’t remember what my mom did when I was 4 or 5, so whatever I’m doing, it just felt like what everyone was doing. It felt like the era I became a mother in. When we started giving my oldest baby food, I was pureeing and freezing and doing all this shit. And I don’t know what my mom did, but I would not be surprised if she just bought some baby food in a jar. 

But I will say, my oldest is 10½ and, over the last 10 years, I think my parenting has gotten much less. I’m much more like, I’m not going on the play structure. I feel like I have been actively unlearning this intensive mothering that I had been doing and have really stepped back. And also I think as the years have gone by, my oldest has gotten somewhat easier so that I’m able to step back. 

Tell me something wonderful about your kids: 

My son is the most hilarious and makes me laugh all the time. And he really gets things right with his humor, just crushes it every once in a while and I will laugh so hard. And it is such a joy to have your kid really crack you up, say a joke and just get it pitch perfect. And I see that he’s learning, he’ll do voices like we do, and you’re like, Oh, this is my family! He’s familiar in his humor and when that happens, it feels like real joy. 

And my daughter is just — she’s 6, and she’s just like a little light beam. She’s definitely getting some of that almost preteen sass and whine, but for the most part she is just total light. Very positive, very happy, she’s easy, she’s flexible, I feel like I can just take her places and go do things and it’s great. It’s a complicated thing when girls are into beauty and fashion, but I’m also into beauty and fashion, and I notice how she watches me. I’ll wear, like, a jumper and she’ll be like, Can I have a jumper just like that with buttons like that? And I see how she’s watching me and there’s something joyful in that. 

Thanks to Minna for speaking with me! You can find Minna, her writing, her social media links and her book, at minnadubin.com.