Mom Rage: The Everyday Crisis of Modern Motherhood

"Mothers aren't supposed to be angry. Still, Minna Dubin was an angry mom: exhausted by hard, thankless full-time parenting work and feeling her career slip away from her, she would find herself screaming at her child or exploding in anger at her husband. Despite the pressure she felt to suffer in silence, Minna chose to talk publicly about her experiences, kicking off an international conversation about a rage that, it turns out, nearly every mother has experienced. Mom Rage is Dubin's groundbreaking work of reportage on the national crisis of mother rage - what it is, where it comes from, and how we can all learn to work through it. As Dubin reveals, mom rage is a global phenomenon, but it's particularly acute in the United States, where mothers are expected to manage physical care, education, and emotional support for their children; household and administrative labor for their families; and their own careers, all with little to no institutional support. Adding insult to injury, mothers' struggles go largely unacknowledged and unvalidated, making them feel like their rage is a personal failure caused by being a "bad mom." This sense of guilt is only exacerbated by the intense public scrutiny that mothers (especially poor mothers and mothers of color) are subject to. Dubin assures these readers that they're not alone. She shares her personal story of understanding and eventually overcoming her rage, and includes interviews from women experiencing mom rage across the spectrum of race, gender, sexual orientation, and class. She then breaks down the research on rage, emotional intelligence, anger management, and motherhood to give women accessible tools to alleviate their burden and issue a call for broader social reforms. Mom Rage is a no-holds-barred excavation of the national crisis of mother rage and a call for women to let go of their internalized shame and guilt, resist the patriarchy, and reclaim their lives"--