Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - What Do We Do With Mom Rage？ With Minna Dubin

00:00:00.000 Hi. Hello. How often do you get mad at your kids? At your husband? At your husband and your kids

00:00:09.400 at the same time, but then also at the world and particularly at our country that isn't set up to

00:00:16.780 take care of mothers, women and caregivers? I am going to be very honest with you here. I get pissed

00:00:23.120 off all the time. I feel so much rage. I feel so much rage. I want things to be different. I want

00:00:29.920 more help. I want my kids to put their sneakers in the same place every night so that we don't

00:00:35.520 have to go on a sneaker scavenger hunt for them every single morning while I try to keep my cool.

00:00:40.360 And it's okay. It's okay. It's okay for us to be mad and it's okay for us to feel rage.

00:00:47.520 We've all been there. My guest today, Minna Dubin, came to a real breaking point in her life with

00:00:55.140 her own mom rage. She was at the point where her rage was permeating her whole body. She would have 1.00

00:01:01.180 to clench her fists and summon all of her energy to keep it inside when she was furious with her

00:01:06.300 kid for the big things and the small things. And Minna felt terrible about it. She felt terrible

00:01:11.920 because she felt like mom rage is not appropriate. Moms are supposed to be martyrs. We're supposed 1.00

00:01:18.000 to be patient. We are not supposed to feel rage, especially not about our kids. Minna took matters

00:01:25.500 into her own hands. She took an anger management course, she went to therapy, and finally she did 0.98

00:01:31.500 what writers always do. She wrote about her rage. She wrote about it in a big place, the New York

00:01:37.500 Times, and she fully expected to be trolled and shamed and essentially shit on on the internet. 0.90

00:01:43.480 but instead but instead she got letters she got letters from moms all over the world who were 0.99

00:01:52.740 also filled with rage that they didn't know what to do with who also needed help and a community

00:01:58.040 and just someone to listen to them so minna set about compiling the stories in her new book

00:02:05.320 aptly titled mom rage the everyday crisis of modern motherhood and she's trying to help 0.90

00:02:10.860 mothers find both absolution and a place for their rage.

00:02:15.740 See, we're talking about this on this show because we live in a world where rage definitely doesn't seem like it belongs on social media,

00:02:23.500 where we see mostly picture-perfect images of motherhood interspersed with wine moms bottling up their rage in a very quiet and pretty and drunk way.

00:02:34.020 i wanted to chat with minna about my own rage my own exhaustion the ways that i cope with

00:02:42.800 wanting to scream at my kids bottling it up inside and becoming a wine mom myself

00:02:47.900 where do we put this rage and how do we truly connect with other mothers to quell it

00:02:54.460 hi hi how are you doing how has your mom rage been this week oh um it was fine today you know

00:03:10.100 and I wouldn't say it was mom rage necessarily but I had a tough morning we had the whole there's

00:03:14.320 no shorts long enough that fit my daughter and she wanted to wear the shorts from three years

00:03:18.140 ago that are barely shorts and I was like you can't wear those to school and she was like please

00:03:23.120 let me wear what i want and i was like you know caught between like am i being an anti-feminist

00:03:28.500 if i tell her not to wear the shorts that are so inappropriate i don't think it is anti-feminist

00:03:33.420 and maybe people are going to troll me for this but i just don't think that little girl shorts 0.98

00:03:40.280 should be up their ass it's how i feel it is it is a deeply held belief of mine and i will i will 0.98

00:03:47.760 say it until the end of time yeah i know i'm always like is this the hill i'm gonna die on 0.99

00:03:53.020 this morning and i decided that it was so good you die on that hill you die on that hill of i 0.94

00:03:58.920 don't want to see your butt cheeks exactly so that was my morning but i'm happy to be talking to you 0.98

00:04:04.760 now i know me too me too and we're not here to talk about little girl butt cheeks today

00:04:09.200 because that would be creepy we are here to talk about mom rage and your wonderful book that i had 0.99

00:04:18.380 the pleasure of doing an event for you for this week, Mom Rage. I want everyone to go out and get 0.94

00:04:25.920 it because I think that this is a book unlike anything that has been written before about the

00:04:32.780 feelings so many of us have about being a parent in a world that doesn't support us. Thank you.

00:04:41.300 I want to start by tell the audience a little bit about when you recognized that Mom Rage was

00:04:47.040 something that you as a journalist and a writer had to put out into the world.

00:04:55.020 Yeah. I mean, I first wrote about it in 2019 in an essay for The New York Times called The Rage

00:05:01.200 Mothers Don't Talk About. And that was really just a personal essay about my own fury that felt

00:05:08.520 uncontrollable and new in motherhood. But the response from that led me really on a journalistic

00:05:16.100 investigation for the next three years that became this book because I got such a big response from

00:05:21.540 people that I realized that it wasn't just me and I wasn't just a bad mom. And this was happening

00:05:27.920 all over the world, actually. And it was basically a societal phenomenon that that people were sort

00:05:33.340 of ashamed of and not really talking about. And why do you think that is? Why do you think that

00:05:39.860 we are ashamed to feel anger to feel rage as as a mother as a as a person who has children in the

00:05:48.180 world uh i think that being angry is uh an uncomfortable experience and in particular it is

00:05:59.100 um it is thought of by society as not something that women should be and then i think it gets

00:06:06.440 you know, it goes to the extreme for mothers because we have this mythical version of motherhood

00:06:13.100 that mothers are supposed to be, you know, self-sacrificing and have no needs and always

00:06:18.600 patient and gentle and basically a non-human. And anytime that a mother steps out of that box 0.95

00:06:26.980 of perfect caregiving and is angry, it's basically the worst thing a mother can be.

00:06:32.840 And there's punishment, whether that's, you know, an actual punishment or social, you know, people judging the mother.

00:06:41.740 And so, you know, we feel bad about it because we have been taught that this is sort of anti-mother.

00:06:48.060 And we don't want to be anti-mother.

00:06:49.640 We want to be a good mother.

00:06:51.900 Right, right.

00:06:52.480 And our society has such narrow views of what a good mother is.

00:06:58.680 Right. 1.00

00:06:59.140 Right?

00:07:00.020 Yeah.

00:07:01.120 And it's impossible.

00:07:02.840 it's like the narrow view right it's a box that none of us will ever stay inside

00:07:07.540 um never never ever and so you write this essay what did it feel like when it went viral when you

00:07:17.640 when you first realized oh my god this it's not just me and there's so many women around the world

00:07:26.400 who feel this way uh it felt it felt surprising i think i think i didn't realize that i was very

00:07:34.120 afraid to publish this essay because it was i felt like i was setting myself up for a public shaming

00:07:39.960 and instead basically got all these messages and so it felt like it felt very exciting it felt

00:07:47.040 relieving that it wasn't just me and i you know it was the most public feedback i or most feedback

00:07:54.640 at all that I'd ever gotten on a piece of writing. And I felt like my I was buzzing underneath my

00:08:01.860 skin from getting all those emails. And I just felt like it felt like something was happening,

00:08:07.000 something very exciting was happening. And I didn't quite know what it was then. But now I

00:08:11.020 know it was the beginning of this book. Right. And I think the beginning of a movement towards

00:08:15.740 talking about the real anger that mothers feel and that we feel like we cannot talk about.

00:08:22.160 And I understand why you were nervous to put this out there. You opened the New York Times story

00:08:27.940 by saying things like, I want to hurt someone. I am tears and fury and violence. I want to scream

00:08:35.280 and rip open pillows, toss chairs and punch walls. When I get mad like this around my three-year-old 0.97

00:08:41.400 son, I have to say to myself like a mantra, don't touch him, don't touch him, don't touch him.

00:08:45.680 i think we can all feel that our children they they drive us to the brink so often and yet we

00:08:57.760 would never hurt them but we have this rage inside of us and instead of getting nasty comments you

00:09:05.880 had so many other women say me too me me too because they're i think as mothers we all have

00:09:14.360 this empathy for being in that situation. Because as you say in this piece, mother rage is not

00:09:20.580 appropriate. We are not supposed to want to tear out our hair or, God forbid, hit our children. 0.98

00:09:28.480 We have to hide all of these things. And you write about the price that we pay for hiding

00:09:35.200 these things. And you talk to so many women in this book about the price they've paid and how

00:09:40.740 it has impacted their mental and their physical health. Tell us a little bit about that. What are 0.87

00:09:45.820 the consequences of holding this rage and the shame and this guilt inside? You know, the irony

00:09:52.300 of holding the rage and the shame and the guilt inside is that it just leads to more rage because

00:09:58.520 we're, you know, whacking down the emotions, trying not to express them. And then what happens is they

00:10:05.220 eventually come out and they come out as an explosion. So holding it in is not particularly

00:10:10.680 helpful. And, you know, I write in the book that, you know, some moms, we think of mom rage as being

00:10:15.400 very loud. And for me personally, you know, I'm like a yeller, a stomper, but there are lots of

00:10:21.700 moms who are also just internalizing their rage. And that ends up looking like numbing out on your 0.96

00:10:27.040 phone, self-harming, possibly abusing alcohol and drugs. So like the rage is going to come out no

00:10:35.160 matter what. Right. Right. And you talked to some women who are trying to soothe this rage with

00:10:44.460 alcohol and with drugs. And I think we see that a lot, too, in mommy wine culture. Totally. So

00:10:51.340 on social media, it's such a huge thing. And I think about it now after reading your book,

00:10:56.980 that when we see so much mommy wine culture on social media, that it is a lot of women trying

00:11:03.460 to soothe their pain and soothe the rage that they're feeling inside, that they feel like they 0.77

00:11:08.180 cannot express in a picture. And so instead, they pour themselves a glass of wine and take a video

00:11:12.740 of that. Right. Because we can't actually leave our situations. And I'm not saying that we want

00:11:18.400 to leave our children. But, you know, I think we have moments where we want to leave the situation

00:11:24.460 of what motherhood is in this culture. And there's no actual way to leave. And so the drugs or

00:11:31.740 alcohol is a way to to to exit you know when there's no other way to get out right right

00:11:40.300 exactly and you talk you talk a lot in the book about what motherhood is in our culture that it

00:11:47.700 is all-consuming that from the second we take a pregnancy test we are no longer ourselves that we

00:11:54.660 become mommy and how is our culture set up to continue to perpetuate this rage to to not to

00:12:05.820 not help us uh in any way to not make this easier in any way well i mean for one thing we don't

00:12:14.160 acknowledge that motherhood is this complete identity volcano that happens and that once we

00:12:21.280 once we reproduce, our value in the world is seen as being caregivers and kind of managers of the

00:12:30.460 domestic space. And so our identities, which before we had children, were totally complicated

00:12:36.960 and beautiful and messy, and our identity gets flattened into being just mom. And so I think

00:12:44.060 some of the rage is about fighting against that flattening and trying to claw ourselves

00:12:49.840 out of, of being just mom. And then I would say that the culture, the society doesn't support

00:12:57.460 mothers in a variety of ways, you know, from having no paid family leave. So there's no one

00:13:03.920 to help the mother unless she's got, you know, some amazing community she's built or a mother

00:13:09.960 or mother-in-law who are actively engaged and live near her because, you know, the spouse doesn't

00:13:16.160 have family leave either. Right. So she's mostly just dealing with it herself. And then we don't

00:13:21.460 have universal child care. And so our choice is either money or mommy. Right. Either the mommy

00:13:26.880 takes care of the children or she has money to pay someone else to take care of the children. 1.00

00:13:32.120 And we also don't have, you know, very accessible or affordable mental health treatment for moms. 0.98

00:13:39.040 Or for anyone, for that matter. For anyone. No one gets mental health in this country. You're

00:13:45.780 not allowed to have it unless you're a very very rich person and then that's right you usually

00:13:50.100 complain about it yes yes i think about that all the time when i watch woody allen movies

00:13:56.040 now as a grown-ass woman who lives in the post me too era and i know we're not supposed to watch

00:14:01.680 them but i still watch them and everyone is always complaining about therapy and i can all i all i 0.93

00:14:07.640 can think is you're so goddamn lucky you have all the therapy stop complaining about having all of 0.58

00:14:11.740 the therapy all the time. Totally. Yeah. And, you know, in America, we think of the postpartum 0.97

00:14:17.940 period as being this like, you know, six to 12 week period. And then all support cuts off. Like

00:14:25.380 there's no more postpartum appointments with the doctor. You're no longer getting screened for

00:14:30.360 postpartum mood and anxiety disorders. You're just all right. You pushed out a baby. Go ahead,

00:14:35.340 mom. Go live your life and take care of everyone, including yourself all by yourself.

00:14:38.980 Well, and we talked a little bit the other day about the baby shower, right? About how the baby shower is this cultural thing that is all about the baby instead of preparing a mother for this new person that she is about to become.

00:14:57.440 And instead of caring for her, you just get a zillion goddamn swaddles. 0.94

00:15:02.480 No one needs that many swaddles. 0.99

00:15:04.420 Instead of getting frozen meals and gift certificates for massages and nice candles.

00:15:11.760 I don't know. 1.00

00:15:12.280 The shit that would make life a little bit better and easier for mom. 1.00

00:15:15.740 When a baby would be happy sleeping in a box, okay? 1.00

00:15:18.760 A baby doesn't need, baby needs nothing. 0.81

00:15:20.880 I'm going to say this to all of the new moms out there. 0.93

00:15:23.400 If I've learned anything, a baby needs nothing.

00:15:27.440 but sadly they need you they need you they need you and your love but they don't need any stuff

00:15:33.460 no stuff that's right that's right yeah we have no we have no rituals for american motherhood

00:15:39.800 everything is about the baby and the mother disappears basically once the baby comes

00:15:45.660 and you know we talked about this at the event and in the book i write that at baby showers i

00:15:51.200 give an economy-sized bottle of laxatives because that is what postpartum mothers actually need in

00:15:57.300 addition to you know child care we they they need they need child care they but yes and i 0.97

00:16:04.680 give new mothers a squatty potty because much like laxatives you know what new mothers want to do 0.84

00:16:11.420 they just want to poop i think i think that you and i need to start our own motherhood ritual 0.91

00:16:17.020 that we can shop around america yeah done done let's i'm gonna i'm gonna write a sub stack about

00:16:22.660 this and i'll make you a co-author this week for what we think the ritual around motherhood

00:16:29.120 should be and all right i mean look sorry guys it involves a lot of talking about poop

00:16:34.280 yep does yeah yeah um i still i actually still have a bunch of laxatives and stool softeners

00:16:41.640 in my so many i have so many bottles yeah in in in my medicine cabinet because i'm like you never

00:16:48.420 know when you're when you're gonna need this but i am making a care basket for a friend who's having

00:16:53.060 a baby in january and i finally just packed packed her all those stool softeners and with a note that

00:16:58.760 says trust me trust me trust me yeah you better get are you getting a squatty potty too oh yeah 1.00

00:17:05.520 yeah no i've already ordered her the squatty potty um because yeah like that's that's the real shit 1.00

00:17:12.060 And also the massive mesh hospital underwear. 0.99

00:17:17.320 I will say this pregnancy, you didn't expect this conversation to go this way.

00:17:22.420 But with this baby, I just bought myself a shit ton of Depends after I had the baby and then stuck the pads in there.

00:17:33.120 Because I'm like, I'm just going to wear adult diapers now.

00:17:35.720 Because trying to balance it in normal underwear has never worked.

00:17:40.100 And yet the hospital doesn't give you nearly enough adult diapers.

00:17:44.560 They give you that mesh underwear.

00:17:45.820 But you need an adult diaper is what you need.

00:17:47.920 They give you no adult diapers.

00:17:49.200 I think that we should put adult diapers in the in the care package.

00:17:53.200 Yeah.

00:17:53.520 Yeah.

00:17:53.780 They're adult diapers.

00:17:54.640 It depends.

00:17:55.760 This is what you need.

00:17:56.460 All right.

00:17:56.680 We're going to we're working on this, everyone.

00:17:58.420 We're working on solving this problem.

00:18:00.640 And we're going to take a quick break right now.

00:18:02.200 But we will be back after the break to talk more about mom rage.

00:18:07.760 But the upside, what can we do? How can we, quote-unquote, cure it?

00:18:27.680 Hi.

00:18:29.220 Hi.

00:18:30.040 We are back with Minna Dubin, the author of Mom Rage.

00:18:34.420 this is one of those books that i want to give to every new mother much like i gift jess gross's

00:18:42.040 book screaming on the inside and not just you know what i hate myself for saying that i do

00:18:47.480 i shut up joe not every new mother every new parent every new mom and dad because frankly 0.58

00:18:55.660 i think dads should be reading this book too because we know we're mad and they don't and 0.89

00:19:02.180 they don't understand it a lot of the time right yes and and dads dads don't understand it they

00:19:08.960 don't know what to do about it and they're just they feel alone too everyone is alone in mom rage

00:19:15.880 and this book I think is one of like one of the ways that you can say to your partner especially

00:19:22.120 a father this is what's happening for me and to have them understand you better and there there

00:19:28.960 is there's stuff that's written in the book specifically for partners and there's a whole

00:19:33.280 chapter basic called bringing your part bringing your partner out of enemy territory and basically

00:19:38.460 using your partner's um closeness to your rage for to learn about your rage because they actually

00:19:47.240 know your rage the best besides you true true so they know your rage but they don't they don't

00:19:56.380 always know what to do with it I think um that's a whole other episode I really I really think it

00:20:06.300 is because what I want to dive into you right now is what did you do you actually joined a 12-week

00:20:13.980 anger management group how how did you get to the point where you said this is what I need to be

00:20:20.220 doing? And then did that work? You know, I had so many moments along the journey that were like,

00:20:27.600 okay, I need to deal with this. Or my partner saying to me, okay, you need to deal with this.

00:20:32.540 And so the anger management group for mothers was one of those stages. And I would not say

00:20:41.480 that the anger management group for mothers was particularly helpful for me. It doesn't mean that

00:20:47.560 it wouldn't be for other people, but it wasn't for me. I think that therapy has been incredibly

00:20:51.740 important and couples therapy. And also in the book, I talk about this process called

00:20:59.300 inviting your rage to tea, which is really about not being ashamed of your rage and actually

00:21:06.440 getting curious about it and basically becoming a researcher or sociologist of your own rage

00:21:13.100 and beginning to, like, take notes and get really, really, really smart about when you rage,

00:21:20.420 where you rage, what happens before you rage, and figuring out what your triggers are,

00:21:24.680 what makes you crazy, so that we can get really smart about it and then have a sort of mindfulness

00:21:31.260 about it that doesn't happen otherwise when we're sitting, you know, in silence and shame around it.

00:21:37.880 I think that that's really the most important thing I've done. Like, I think that writing this

00:21:42.620 book I think that talking to mothers I think that constantly having conversations around mom rage

00:21:47.820 having my kids on tour like having them understand what mom rage is like just bringing it out into

00:21:53.780 the open so that we are all sort of engaged in conversation around it all the time makes it so

00:21:59.600 that when I want to explode me and everyone around me is a little more aware of what's happening and

00:22:05.820 we can be like okay everyone break like and we'll all take a break you know like part of it is about

00:22:12.280 just it being in the open. Right, exactly. I think so much of everything is it being out in

00:22:19.600 the open, is us just talking about these things that are supposed to be taboo, that we're not

00:22:25.800 supposed to talk about what Anne Lamott calls the myth of maternal bliss that we're hiding behind.

00:22:33.160 I've tried to be better about saying, you know, this is a lot for me. Mommy is having a lot of

00:22:40.400 emotions right now yes you guys are having a lot of emotions and i need to take i need a minute

00:22:46.260 i need i need to breathe i need to go sit in the bathroom with my phone for five minutes because

00:22:52.280 i'm feeling all the feelings right now and that's right you know that's the best that i can do i

00:23:00.400 don't i don't think there is a golden ticket to serenity but i think that there's things we can

00:23:04.960 do to feel better. Yeah. And I'd say that the thing about the anger management group,

00:23:10.700 which I think I said in that article, was that it offered a reflection to me of myself,

00:23:16.640 which I don't see in the public narrative around motherhood. You know, one of the problems about

00:23:23.520 motherhood in America is that the narrative that we see in every message, like media, movies,

00:23:30.040 your own mother, celebrities, is that motherhood is this, you know, blissful experience. And if

00:23:37.800 you're struggling, you better be quiet because that says you're a bad mother and you're talking

00:23:42.200 badly about motherhood and your children. And maybe you don't love your children and maybe 0.99

00:23:45.340 you're neglectful. Like, you know what I mean? It goes down this whole rabbit hole. And so

00:23:49.120 the amazing thing about the anger management group, which is really just about mothers talking

00:23:54.660 to each other is that then we see a reflection of ourselves and our experience. And we realize that

00:24:01.300 we're not crazy and we're not bad and that there's a whole societal setup that's making

00:24:06.840 this quite difficult. Yeah, we're not crazy. We're not bad. The majority of us are good mothers,

00:24:14.340 but we also live in a society that doesn't prepare us to be mothers and that doesn't

00:24:19.540 acknowledge the massive shift we undergo when we become mothers, which we talked about the other

00:24:27.220 day and you write about, you have a whole chapter about this in Mom Rage, your book,

00:24:31.340 Matrescence, the period where you become a mother and your brain and your body changes and you're

00:24:38.780 a completely different human being afterwards. But when we were doing our book talk here at

00:24:45.860 the Philadelphia Barnes & Noble, we asked people to raise their hands if they'd ever heard the

00:24:50.380 word matrescence. And I think maybe three people did. And they were all women and one was a

00:24:55.520 therapist. Yeah. And, you know, a couple of days later, I did an event at a teacher's college at

00:25:03.240 Columbia with Dr. Oralee Athan, who I think of as the mother of matrescence because she's really

00:25:08.560 brought that word into the world. And matrescence is the life phase of becoming a mother. And I

00:25:14.880 I think that that word is, you know, on its way to blowing up.

00:25:18.580 And there's a new book that's out called that by Lucy Joan.

00:25:22.200 And I think that just like the acknowledgement of motherhood as as this big life shift in

00:25:28.320 the way that we think of adolescence as this big life shift would change the way that we

00:25:33.980 treat and take care of our mothers.

00:25:37.160 Absolutely.

00:25:38.160 Absolutely.

00:25:38.600 If we acknowledged that what happens when you start the journey of motherhood and that

00:25:44.440 journey can begin anywhere. It can begin when you start thinking about having a baby. It can begin

00:25:48.740 when the baby comes out of your body. If we think about it in the same way that we think about

00:25:52.520 puberty and adolescence and how you become a totally different human being then, then I think

00:25:59.340 that we will have a lot more respect for this process. Yeah. Yeah. And speaking of therapy,

00:26:07.000 I actually have therapy in a couple of minutes. You should go. Get out of here. Well, tell everyone

00:26:13.980 where they can find you on the socials and find your book, because I will never make anyone late

00:26:20.740 for therapy. Thank you. Everyone can find me. I'm on Instagram at Minna Dubin. That's M-I-N-N-A-D-U-B-I-N.

00:26:30.340 All of the info about everything that I publish or about the book is on my website at MinnaDubin.com.

00:26:38.420 Brilliant. I love talking to you. I have no rage. I have no rage right now.

00:26:42.520 I know. I feel so good. What will I even talk about in therapy?

00:26:45.620 I don't need it. Something will come up. Don't you worry?

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - October 23, 2023

What Do We Do With Mom Rage？ With Minna Dubin

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