Mom Rage: The Everyday Crisis of Modern Motherhood

by Minna Dubin

Overview

A frank, feminist examination of the hidden crisis of rage facing American mothers—and how we can fix it 

Mothers aren’t supposed to be angry. Still, Minna Dubin was an angry mom: exhausted by the grueling, thankless work of full-time parenting and feeling her career slip away, she would find herself screaming at her child or exploding at her husband. 

When Dubin pushed past her shame and talked with other mothers about how she was feeling, she realized that she was far from alone. Mom Rage is Dubin’s groundbreaking work of reportage about an unspoken crisis of anger sweeping the country—and the world. She finds that while a specific instance of rage might be triggered by something as simple as a child who won’t tie her shoes, the roots of the anger go far deeper, from the unequal burden of childcare shouldered by moms to the flattening of women’s identities once they have kids. Drawing on insights from moms across the spectrum of race, sexual orientation, and class, she offers practical tools to help readers disarm their rage in the moment, while never losing sight of the broader social change we need to stop raging for good. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541601307
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	09/19/2023
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	44,420
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

Minna Dubin (she/her) is a writer and mother in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Salon, Parents, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Romper, The Forward, Hobart, MUTHA Magazine, and Literary Mama. She is the recipient of an artist enrichment grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. As a leading feminist voice on mom rage, Minna has appeared on MSNBC, Good Morning America, The Tamron Hall Show, NBC10 Boston, and NPR. She lives in Berkeley, California. 

Editorial Reviews

★ 06/05/2023

“Mothers are America’s care infrastructure, and it’s costing us emotionally,” according to this trenchant outing. Essayist Dubin, mother of a nine-year-old boy and five-year-old girl, suggests that mothers’ frustrations with child-rearing stem from feeling unable to meet the “impossible expectations of modern motherhood” and the “debilitating lack of support from within the family structure and societal systems.” The author decries the expectation that mothers should “always be mothering,” admitting that she made baby food purees for her two kids instead of buying jars from the store, and suggests the idea only serves to justify the gendered distribution of domestic labor. Sharp analysis illuminates how such policy failures as America’s lack of universal preschool and paid family leave contribute to mothers’ suffering, and her proposed solutions include a more equal division of household labor between partners and developing a “multigenerational support network” of friends, neighbors, and extended family. The author’s candid appraisal of her own rage (she discusses having to mentally repeat “don’t touch him” to stop herself from roughly handling her son while angry) and her penetrating insights make for captivating reading. It’s an astute account of how society fails mothers. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

The author’s candid appraisal of her own rage . . . and her penetrating insights make for captivating reading. It’s an astute account of how society fails mothers." —Publishers Weekly

“A cleareyed analysis of the intricate web of cultural and political challenges that make female-identified parenting nearly impossible . . . the author writes with humor, vulnerability, and a level of expertise that shape her narrative into a nuanced and convincing argument for justice.”

—Kirkus

“Breaking down the unnamable feelings so many women have as mothers, Mom Rage is a must-read for women who struggle to reconcile the cultural pressure to be "good mothers” with the powerful negative emotions that come with parenting."—Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Become Her

“If you've ever screamed at your child in ways that shock you — and we all have, haven't we? — Mom Rage is an absolute must-read. As Minna Dubin argues, your anger is not a moral failing. This book is an eye-opening exploration of the many social forces that drive mothers to explode at their children, as well as the societal and situational solutions that could, ultimately, save us.”

—Melinda Wenner Moyer, author of How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes

"Mom Rage is a critical addition to the literature of mothering, compassionately exploring the ugly, rageful moments that haunt many of us even as we struggle to do right by our kids. Dubin invites us to consider our rage in the full context of a perverse, broken, contradictory, and cruel American system that fails families at every turn. I needed the compassion of this book, as well as its expansive look of what parenting can and should be.”

—Lydia Kiesling, author of Golden State

From the Publisher