Hear Us Scream: On The Unique Rage That Rises In Motherhood
'It all accumulated after we got home from a day out,' says Shivani, who regularly juggles the competing demands of a newborn and toddler while her husband works away.
It takes a surprising amount of mental and physical preparation to leave the house with children: mapping out the route with ample stops, the snacks, the toys, the nappies, the change of clothes. ‘All day it felt like nothing I could do was good enough, and when we got home, my two-year-old was just screaming for more, climbing all over me, pulling my hair and nipples as I tried to breastfeed,’ she says. ‘I was so touched out, it felt like my body was being violated.’ She remembers standing in the kitchen, a red rage washing over her. ‘I just lost it and began screaming uncontrollably,’ adding, ‘When someone grabs you, your reflex is to lash back and that’s a scary feeling when you’re a parent.’
The maternal rage Shivani describes is defined as the uncontrollable anger women feel through the lens of motherhood. As psychologist Dr Caroline Boyd explains, ‘ it is often the result of a direct physical threat, overwhelm or a violated or unmet need usually for self-care.’ As humans, we often enter a flight or freeze state when this happens, which can cause the part of our brain responsible for emotions to take over and make us lose touch with moral reason. 'All we see is raging red, and at this point, we quite literally, flip our lid,’ Boyd adds.
In many ways, to be a woman in today’s climate is to live on the outskirts of overwhelm and violation; a woman is killed by a man every three days, we earn an average of 14% less than our male counterparts, and are regarded as the ‘shock absorbers’ of the cost of living crisis.
For many women, these disparities skyrocket after having children, navigating soaring childcare costs, the motherhood penalty and carrying out up to 60% more unpaid work within the home. Since having a child two years ago, I constantly feel like I’m trying to squeeze some resemblance of a work-life balance into a space the size of a mouse hole. Time, finances and my own physical and mental reserves have massively depleted, yet the demands I need to meet have multiplied a million times over.
Boyd adds, ‘liberal feminism has created much powerful change for women, but it’s also added to the pressure too. Jenna, a mother of one, juggling a full-time job with hefty childcare costs, identifies with this: ‘There’s still this myth of being able to have it all, and doing it all perfectly, yet the numbers don’t stack up,' she says. 'Something is always compromised and usually it’s my sanity.’
Quite understandably, women, on average, are angrier than men, and 92% of mothers feel overwhelmed yet despite this, white-hot rage – the sort that ripples through your body making your hair stand up and your bones shake – is still thought of as a masculine trait.
‘Society denies women the right to label anger, and we’re labelled hysterical when we do,’ Boyd says. ‘Women are taught to bite our tongues, and suppress it.’
This is particularly true for women of colour, who, in addition to being disproportionately affected by social inequalities, are also battling tired tropes such as ‘angry black woman’ or the ‘docility myth’ whereby women of Asian heritage are seen as over-compliant. ‘Asian women are supposed to feel angry, and in many ways, I’ve absorbed the projection that we should be submissive,' Shivani agrees. 'It’s made my relationship with my own anger uncomfortable, I just don’t know how to express it.’
So what can we do when we are standing in our kitchens, about to flip our lid? Boyd references the 3Rs. First, self-regulate by stepping away: ‘try splashing your face with cold water to activate your soothing system,’ she advises. Secondly, reconnect by naming how you’re feeling, allowing the logical part of your brain to switch back on. And, finally, repair: ‘acknowledge you’re a good mother and you can’t get it right all the time. Take the time to apologise to anyone you might have lashed out at in the heat of the moment.’
Of course, transformational shifts are needed at a societal level for any meaningful change, too. Sociologist Maud Perrier explains, ‘We’re seeing the impact of 10 years of austerity in the UK, where women's services have been disseminated and specific economic policies have deprived the poorest and most marginalised groups.’
With so many mothers at breaking point, we have reached the brink caused by a society that’s overloaded us without the right infrastructure to support us. ‘We need mother’s rage to fuel an overhaul of the welfare state,’ Perrier reflects, and she’s right, because how loud do we really need to scream until somebody finally listens?
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