Stop calling it Mom Rage

Let’s stop with this nonsense about labeling current feelings of despair and frustration “mom rage.” Or equate the feelings that some mothers experience legitimately during pregnancy or postpartum with the feelings that mothers are experiencing currently during COVID-19. These feelings are different. To lump them in the same category, and label all these very different feelings as “mom rage” shifts the blame, burden and expectations to women and how women are unable to cope with these unprecedented circumstances rather than acknowledging that the current situation is unsustainable for most people, mothers included.

Last month, I started reading articles about what COVID-19 has done to mothers in particular and the rage that it has unleashed in them. It’s not that I haven’t felt “mom rage” before (as the NY Times defines it: “mom rage is the colloquial term for the unrestrained anger many women experience during pregnancy, postpartum and beyond”). But what I’m noticing, feeling and experiencing during this pandemic is not unrestrained anger in the ways described by “mom rage” so much as a complete frustration and unbridled anger towards the unrealistic expectations that are placed on women. And I recognize I am speaking from an extremely privileged standpoint by having a well-paying, full-time job with flexibility and a partner who is involved and helps out. Despite all of this, I am struggling.

What is going on is a a systemic problem, not an individual, coping issue only experienced by mothers. It’s nice to prescribe solutions to mothers of taking a break, getting outside, exercising, eating healthy, sleeping more, and the list goes on. But that doesn’t get at the heart of what is creating and sustaining this “mom rage”. And again, incorrectly, it is placing the blame on women for not being able to cope “properly” with these ludicrous expectations.

COVID-19 has disproportionately affected and even devastated women’s careers, with their mental health, financial independence and equality in the workplace hanging on by a mere thread. These threads are being cut intentionally and unintentionally across the country as women are making the wrenching choice of leaving their jobs to care for their children (check out this NPR NewsHour piece on this featuring my friend Jaspreet Chowdhary). This pandemic is breaking the fragility of the work-life balance that women have worked so hard to create. The burden of childcare has always fallen on women’s laps despite attempts at making it equal. And there is no better way to highlight this imbalance than to recognize how often a woman is interrupted while on a work call than a man while at home. The kids always seem to go mommy first another NY Times article discusses.

And so what are we to do? I think we need to start discussing the disparity of childcare expectations and impacts on women’s careers more openly. Instead of labeling an unrealistic expectation and burden placed on women as “mom rage”, let’s discuss the actual expectation and burden that is placed on women and why. How do we dismantle these systems that have been created by men for men? How do we funnel more financial resources to an already underfunded childcare system? Why is more money not being set aside for childcare despite billions being spent by the federal government during this pandemic? If we do not start looking at the systems that created this childcare deficit in the first place, there will be more collateral damage than just mom rage.