Women Talking: The Mama Limit Line
Women Talking: The Mama Limit Line
a conversation with Minna Dubin, author of Mom Rage
“This book is a rebellion against the supremacy of the googly-eyed, cooing narrative, and the way it silences moms by erasing the harder parts of modern motherhood.”
Minna Dubin, Mom Rage
I, like many women, first came across the writing of Minna Dubin when she published an essay on Mom Rage in The New York Times during the early days of the pandemic. It was July 2020, I had just quit my job after turning in my 11th collaboration in May and had two children, ages six and nine who never left the house. I was going through a rebellion: a phase when I wanted to reject everything my life had become, I had stumbled upon the feminist writings of Sue Monk Kidd, and like so many other women, wanted to discover how to become Untamed, like Glennon Doyle.
Little did I know that a few years later, Minna and I would be connected in person, thanks to
and she would become a beloved fellow mom writer in a band we have come to call “The Witches.”This was not the first time Minna had been featured in The New York Times on Mom Rage. In fact, so many people responded with deep gratitude and relief that she wrote a book about the concept of Mom Rage, why it is so ubiquitous, and what we can do about it. Her book is thoughtful, nuanced, and so very human.
Though I was definitely raging quietly during the pandemic, I don’t have a lot of memories of mom rage directed at my children. I do recall coming up with a term which helped me warn my children that I was about to hit the point of no return. I called it my “Mama Limit Line.” In other words, when my kids weren’t listening, careening carelessly around the house, and I’d already asked them nicely to be quiet, or calm down, I would say: “Kids! I’m about to reach my Mama Limit Line!” This was said in a tone that wavered, showing how very close I was to blowing my top. They would usually realize that if they didn’t alter their behavior, they would regret it. (For more on the impossibility of parenting young children, read The Kids Are Broken…and It’s Only 11 am.)
I do recall one moment of pure mom rage. It was a decade ago. I had a two year old and a two month old and my husband had to leave to attend his grandfather’s funeral in Wisconsin. I was on my own with two kids for the very first time. My oldest naturally came down with something, and thus wasn’t feeling well so was whinier and clingier than normal. Meanwhile, I had an infant who still nursed every two hours. It was early in the morning, but of course we’d probably already been up for a few hours. My oldest was crying uncontrollably while I held my infant who needed to nurse. I didn’t know what to do and there wasn’t enough of me to go around. And I just lost it. I screamed at the top of my lungs, a primal, guttural sound that scared all of us and would leave my throat sore for days. I then collapsed on the ground, sobbing, still holding my infant to my chest.
I don’t remember whether I called my sister or whether her “twin-tuition” meant she called me but she lived only a few blocks away at the time and passed by our house on her way to work. I asked her to come over and she did. She probably wasn’t there more than a half an hour, but somehow having another adult on hand allowed me to calm myself down to get through the rest of the day.
Mom rage stems from a lot of different reasons which Minna beautifully outlines in the book. But for me, my rage erupts when I feel trapped. When I feel powerless to do anything about my conditions. When there is no one to turn to, no escape, the hours before bedtime endless and no one else but me to tend to these humans who need so damn much. I turn into a caged animal, lashing out at anyone and everyone who comes near.
For the most part, I tended to spare my children from my rage and directed it toward my partner. It wasn’t always his fault (though sometimes it was!) but he felt like a more comfortable recipient of my frustration and anger than my children. Minna has a whole chapter dedicated to partners as well as a priceless list in the back called “19 Steps to Alleviate Your Co-parent’s Mom Rage.”
Little did I know that my “rebellion” would lead to a revolution in my consciousness and an upheaval of my entire life (read Plot Twists and Mothering On My Own if you are unsure of what I am referring to). But I am grateful for my anger which allowed me to name that I was no longer okay. That I needed something different.
This is the power of our anger and our rage. It can let us reset our terms. Read on for how Minna harnessed the power of quitting, what it’s like “dipping her toe in dad-land,” and about her exhaustion of being “the little fucking calendar fairy.”
Cindy DiTiberio: You used the word “funneled” several times in the book and it is an accurate word for what is done to women once they become mothers. When discussing the lack of paternity leave, you described it as a “way the culture funnels mothers into the role of primary parent.” (So true!) Another time you write: “My entire self was being funneled into Mother.” I love that visual. All other options are eliminated and we are powerless due to the gravity of what you call “Lost Mother Valley.” We have to work really damn hard to hold on to our selves in motherhood. I’m thinking of an image of me with my hands and arms outstretched trying to prevent the slide down to nothingness. But it is a lot of work, on top of being exhausting. No wonder so many of us give in to the slide.
Minna Dubin: Writing a book-length work is like holding up a mirror to your diction. You find out all the weird turns of phrases you use. I stand by “funneled,” though! Especially when describing motherhood. Avoiding the funneling by not becoming the primary parent and not losing your former complex identity is like trying to get married but bypassing the wedding industrial complex. You can do it, but it’s a mountain of extra work, everyone will question your choices including your own mother, and the entire societal setup will try to block you from succeeding every step of the way. It is so much simpler to just be funneled, but that funneling (both in motherhood and in weddings) is about serving the interests of patriarchal capitalism.
CD: You wrote: “Mothering is the eternal sketching of protection maps, seeing the structural pitfalls seven steps ahead, and weaving nets, always ready to catch.” I related to that so much. Men are not taught to do this multilayered scan. Fathering is single focused: coach the team, drive the car, earn the money, mow the lawn. You later write: "Fatherhood is a side gig.” Like fatherhood is addition and subtraction, while motherhood is complex calculus. How have you found ways to complicate the role of father in your own marriage and how can we stop “over functioning” as moms? Do books and processes like Fair Play help? What has made a difference in your own partnership?
MD: I stepped down from primary parenthood when I wrote Mom Rage for a few years. My husband and I didn’t discuss this delineation of roles, just like we didn’t discuss that I’d be the primary parent when we had children. Now when my children need something, they call “Daddy!” From my desk in our bedroom, I hear my husband, who is cooking dinner in the kitchen, say exasperatedly, “Can you go ask Mommy?” The role reversal pleases me, even though I know sometimes my husband feels overwhelmed, a feeling I’m obviously familiar with. I think the Fair Play practice can help. My husband and I did not do that though. I just sort of quit. And to be fair, my version of quitting is still being a very involved parent. But I’ve really let myself be more mediocre at home (which is probably what my parents’ generation would have thought of as being a fantastic parent) in order to nurture other pleasures and interests, like my career and my non-family relationships. My son who struggled with a host of diagnoses and school issues for years is doing great now, and my daughter is also doing well, so I’ve reached a place where I feel like it’s safe to step back some from the intensive way I was parenting. This feels like both a responsible and self-loving decision.
“Mom rage stems from the overwhelming stress and impossible expectations of modern motherhood, combined with a debilitating lack of support from within the family structure and societal systems.”
Minna Dubin, Mom Rage
CD: You told a story onstage of a particularly difficult moment in your parenting, and your partner asked what you needed and you said: “I need not to be his mother.” The crowd gasps in shock. It made me wonder, did you mean, I need to not have him as a child, or did you mean, I don’t want to be his mother? I’d like to be his father instead, which of course is a totally different thing. There is a scene in Clover Stroud’s wonderful My Wild and Sleepless Nights where a friend of hers wants another baby, but feels conflicted and says: “I wouldn’t mind having a go at being a father.”
MD: In that scene, it’s the 100th time my baby has woken up crying during the 4-month sleep regression period. I punch the mattress. And when I reply, “I need to not be his mother,” what I meant was: “I need a break” / “I need help” / “I need sleep” / “I need a night doula” / “I need support” (which the society doesn’t provide for mothers, and as a result) / “I have hit my wall” AKA “I am losing my motherfucking mind!” It was so early still and I did feel like my husband was all up in the messy sleepless chaos of it with me at that time. So I wasn’t having those “I want to be a dad” feelings. But I absolutely understand the sentiment, and I feel like in my fall from primacy in the last couple years that my husband’s taken on so much more of the childcare and domestic labor, I have gotten to dip my toe in dad-land. And I’ll tell ya, the water is warm!
CD: Writing about going to your first writing residency, you describe how it felt “to be the one who waved goodbye to my beautiful family and walked out the door to go do my very important work.” You write that almost “half of American mothers ‘voluntarily’ reduce their hours to care for a family member, compared to 28% of fathers.” When this shift is made, there becomes a hierarchy of whose work takes precedence, and that can be extremely frustrating after years of having to make accommodations when the other spouse doesn’t, even though “this is what you’ve both agreed to.”
You acknowledge that one of your rage triggers is your need to protect your time. That rage bubbles when you feel powerless to do anything to reclaim your time, or that your need for time (to write, to sleep) is being threatened. What can we do in the absence of the societal support we need? Do mothers need to stop voluntarily reducing their hours so this doesn’t become so common in motherhood? Does someone need to start teaching parenting negotiation classes after your Taking Care of Baby class so that couples are equipped to make these decisions without falling back on gendered stereotypes?
MD: OMG, YES! Someone does need to coach co-parents on this! Of course it’ll just be another support mothers need that society won’t fund, so we’ll have to throw it in the luxury pile for the wealthy along with night doulas, pelvic floor therapists, and sleep consultants. The upholding of the father’s work as the paramount thing the family’s life bends toward is so common. And for artist moms like myself, it’s really hard to fight for our work to be treated equally because we’ve learned through the value system of our society that art is not a serious work endeavor, especially if it’s not making much or any money. I had to get very fierce about my work time. And my husband would be very supportive, but I still had to make it happen. He wasn’t going to make it happen for me. The Sunday before a Monday holiday would roll around, I’d say to my husband, “There’s no school tomorrow.” (And let’s just pause here to point out the invisible labor of mothers holding every family member’s schedule in her brain and reworking things so none of the schedules conflict with each other, like a little fucking calendar fairy.) Then I’d say real quick, “So you’ll work a half day, and I’ll work a half day, and we’ll split childcare?” And he’d do a big sigh, and say in a tight voice, “Okay.” And I’d walk real quick out of that room feeling annoyed that unless I twist his arm, childcare for school holidays is mine unless I “give” it to him, but also totally victorious that I claimed my work time.
“Rage is a natural reaction to being systematically stripped of one’s power.”
Minna Dubin, Mom Rage
CD: I wrote about anger in a post called Good & Mad (I’d just read Rebecca Traister’s book). I mused: “underneath our anger, at least for women, you often discover wanting. A desire unrealized. A desire unsatisfied. A desire unquenched. Because women have been conditioned to be uncomfortable with their desires, we have learned to ignore them. And then we wonder why we are angry.” You too name that “anger is a weathervane pointing to the places that need attention and healing.” You learn to ask your rage questions to unearth the information underneath the rage. Where does it hurt? What are you afraid of? What are you trying to protect? What do you need? And then realize that most of your rage stems from the same few triggers. You use the analogy of taking your anger to tea, to get curious about it, but what I also loved in this section of the book is that, in many ways, you are turning your mothering skills on yourself. You are tending to your discomfort the way you have learned to tend to your children’s, to help them get past a rough patch. I too have really leaned on my mothering self to help take care of myself during the difficult time when I realized my marriage was over. Why does this feel so foreign to us? Why are we conditioned to tend to others, while ignoring ourselves?
MD: Caretaking is a maternal lineage passed down from our mothers who were conditioned to be caretakers, and their mothers, and so forth. And even if we don’t have the most “maternal” of mothers, we have soaked in every media message for our entire lives telling us that once we have used our bodies to give pleasure to men and have completed our biggest blessing of reproducing, our value shifts and resides in our caretaking (which is unpaid unacknowledged master-level work!). Mothers aren’t simply expected to put our family’s needs first; we’re expected not to have any needs to begin with, because aside from Mother, we aren’t supposed to have any self! Similarly, people socialized as women are taught not to honor our anger, but instead to ignore, push down, or get rid of it. We’re supposed to float around, like happy mother ghosts, blissed out from the fulfillment of our coerced care work.
One of the lines that is a theme in Mom Rage is “Maybe I can be precious too.” Society is not taking care of mothers. We have to take care of – mother – ourselves and each other. What other choice do we have? There is so much beauty and transformation and healing that awaits us when we acknowledge our own vulnerability and pain and need. I’m always coming back to mom-community (which, for the record, can and should include non-moms and maybe even dads). We have to let others take care of us. It’s the ultimate vulnerability and opportunity for connection and community.
Thank you, Minna, for all the work you put into this book and taking the time to answer my questions. Order the book here!
FURTHER READING:
An excerpt of Mom Rage on Oprah Daily.
An excerpt of Mom Rage on Lit Hub.
Minna was interviewed on the newly launched The Feminist Mom Podcast with Erin Spahr.
Listen to Minna on
’s Postpartum Production Podcast here.Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women and the Way Forward by Gemma Hartley
Body Full of Stars: Female Rage and My Passage into Motherhood by Molly Caro May.
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Wow, I related to so much of this post. I'm fairly new to the mothering community with two boys ages 3 and 1.5 and holy shit is it hard. I recently started a Substack, Mommy Say F*ck, to process some of my own Mom Rage, and to build a community of like-minded mothers who are willing to pause and say, "Something isn't right. I need more support. Something needs to change." I also wanted to tell the raw, uncensored, full-of-rage stories that society tries to censor and shames us for. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this post. Can't wait to read more!