This Deep Dive series is all about why motherhood is so gosh darn hard. Turns out there are sociopolitical forces at play that make motherhood way harder than it needs to be. Listen to the full playlist on Spotify.

"Mom rage" is a thing, and it feels shameful because it feels so far from where we are supposed to be as mothers and as women. Writer Anne Lamott called it "a closely guarded secret, as if the myth of maternal bliss is so sacrosanct that we can't even admit these feelings to ourselves."

But it's more universal than we admit, and its triggers more predictable. There are also practical ways we can all recognize it sooner when it might be building within ourselves.

In this episode, we discuss:

How a "sequence of provocations" can dramatically increase anger

Why lack of sleep is a major cause of mom rage

Things that work to lengthen our fuses

If you found this episode useful, here are some other episodes of ours you might listen to next:Fresh Take: Carla Naumburg Tells Us How To Stop Losing It With Our Kids (May 2021)Sometimes We Lose It (Dec 2018)How to Yell Less (Dec 2024)

Here are links to some of the resources we mentioned in the episode: @momuninterrupted on Instagram: "Nighttime Parenting"Anne Lamott for Salon: "Mother Rage: Theory and Practice"Pallavi Pundir for Vice: ‘It’s Like I Was Possessed’: Women Reveal the Deepest, Darkest Moments of Their ‘Mom Rage’Minna Dubin for The New York Times: "The Rage Mothers Don’t Talk About"Minna Dubin for The New York Times: ‘I Am Going to Physically Explode’: Mom Rage in a PandemicNBC Boston: What Is Mom Rage? Why Are So Many Women Feeling It?Mairead Heffron for Image: The secret rage of motherhood: ‘I never imagined that my child could be both the trigger and target of my anger’

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What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Margaret Ables and Amy Wilson.

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