How I learned to cope with mom rage — and accept my new identity as a parent

In the fall of 2023 two seemingly unrelated events happened to me: I hit a rough patch with my then 4-year-old, and I picked up the novel “Nightbitch” by Rachel Yoder. Usually I resisted what I deemed “mommy lit” (obviously a mistake on my part related to ingrained internalized misogyny), but the raw slab of steak on the novel’s cover called to me. At the time I was struggling externally with my son’s behaviors and internally with my identity as a parent.

“Mother” wasn’t a label I clamored to claim. 

When my firstborn arrived, I was struck by the obvious: overwhelming love, anxiety and a newfound sense of responsibility. Within hours of my son’s birth, another more bizarre feeling cropped up: the urge to hide from my new title of mother. This was likely due to the well-worn knowledge that the label “mother” was the fastest way to detach a woman from herself, more disconnecting even than “wife.” All women, whether or not they are married or have children, are brought up to outstrip themselves from their natural selves. We are taught to adjust our emotions, looks and desires to fit within societal boxes. This push to conform is even more compounded for mothers.

Personal history and pop culture had taught me that mothers were not fully formed people, but rather caricatures with hardened truths. Mothers were supposed to be instinctual, self-scarifying, pleasant, asexual and fully devoted at all times.  I didn’t want to be or be seen as a reduction of a person, so I kept my distance from mommy-related tropes and hoped my friends without children didn’t see me as “one of those” moms.

Other women I knew were also fighting the overshadowing title of “mommy.” One friend confided in me that she didn’t allow her cycling instructor to become Instagram friends with her because she didn’t want him to know she was a mom. She revered this 50-minute space where once a week someone thought she was a mysterious, possibly sexy, unattached woman out in the world. Instinctively she knew his knowledge of her full identity would dissolve this.

And then came “Nightbitch.”

I read along as the mother narrator struggled with her own feral son. In the book, it was taking her hours to put him to bed, which brought about a nighttime rage in her that at times turned her so dissimilar and intense that it frightened her son and husband. I was intimately familiar with that particular rage and had never seen it discussed anywhere or with any of my mom friends. I relayed this matching sensation to my wife, who then happily referred to me as Nightbitch during my own bouts of evening anger. In the novel, I read as the nameless mother struggled with feeling disconnected from her old creative self, and with the push and pull of wanting to be with her child while simultaneously far away from the domestic. While it wasn’t a life-changing read at first, I welcomed seeing the reflection of the mundane and exhausting mirrored back. 

In my own home, nothing was making my kid happy. Seemingly overnight everything according to him was “stupid” or “boring,” and worse, he was resistant to everyday routines. At night he chucked his toothbrush across the bathroom and screamed in protest, and in the morning he greeted my singsong wake-ups with animal howls (and hurling stuffed animals). I attempted reward charts, talking to him man-to-man, and yelling (and then apologizing because I’m a millennial gentle parent). Finally I gave up hoping it was a phase. 

But I kept reading. One night as we sat side by side on the couch, him watching “Peppa Pig,” me consuming “Nightbitch,” the following passage jumped out at me: “She likes the idea of being a dog. She can run free if she wants. She can be a body and instinct and urge. She can be hunger and rage, thirst and fear, nothing more.”

I put down the book and thought about what it would feel like to crawl around on all fours. To bark. To not communicate through words. To not resist hunger, or tamper my rage. Like a dog, what would it be like to allow all the parts of myself to just be, without twisting them into a more presentable package? After all, this was the issue with motherhood (and womanhood, really): We are expected to hide our mess. It might feel great to be an animal — all id, no ego, I thought. But how silly would that be? I wrangled my kid to bed while the lingering thoughts of trotting around my apartment on my hands and knees played in the backdrop of my mind. 

The next morning, with nothing to lose, I decided to go full Nightbitch. When I went into my son’s room, I didn’t sing or give the typical good morning salutation. I turned on the light, dropped to the ground and crawled inside, making high-pitched barking sounds. His sleepy eyes opened. He stared at me, confused, but not mad. 

“Ruff, ruff,” I barked, climbing into his bed, licking his face and nuzzling him awake. Of course, he was thrilled. I proceeded to carry him his clothes piece by piece using my mouth, and maintained barking sounds as encouragement while he got dressed. 

Without questioning what happened to his mom, my son happily pet me. “Sparkles,” he quickly decided, inventing my dog name. 

The more I read “Nightbitch,” it was illuminated that as the narrator mother leaned into her nature, hunger and desires, the more she felt like herself, even with her updated mother identity. Leaning in caused her to feel better. She mothered better. In a favorite scene, Nightbitch and her son sloppily chow down on chunks of raw meat at the playground in front of gobsmacked parents. Finally, they are a team — a pack. I realized that while I can’t always throw societal norms out the window, the idea of connecting with myself and my kid in ways that felt natural was a good place to start.