Rage Mum: the new Worcester Woman
Julia Llewellyn Smith on a new force to be reckoned with – and no, she won’t calm down
How does your day begin? A year ago mine would have involved maybe a shower, breakfast, checking my children had shoes for the new school term, a text to a friend arranging a quick drink. Now I know it’s a good one if I manage more than three minutes of the Today programme without bawling expletives at whichever minister has been wheeled out to recite a list of excuses for the latest government fiasco.
When I check my texts, emails and social media, all are chock-a-block with furious messages from formerly mild-mannered friends and neighbours, discussing taking to the streets in acts of civil disobedience.
By 8am my heart is pounding, my limbs quivering with the anger that, post-covid, defines my life. My bemused husband suggests perhaps I should “chill”. I respond by making V-signs behind his back. Then I go to my computer, bash out several irate emails to politicians, put on a mask and go on a protest march.
I am the personification of the latest political force: a “rage mum”. We’re the UK sisters of the US “rage moms” – a term coined by Senator Patty Murray, the highest-ranking woman in the senate. Exhausted and furious after months of trying to homeschool, anguished about their vulnerable ageing parents and all the while trying to hold on to their vulnerable jobs, these fed-up mothers are the force Democrats are pinning their hopes on to take Joe Biden to the White House in November.
Another UK election may be years off but if politicians know what’s good for them, they’ll be monitoring us rage mums very carefully too. After all, we are a completely different, snarling beast to insipid, thirtysomething “Worcester Woman”– the Middle-englander mother-of-two, “not interested in politics”, patronisingly dreamed up by Tony Blair’s strategists in 1997.
Nor are we anything like the yummy mummies of the 2010 “Mumsnet election”, who apparently carried David Cameron to victory in pique that Gordon Brown wouldn’t tell them his favourite type of biscuit.
Rage mums are making it very plain that we won’t be fobbed off with patronising labels (though rage mum is, too, a somewhat belittling term that implies the only women whose anger should be recognised are mothers).
We couldn’t give a flying fig roll about the Prime Minister’s opinion on Hobnobs. Instead, we’re infuriated by the neverending corona-shambles and the A-level fiasco. We’re appalled that domestic abuse cases shot up in lockdown. And we’re in despair that – because women traditionally work in sectors such as retail and hospitality, which have been most damaged by Covid – we are at greater risk of unemployment, with the Institute for Fiscal Studies showing mothers are almost 50 per cent more likely than fathers to have lost their jobs or, thanks to lack of lockdown childcare, been forced to quit them. “Women on Mumsnet are incensed and close to breaking point,” says the website’s founder Justine Roberts. “There’s a strong feeling that women are not being represented at the highest levels and their voices are going unheard.”
In the first few weeks of lockdown, I wasn’t angry, instead I felt sad and scared. But then came the April weekend when I learnt a member of my choir was dying of Covid-19 in hospital. The next day I read that the PM hadn’t attended five emergency Cobra meetings about the virus.
Something switched. My listlessness was replaced by a red mist that mounted daily in correlation with the death toll, and the Dominic Cummings scandal that saw every mother on my Facebook feed explode.
“A man’s allowed to break every rule and lie brazenly because he can’t cope with five minutes of childcare while his female’s malfunctioning – it almost gave me an aneurysm,” fumed my friend, Lora. “Every woman’s been sick with a toddler in tow – you don’t drive illegally to Durham, you plonk the child in front of Cbeebies while you vomit quietly into a bucket.”
The result is we’re waving placards on distanced marches and packing into virtual church halls to vent our outrage. From the Black Lives Matter protests, originally organised by two women, to the Us for Them campaign organised by four women who met on social media to have children return to school without social distancing, women are mobilising in a way we haven’t seen since the bra-burning Sixties.
In my formerly genteel neighbourhood of Barnes, south-west London, mothers who a year ago might have been a bit irked at the unreliable bin collections are now going to the barricades in protest against the recent closure of Hammersmith Bridge – our only viable link to the rest of London.
That closure – the result of decades of neglect and political infighting between the council and Transport for London – means that after six months of homeschooling, 4,000 local children now can’t travel to school or our elderly parents attend hospital appointments without complex detours adding at least an hour to what were once 10-minute walks. Last week, a neighbour gave birth on her floor, the ambulance unable to reach her via surrounding gridlocked roads.
Mothers have to sort all this out. Politicians, who promised help before the election, are now silent on an issue affecting tens of thousands. Consequently, my local Whatsapp group is on fire with women discussing withholding our taxes.
What’s notable is that while men are outraged, too, the most furious voices seem consistently to be female. “When our leaders’ incompetence is damaging our children so badly, women are programmed to lash out,” says my neighbour Alice White, reeling from the chaos around her son’s A-level results.
“My husband doesn’t seem nearly so bothered. The only thing that really worked him up has been whether the football would restart. He’s always had an ‘It’ll be fine’ approach – but I’ve realised that he would think that way when the status quo has always been organised in his favour.”
I wonder if hormones are at the root of female ire. After all, perimenopausal women have borne much of the pandemic’s brunt, often caring for bored teenagers and frail parents. Nuffield Health’s survey of more than 3,000 menopausal women found that 60 per cent experienced uncharacteristic, irrational anger.
But Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, tells me this is nonsense.
“It’s not some rush of maternal – or any – hormones making us angry, it’s because there’s plenty to be angry about right now,” she says.
What’s more, we are unapologetic about our fury. I keep remembering the Hulk, warning “you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry”. Well, if you thought a dweeby doctor morphing into a gigantic, green, destructive humanoid was scary, then all I can say is just sit back and watch what the rage mums do next.
‘My husband doesn’t seem bothered. He only cared about the football restarting’