2025 Was the Year of Maternal Rage. 2026 Is the Year We Put It to Use

In case you missed it, 2025 was the year of maternal rage. There’s nothing foreign about the feeling; indeed, maternal rage has been around since the dawn of time…but its open expression in TV, film and music over the past year is a newer phenomenon. (See: A Handmaid’s Tale, Die My Love, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Hamnet and so on.) So what’s caused this shift—and where does it mean for us in the year ahead? I spoke to a clinical psychologist to learn more about this upswell.

Dr. Bethany Cook, PsyD, MT-BC, is a licensed clinical psychologist and author of For What It’s Worth: A Perspective on How to Thrive and Survive Parenting. She's a sought-after therapist and quoted media expert who brings accessible, real-world guidance to families of all socioeconomic and mental health backgrounds, based on over 20 years of clinical experience in the field.

There are numerous contributing factors that explain why angry moms are being represented more in popular culture. Per the expert:

“Movements like Me Too have brought to consciousness for many women how much silence, abuse and emotional labor they have been conditioned to accept as normal. When anyone spends the majority of their life swallowing their own reactions and deferring their needs to others around them…resentment builds,” she says.

“Covid was like an accelerant to this awakening. Families were pushed to the brink, and social media platforms like TikTok gave women a place to narrate what was happening in real time. Suddenly, for the first time, women around the world saw each other's shared experience of exhaustion, imbalance in relationships, resentment and burnout.  Once women realized they weren't alone in their struggles, the shame associated with the suffering was validated and space was created for anger to surface and be expressed.”

To be clear, the increase of maternal rage isn't about rejecting motherhood. It is about rejecting a narrow, idealized version of it. When women are told there is only one acceptable way to be a “good” mother while carrying most of the emotional, logistical and often financial responsibility, it doesn't take a genius to see why so many are rageful. Still, we are not often rewarded for our emotional honesty.

“Expressing this rage has often resulted in strong backlash from those benefiting from the silent self-sacrifice of women,” says Dr. Cook. “Mothers who spoke out or shared their experiences were given negative labels in an effort to ‘push them back down,’ such as dramatic, ungrateful or mentally unstable. This sent a clear message to women: Don’t complain about how heavy it is…you asked for this when you wanted equal rights.”

Needless to say, being told to shut up when you’ve finally found your voice is a hard pill to swallow. The result is a pressure cooker of rage—and by 2025, that ever-building pressure needed a release, and found it in pop culture.

Stories like The Handmaid’s Tale resonated with many women—namely because “it accurately reflected the fear many women experience; reduced to a role rather than seen as a whole person,” says Dr. Cook, adding that “just because a woman wants to be a mother doesn’t mean she must surrender her identity, ambition or autonomy.”

Then there are strong public figures like Taylor Swift who are modeling the attitude of “I’m done being kind at the expense of myself.” While not a mom—though some fans refer to her as “mother”—her refusal to soften or apologize for anger reflects the broader cultural shift. Dr. Cook thinks this trend will hopefully guide us to a more peaceful place going forward:

“When rage becomes more visible and normalized, women are validated in their experience as they realize they aren’t alone. When someone feels validated and seen, the anger often shifts from emotional explosions to useful energy for problem-solving. So in 2026, I predict we will have less viral venting and see more conversations about boundaries, systems and sustainability. Less ‘I’m losing it’ and more ‘this setup doesn’t work, how can we change it?’”

Like Michael Jackson said, moms, you are not alone. But how do we actually turn our rage into something productive?

First, Dr. Cook says it is important to understand that rage does not mean you are failing; it's just data letting you know something isn’t working. “Remember that rage is often the most visible emotion, but you need to look deeper to what’s underneath the anger,” Dr. Cook advises.  Think of it as the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the anger are primary emotions like sadness, disappointment, grief, fear or frustration. “When you identify what’s actually driving the anger, it stops feeling so chaotic and you’re able to start making sense of things and move forward in action. The majority of mothers are being asked to be successful in impossible conditions with minimal structural or relational support.”

Bottom line: The first step isn’t calming down, it's continuing to seek validation and find more like-minded women. Per the expert, this kind of acknowledgment allows the nervous system to settle enough so you can move out of survival mode—and that’s when you’re able to think clearer and solve problems. After all, relief from maternal rage doesn’t come solely from regulating yourself; it comes from changing the conditions that made the rage necessary to begin with.

So, start by asking yourself some questions that help you really pinpoint the source of your anger. “You need to name it. Write it down. Look at the whole landscape,” says Dr. Cook. “Then separate what you can realistically change today, tomorrow and set long-term goals.” From there, you can find a more fulfilling release from all that pent-up frustration.

Hey, moms, I think this sounds like a New Year’s resolution that we can all get behind.