My baby is nearly two. ‘Ah, the terrible twos!’ people say knowingly, leaving me wondering what we might be in for. It’s true that, as my baby is getting older and becoming increasingly independent, we have had some moments where our desires didn’t exactly coincide (translation: she has a big meltdown if we want her to have a bath and she is busy doing something else). But - and here I should be trying to find as much wood to touch as possible - so far these meltdowns have been few and short. (I suspect this might be the moment when parents with older children are starting to think ‘mmhmmmm...just wait’).
Thinking that it might be a good idea to get prepared for what the next few years might hold, I talked to our local Plunket nurse about managing behaviour (translation: what should I do if my baby turns into a wailing banshee in the middle of the supermarket?) Before offering some useful tips, she said that part of early childhood development is about learning how to control strong emotions in a healthy way. She also said that so-called tantrums are a form of communication: sometimes toddlers act out because they are frustrated at not being able to express what they want in a way their parents can understand (and parents can get frustrated at not being able to understand too). If a child can speak well from an early age, they are less likely to have meltdowns because they can’t be understood. On the other hand, they can have meltdowns when their wants are understood and not supplied (for example, when their winning argument about not wanting to have a bath is ignored)
Whether it is failure to be heard and understood or failure to have one’s desires fulfilled, ‘tantrums’ (starting to really not like that word) are an expression of frustration, of being thwarted, and of being ignored. In other words, the kids are angry.
As an emotion, anger seems to have a bad rap. Anger is conventionally equated with overweening aggression and violence: at best, it should be ‘managed’, at worst ‘suppressed’. Modern psychologists, however, apparently view anger as a primary, natural, and mature emotion experienced by virtually all humans at times, and as something that has functional value for survival. Anger is thought to mobilize psychological resources for corrective action. It is uncontrolled anger that is the problem.
British psychotherapist Sue Parker Hall, for example, argues that anger originates at age 18 months to 3 years (those ‘terrible twos’) to provide the motivation and energy for a child who is beginning to separate from their carers and assert their differences: it therefore emerges at the same time as thinking is developing.
As with much else, anger is also gendered: girls and women more commonly display passive angry behaviours such as sulking (another of my pet hate words), vindictive gossiping, defeatism and self-blame, while boys and men more commonly display aggressive behaviours, such as destructiveness and bullying (I am generalising here, of course: different people can display different combinations of passive and aggressive behaviours).
Why might girls and women engage in more passive angry behaviours? Bit of a no-brainer this, really: because, more broadly, girls and women are not encouraged to be assertive and direct in the expression of their feelings. Instead of openly addressing people’s hurtful behaviour with them, girls and women are taught to shun them and b*tch (no coincidence that this is a pejorative word for women) behind their back. Instead of raising their voice and telling people what to do, girls and women are meant to keep quiet and get on with it, leading to the development of resentment (and rough shaking of kitchen implements). Cue an unsuspecting man saying ‘what’s wrong?’, to which a woman classically replies ‘nothing’ (in a way that indicates that everything is wrong and she’s really angry about it). He will shrug his shoulders, go back to what he’s doing, causing yet more anger .... and a million comedy routines are born.
This is by no means to say that women should adopt more active forms of anger if this means adopting aggressive, threatening, intimidating and violent behaviour. Rather, the ideal for both genders is to speak up, say what’s bugging them, and work through it constructively. It’s the speaking up about what’s bothering you that can be the hardest thing to do, especially when it seems trivial. Both men and women, boys and girls - and I include myself in this - are works in progress when it comes to managing anger successfully.
Here Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has in the last fortnight shown the way in terms of directly expressing her anger with the person concerned. Whatever her political record (and, as with any male politician, there is plenty with which to take issue), Gillard demonstrated her anger by standing up, naming the misogyny and sexism in public life, and shaming the behaviour of those responsible. That has to be a positive step in tackling sexism in public life, and it’s no wonder it struck a chord with hundreds of thousands of women worldwide.
But what about social anger? Who could deny that anger is a force for social change, both positive and negative? As I mentioned in a previous post, if ‘first wave’ feminists weren’t angry about their lack of economic or political clout and sought to do something about it, then a whole lot of women would be a lot worse off. This is true in any number of movements.
Women, particularly mothers, are still angry. In the 1990s, a Women’s Anger Study found that there were three common roots to women's anger: powerlessness, injustice and the irresponsibility of other people. Another study found that parenthood exacerbated anger in women: ‘women have higher levels of anger than men, ... each additional child in the household increases anger, and ... children increase anger more for mothers than for fathers.’
The researchers found that this ‘anger gap’ was because:
Parenthood introduces two types of objective stressors into an individual's life: economic strains and the strains associated with child care. Women are exposed to both types of strain more than men. Economic hardship, child-care responsibilities in the household, and difficulties arranging and paying for child care all significantly increase anger, and explain the effects of gender and parenthood on anger. In support of a gender inequality perspective, we find that mothers have the highest levels of anger because of economic inequality and the inequitable distribution of parental responsibilities. Mothers also are more likely to express their anger than others.
When it comes to feminism, women and anger have an uneasy relationship. Anger has ignited many a social movement, but can also be the stick used to beat those who would strive for change. Former US ambassador and Vermont governor Madeleine M. Kunin writes about anger in her 2012 book The New Feminist Agenda: Defining the Next Revolution for Women, Work, and Family. In it, she quotes from an interview she conducted with Anita Hill. Hill says:
‘We have to be allowed to be angry.’ // Women are hesitant to be angry because ‘they don’t want to be labelled femi-Nazis,’ she says. ‘Feminism has been caricatured to [such] a degree that it takes anger as a political tool away from them.’ (p 254)
Kunin agrees, but cautions, ‘if anger is too severe it may result in despair, the belief that nothing we can do will change anything. Or extreme anger may result in violence - the belief that the only way to change anything is tear the existing system down and start from scratch.’ While Kunin thinks that there is a place for this kind of anger - e.g. in protests against totalitarian regimes - she believes that ‘change best occurs when we can express controlled targeted anger focussed on a new vision of society’.
Change can also occur by recognising that anger, particularly in women, is a healthy response to injustice, irresponsibility and powerlessness. If women learn to both express and channel their anger to address those things then doesn’t that also help role-model to their children - particularly their girls - how to best articulate their anger rather than suppress it?
Speaking for myself, one of the things that drove me to start this blog was anger. I might not have put it that way when I started out, rather viewing it as a creative and intellectual outlet, and something to alleviate the boredom of being stuck at home with a baby all day. But it was also a means of venting some frustration: both with the pinkarama that seems to pass for girlhood these days, and with the lack of recognition and respect for the work involved in stay-at-home-parenting.
Similarly, the frustrations of toddlers are also about powerlessness and injustice (or at least perceived injustice: ‘You want me to have bath? But I want to keep riding my bike! That’s so unfair!’). It might not be quite in the same league as movements for social change - and I don’t wish to trivialise those by the comparison - but there are power relations within a family to which toddlers are on some level responding.
Bearing that in mind, I’m going to try my best to empathise more next time a battle of wills is brewing at bath-time ...
