Julie Jay: Our anger can blindside us when we least expect it - even as parents

“My husband has left dirty washing in the laundry basket for the third time this week, Joe,” I would start, relishing my chance to rant on the national airwaves. 

“The thing is, he could just as easily have placed it directly in the washing machine — in fact, he actually had to walk past it to put the clothes in the laundry basket.”

“Is your radio on in the background?” Joe would interject because I would most certainly be the caller who forgot to turn my radio off, diluting my rage-filled rant with static interference.

“I take your point Sinéad,” Joe would say, using the pseudonym — Sinéad Kelly — I had given to the researcher. It also happens to be the pseudonym I use whenever the guards stop me for not using my headlights correctly.

Tantrums are not just Elton John’s thing. It turns out mammies get angry too — and our anger can blindside us when we least expect it. Yesterday afternoon, a conversation with my husband went something like this:

“I was just talking to Eamonn,” I said.

“Eamonn who?” Fred asked.

Cue my frustration: “What do you mean, Eamonn who? Eamonn! My best friend? My resident ride or die? Godfather of our son?”

“Oh, I didn’t know which Eamonn you were talking about,” mused Fred.

Inwardly counting to 10, I calmly pointed out the only other Eamonn I knew was his father, who was hardly after buying an apartment in Dublin city centre with his husband.

“Oh. Right,” Fred added. “By the way, what is our address again?”

Refusing to be riled, I called it out to him before spotting on Instagram that he was doing a comedy show the same night as a show I had booked in for months. A lively marital debate about childcare arrangements ensued.

I was so incensed following this verbal tennis that I had to retire to the back bedroom and momentarily scream into a bath towel before pulling myself together.

As fun as shouting into towels is, needless to say, I am looking for better ways to channel my anger, like a dream journal or rejoining Twitter/X.

None of us wants to be the mammy that shouts at her kids, though of course, we all have to raise our voices sometimes, especially when talking over Ted’s new toy drill and anytime my husband suggests I “go for a walk”.

FYI: If anyone suggests you should go for a walk, what they are saying is “You are on the verge of losing the plot completely”. 

It is the domestic equivalent of being told to “relax”, “chill out”, and “take it easy”. Even typing these phrases has me shaking with fury and madder than when Fred watched Netflix’s Beckham without me earlier in the week.

Anger is a perfectly normal human emotion. We all feel it at times. Yet, as parents, there is a lot of shame around losing the rag, and I think this is particularly true for mammies, as we are expected to have the patience of Job. (Can all my Old Testament fans make some noise?)

Of course, the stigma associated with women seeing red is all part of a greater conspiracy. As women, we have been told to play nice, be kind, and not rock the boat. Being patient is seen as a particularly feminine virtue, and we are expected to stay calm and be in control at all times.

However, since having baby number two, I’ve experienced intense moments of annoyance, which I’m not sure I’ve felt before, though it has never stemmed from anything my children have done. 

Rather, my nostrils have been set a-flaring when a stranger on the street comments on my baby being underdressed for the weather or when my beloved husband asks where he lives.

The intensity of this anger — albeit, thankfully, a fleeting feeling — has been made all the more confusing because of the shame attached to it. 

Mothers are expected to be nurturing and endlessly kind, and so to lose my cool, even for a moment, feels like a colossal personal failure on my part.

This morning, while parallel parking my car, a crowd of Italian tourists stopped to watch. Upon completing my reversal, they started to applaud. It made me realise that however annoying life can be, a dose of continental enthusiasm can make it even more annoying.

I thought of my husband and how he rarely claps when I complete rudimentary tasks and realised I have little to be mad about.