As mothers, Rachel Yoder and Esther Freud have learnt from the 'rage that arrives in the middle of the night'

There's a moment many parents will be familiar with, that comes in the darkest, deepest moment of the night.

Your small child has woken you for the 17th time, your partner is pretending to be asleep and you are, simply, enraged.

It's from this place that the wisest, most heavy-eyed parents unite in a collective understanding: what happens in the middle of the night — curt words, refusals to rise, swearing to the ceiling — stays there.

The next day, it is necessary to move on, to work together to keep that little person fed, clothed, occupied and away from the electrical sockets, the dog's food, the cupboard that begs to be climbed.

The feeling will be back though.

British novelist Esther Freud, great-granddaughter of the famous Sigmund, describes it as a "rage that arrives in the middle of the night, shocking you to your very core".

Freud explores parenting, experienced by three different women across different generations, in her new book, I Couldn't Love you More.

She attributes some of the rage to the pressure on mothers in particular to be "intensely responsible" and parent "so incredibly well".

"I think the pressure of that has given rise to huge problems for the women, maybe the children too," she tells ABC RN's Life Matters.

It's something she's experienced first-hand, along with US novelist Rachel Yoder, whose latest book Nightbitch also explores the challenges of parenting.

Both Freud and Yoder say they managed to work through the frustrations of parenting — by taking action to reclaim a sense of self they felt they'd lost.

An animalistic feeling

Early on in Yoder's new novel, the protagonist, who's in the throes of early parenthood, reaches a tipping point.

Her body registers it first: she grows coarse hair, pointy teeth and a weird new lump where a tail might be.

She has become animalistic, wild and savage — her frustration has brought her here.

"The mother", as she is known in the book, has found herself "far ashore, treading water in a place she never thought she would be", Yoder says.

"On the edge of 40, she's dropped out of the workforce, she's home with a child, and she just wonders, how did I wind up here?"

She starts asking herself, "Why do I have to be at home? Why does it make more sense for me instead of my husband? Why did I have to give up my career?"

Underlying Yoder's book is her experience grappling with the same questions.

She's also been in the choppy waters of domestic life after having a child, struggling to negotiate the balance of home and paid work with her partner, and losing a grip on her identity in a new-found role.

"That whole question of value and whose work is valued more, what sort of work is valued more, whether or not the work actually brings in money, all of those questions were really up for me when I was writing [this book]," Yoder says. 

"I was really concerned with what is fair? And what is valued, And why isn't the work within a domestic sphere valued in the way that I felt that it should be."

Women 'should be happy with what they get'

Modern mothering can transform someone's identity in "unexpected and varied ways", Yoder says.

For one thing, after having children, female desire — a yearning for something different or something more — becomes "dangerous", she argues.

"I think it's really provocative and a little taboo to talk about desire and motherhood; desire of all sorts, [for example] ambition [and] career desire."

Yoder says there's an idea that upon becoming parents, "women should be happy with what they get, instead of deserving to have what they want".

Freud agrees.

Societal, familial and political structures tell women they should "behave in a certain way", she says.

"The idea that you might actually let go and give into the sort of sheer passion and power that's inside you is scary because you're responsible for somebody else."

Desire, Freud argues, is something women learn they should contain, and they are "judged very harshly if they forget [that], even for one minute".

How to carve out time — and why it's essential

When Yoder's "mother" character reaches her tipping point, her physical changes, mirroring her internal shift towards growing discontent, are "unsettling, but [they] force her to start to take action", she says.

She begins articulating her need for, and claiming, more space to herself. By the novel's end, "she lays claim to her time and to her creative space".

In Yoder's own life, when she says juggling work and mothering "has really stressed me out", she too has had to carve out space.

"It is a matter of coming up with boundaries and saying, I need my three or five hours or however much time today … and making that a priority and not just entirely losing myself, as I did in early motherhood."

"And I think that's a constant ongoing negotiation. I mean, that's the work of a marriage," Yoder says.

It's negotiation that can be tough going to work through, Freud says.

"It's not so easy to carve out that time when you're a mother."

When Freud's children were small, she struggled with a balance she needed to feel creatively fulfilled, and to be able to shirk the anger and frustration that came from not feeling as though she had any available time for herself.

"If I could just be clear that this is what I need — sometimes three hours was the minimum [to write] … to kind of reset myself," she says.

"If I could do that, I could be present with my children and joyful. But if I didn't have that, I felt as if [parenting] was just overwhelming."

Both Yoder and Freud say that claiming space and time can be hard to do.

And it might be hard to believe in the middle of the night, during the quiet stand-off between two parents as a baby stirs, but both women are testament to the fact that it is possible.

Indeed, they say it's essential, and for a writer or anyone else, it's among the most important creative work you'll do.

"It's an artistic act, in a sense, rebuilding that identity in motherhood as a mother, as an artist," Yoder says.

"It's a constant dance and I've embraced it as a creative practice."