In this episode, Lauren welcomes Erin Wissler Gerdes, recent PhD graduate from the University of Iowa College of Public Health, to discuss the mental and emotional realities of early parenthood, including anxiety, burnout, loneliness, and “parental rage.” Drawing from her dissertation research and personal experience as a parent of three young children, Erin explains what parental rage actually is, why it remains under-discussed, and what her research revealed about how common these experiences are among both moms and dads. The conversation explores the role of social support, mental load, overstimulation, and the structural pressures shaping modern parenting.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the student hosts, guests, and contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the University of Iowa or the College of Public Health.

Lauren Lavin:

Hello everybody, and welcome back to Plugged in to Public Health. This weekend is Mother’s Day and for today’s episode, we wanted to highlight research focused on supporting parents and better understanding the realities of early parenthood. I’m Lauren Lavin, and today I’m joined by Dr. Erin Wissler Gerdes, a recent PhD graduate from the University of Iowa College of Public Health, whose research explores anxiety, parental rage, burnout, and support systems among parents with young children.

In this conversation, we talk about what parental rage actually means, why it’s so under-discussed, and how larger structural issues like childcare, social isolation, and unrealistic expectations shape the experiences of both moms and dads. This episode is honest, nuanced, and I think it’s deeply validating for many parents who feel isolated in these experiences. We also discuss where support systems are falling short and what meaningful change could look like moving forward. So let’s get plugged into public health.

Plugged in to Public Health is produced and edited by the students at the University of Iowa College of Public Health, and the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the student hosts, guests, and contributors. They do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the University of Iowa or the College of Public Health.

Thank you, Dr. Erin Wissler Gerdes for being on the podcast today. To start, could you introduce yourself, who you are and maybe, I don’t know, if you want to talk about your educational background, if you want to talk about personal stuff, whatever you want to give us to route us as to who you are and what you do.

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Sure. Thanks for having me. Like you said, my name is Erin Wissler Gerdes. I am finishing up my PhD here at the College of Public Health, the University of Iowa in epidemiology. And my focus is on parental mental health, specifically around young children. So I have both personal and professional experience with this area. I have three kids, five and under. And so I am not only getting to do this work professionally, but I’m living this work day to day. And so I just feel really lucky.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. Three under five. Boys, girls, mix?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

I have two boys and one girl.

Lauren Lavin:

Oh, my gosh. How fun. So did you have all of them while you were getting your PhD?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

I started my PhD when my second, my daughter was six weeks old, and I am finishing up and my son turns a year old this week.

Lauren Lavin:

Erin, oh my goodness. I am always in awe of parents getting PhDs because I think I’m busy and I’m just a regular girl, right? I can’t imagine doing all of this work with kids at home, and you are a saint and the amount of hard work that goes into that, I literally think about that every single day when I talk to colleagues that have kids.

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

It’s fun and it keeps you grounded. I’ll say that.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. And maybe it gives you reasons to take breaks. I probably overfill my schedule because I can and that’s not always in my best interest.

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

There has to be a stopping time.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. So what did you do before you got your PhD?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Yeah, so I have gotten the pleasure of being all across the research spectrum. I started my undergrad in chemistry, and so I did bench science for a little while and then I did a master’s in public service administration. So I did some community-based participatory research and then I worked in clinical research at Mayo Clinic for a while. And now I am here getting to do a little bit of all of that across the spectrum.

Lauren Lavin:

I love it, or what do you think you’re going to do next now that you got to walk in graduation, but then what?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Yeah, so I am excited I get to continue my training here at the University of Iowa. I’m going to do a postdoctoral fellowship over in the department of OBGYN across the bridge.

Lauren Lavin:

So if people don’t know what a postdoctoral fellowship looks like for PhD, what does that entail?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Yes. So I’m going to spend a couple of years doing some research for the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology on their perinatal quality collaborative.

Lauren Lavin:

It’s a mouthful.

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

I have to double check that. Anyway, so they do a lot of work around perinatal and perinatal mental health and maternal and child outcomes. And so I’ll be getting to work with that group as well as continuing my own research. So the postdoctoral fellowship really allows you to still continue your training while getting to build your own research portfolio.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, best of both worlds. Do you get a little break before you have to start or is it like graduate Friday, work Monday?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

I’m going to take a month.

Lauren Lavin:

Fabulous. And then the best time of year to be doing that.

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Yes. Welcome summer.

Lauren Lavin:

Okay. So now getting down to what you’re here to talk about. To start, when you talk about early parenthood from a mental health and emotional health perspective, what are we talking about?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Great question. So we’re talking about parents who have young children, specifically children age five and under. And the reason is this is not only an incredibly demanding time in a parent’s life, you have children who are more dependent from age zero to five, but also parents have less interaction with structural support like a school system. And it’s also a really incredibly transformative time as a parent as you’re entering in this new role. So all of these factors can really exacerbate underlying mental health conditions or bring up new symptoms.

Lauren Lavin:

And what type of mental health conditions or symptoms are you looking at specifically?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Yeah, great question. So when I took my maternal and child health seminar here, we learned that depression is universally screened for in the perinatal period, so in postpartum and throughout pregnancy, but anxiety is not.

Lauren Lavin:

Interesting. I don’t think I knew that.

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

And I should caveat that by saying, “At the University of Iowa it is, but across the nation anxiety is not university screened for.” So I knew right then I wanted to do research on anxiety, and anecdotally I kept hearing about all of this postpartum anger and mom rage on social media and I had friends who were experiencing this.

I was experiencing this in my own journey of parenthood and so I tried to do my own research on what is this rage and when I looked it up, I found a couple articles on postpartum anger and one peer reviewed article on mom rage and thought, “Gosh, we have some work to do.”

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, you hit the jackpot in terms of an area to go. When you talk about rage in specific, what does that look like in early parenthood? Because I don’t think that’s talked about a whole lot. Postpartum depression, absolutely. Anxiety definitely less, maybe more like colloquially, but rage, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that in terms of parenting.

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Yeah. So when we’re talking about rage, we’re not talking about feeling irritable or frustrated, which some of the anxiety and depression screeners pick up. We’re talking about these typically short, all consuming, almost uncontrollable feelings of rage, this anger that kind of takes over your body where people describe it as their blood feeling hot or boiling and they go from a zero to 60. So it’s really short-lived, but it’s this all consuming rage.

Lauren Lavin:

And how do you measure something like that?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

So you do primary data collection and you come up with your own measurement. So we created a measurement of rage based on some of the existing editorial accounts that were out there and combined all of these different symptoms of what these rage experiences tended to include. And then we surveyed over 400 parents who had kids.

Lauren Lavin:

Oh, my goodness.

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Yep. Who had kids age five and under and we found that over three quarters of the parents were experiencing these rage symptoms.

Lauren Lavin:

Wow. Okay. So for anyone listening, primary data collection is like a feat within itself and to survey 400 people, how many surveys did you send out if you got 400 back?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

So we collected data through the university listserv. So we emailed out surveys, but then my research assistants, my kids and I, went out to local parks and the children’s museum and local businesses all around Iowa City and posted flyers. And so we got a bunch of parents from the community, which I find really special that our data is reflective to some degree of the community that we’re in here in Iowa City.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. It makes it a little bit more real.

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Yeah.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. Okay. So let’s talk about your target population. Who are you looking to generalize this data to? I’m guessing from the way that you’re speaking, it extends beyond moms, and I think that’s interesting. So can you comment on that?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Yes. As I mentioned before, very little research on mom rage or anger and zero research on anything considered dad rage. So we decided to include dads in our research to see is this something that both moms and dads are experiencing? If so, how is it different? And so our target population included both moms and dads of kids who are age five and under.

Lauren Lavin:

So then how would you, to those listening, how would you summarize your results that you found?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Number one, rage is super common and almost half of our parents were experiencing these overwhelming rage experiences at least weekly. So really high prevalence in our population. The other thing is that symptomatic anxiety, meaning anxiety that’s not necessarily diagnosed, but people who are experiencing anxiety symptoms like excessive worry, feeling on edge, trouble relaxing is strongly associated with these rage experiences. And additionally feeling overwhelmed, burnt out, overstimulated, all of that is also strongly associated with feeling rage. On the other hand, feeling supported is protective against rage and rage frequency. So people who said that they felt really supported were less likely to experience rage.

Lauren Lavin:

It’s good to know both some associative characteristics but also how some protective characteristics. So I like that your research looked at both of those, and did you find any differences between men and women?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Interesting question. When we looked at rage itself, no. Both men and women experience rage commonly and often. When we looked at feeling overwhelmed, burnt out and overstimulated, both moms and dads were feeling really burnt out, but the moms were more likely to say that they were feeling overstimulated and overwhelmed and also like they couldn’t take a break when they needed to.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. Did you guys look at if people were predisposed, had they had rage experience before or what do they attribute these instances of rage to like outside of kids or is that what they say, “When my kids are older, then this is going to go away?”

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Great question. In addition to the survey we did interviews with these parents to get a little bit more in depth about what’s leading to these rage experiences, what are these triggers and the incidences around these rage experiences. And what we found is the three most common triggers that parents talked about were kids’ behavior, their co-parent, and then also the day-to-day tasks. And men were more likely to say that their kids’ behavior or not feeling respected led to these rage experiences while moms were more likely to say, “The mental load or managing their partner and their partner’s tasks,” that was more commonly leading to these rage experiences.

Lauren Lavin:

Interesting. I’ve heard a lot of discourse around mental load lately so that seems like that tracks. Did you look at how kids experience or how they interact with their children in these experiences of rage?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

So one of the really encouraging pieces of the research that we found is parents are really trying to be intentional with repairing with their kids, meaning they’re recognizing, “Hey, maybe this reaction wasn’t healthy or a healthy way to express this anger. How did this affect my relationship with my kids? How did this affect my relationship with my partner?” And so they’re sitting down and intentionally trying to repair. And what that looked like for some parents is sitting down and apologizing explaining their behavior or finding strategies to prevent that buildup and blow up.

Lauren Lavin:

Absolutely. So why do you think that this aspect of early parenthood is often under discussed or maybe even stigmatized in today’s world?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

I think number one, when we hear the term rage and anger, there is this fear that there’s some kind of physical manifestation of this emotion like violence, and also there’s more of a societal idea that women shouldn’t be experiencing anger or that it’s not acceptable for them to experience anger.

But really I think that this rage parents are feeling is not just a reflection of kids’ behavior or their partner. It’s really the high demands of parents in a society that expects a lot with little to no safety net.

Lauren Lavin:

Did you look at any, I would probably consider them confounding variables like were people in certain socioeconomic status more likely to report something like this?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

That’s a great question. Across the many different socioeconomic variables we looked at, including financial stability, education, race and ethnicity, age, we really didn’t find any significant differences across the board. So I think that speaks to number one, our sample was from Iowa City, so it’s not a nationally representative sample, but then also maybe this is an outcome that’s being experienced across different demographic lines.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. It doesn’t matter who you are. It’s a tough time.

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Yeah.

Lauren Lavin:

Okay. This is a really niche question, and I might cut this out, but this is just something I’m curious about, but I’ve seen some rhetoric about moms in particular being like really mad at their pets, like so mad that they want to get rid of their pets and they didn’t feel that way before. Is that anything that you looked at or came across in your data?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Super interesting. It’s not something that came up in our interviews, but I have anecdotally heard that a lot of, after having kids, your pet is sort of-

Lauren Lavin:

Like just can’t handle it.

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Yes. Your patience level for your pet has gone down significantly.

Lauren Lavin:

Interesting. Okay. That was just like a me thing because I have a cat, and I can’t imagine being mad at my cat for existing, but I also don’t have kids so that’s a different situation. So what kind of support systems matter most during this period, or what are those protective mechanisms that are most valuable and where do they also fall short in helping?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

There are a lot of different kinds of support that are really helpful during this stage of parenthood and when we think about support, this could include tangible support, which could be helping with daycare pickup and drop off, a specific task. It could also look like informational support. When do I sign up my kid for kindergarten or it could look like emotional support, talking to another parent to say, “Hey, my three-year-old is completely feral. Is this normal?” And in this post pandemic society, I think we are all so much more isolated and lonely and there are just a lot more barriers to creating these networks of support that are so important in this stage.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. It’s not as easy to find community and I’m not saying it takes a village, I’m guessing is pretty true, but it’s hard to find your village, I think. So as you look at these problems, what solutions do you think exist or need to exist going forward to address something like this?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

So I think a lot of it comes down to the big structural factors that are shaping some of these outcomes. When we think about the early stages of parenthood, including pregnancy and postpartum, there’s a lot of emphasis on this period, especially for moms, which I think is incredibly important.

But when I talk to parents who had toddlers and preschoolers, the impacts of the structural factors or lack thereof are enormous. We live in a society full of dichotomies. We have families needing two incomes just to meet financial demands, but then the cost of childcare is prohibitive of two parents working.

We have free public education, but the hours don’t align with a normal work schedule and so parents have to figure out before and after school care and summer camps in order to fill in these gaps. We want dads to be more involved, but we’re not going to pay for parental leave in order for them to do. So it’s a challenging time to feel this sort of push and pull of what parents feel like is the right way to do things when we’re in a society without the structural support to make it possible.

Lauren Lavin:

That’s so interesting. I don’t think I’ve heard all of those dichotomies framed out before, but I even think the point of we want dads to be involved, but then we don’t give them time off from work, which is probably a critical time to bond and be involved in your kids’ life in those early years.

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Absolutely.

Lauren Lavin:

Are there any other structural factors like healthcare access or social expectations that came up in these interviews with young parents, new parents?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Yeah. Healthcare access didn’t come up a whole lot, but societal expectations of what mom is responsible for versus what dad is responsible for and around socioemotional parenting. I don’t know if you’ve heard the term gentle parenting?

Lauren Lavin:

Yes.

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

So this idea that we’re supposed to be really validating of our kids’ emotions and really in tune to all the nuances that go into it, there is a real culture push towards this type of parenting. And that came up many times in the interviews as being incredibly confusing and stressful, and how are we supposed to help our kid regulate when we’re trying to regulate ourselves? So that I think will be really interesting to watch over the next generation for sure.

Lauren Lavin:

And to be fair, how do people learn how to be parents? You’re just thrown into it and obviously for centuries we figured it out, but I don’t know if we’ve always figured it out, which maybe at least I don’t know. Is that something that you heard in the interviews or people are just like, “How do you know what’s best?”

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

How do you know what’s best and also getting bombarded with content that is telling you what is best.

Lauren Lavin:

Or looks best.

This picture perfect ideal and my life doesn’t match that, and there’s that cognitive dissonance between your reality and what you wish was.

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Absolutely.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. Were there any findings that genuinely surprised you or challenged your assumptions going into this?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Yeah. So based on the narratives I read about mom rage and all of the emphasis on what postpartum hormones do to moods, I was really expecting there to be a gender divide in this outcome, and what I found is moms and dads both experience rage and loneliness and burnout and anxiety. And it really highlighted to me the importance of including paternal mental health and parental mental health research.

Lauren Lavin:

And as people are listening to this, let’s say it is a parent of young children, what’s your number one suggestion for them going through this time based on your research and maybe some of your personal experience?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Yeah. I think on an individual level, be kind. This is all of our first time living, and it’s generally safe to assume that parents are trying their best with the information they have, but on a societal level, we were never meant to parent in a vacuum.

You mentioned the importance of a village, and I think many of us don’t have a village right now. So if you’re struggling, you’re not alone and my hope in doing research like this is not just to highlight the mental health implications of parenting young children in today’s environment, but also emphasize potential areas where we can create impactful change to help families across the board.

Lauren Lavin:

And maybe this is outside of the scope of what you’ve thought about, but if people are looking to create a village or maybe healthcare administrators hear this or just people in the community, who do you think is best situated to address some of these issues?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Yeah, that’s a tough question because I think this is an issue that goes across many different lines. As we talked about earlier, there are obviously structural factors that could really make a huge difference. Affordable childcare being number one I think as well as paid parental leave, but also opportunities for parents to connect in person and form that emotional support network that I think so many parents need in a world of am I doing what’s right for my kid?

Lauren Lavin:

So as we wrap this up, my last question for you is if you could change one thing about how we support new parents, what would it be?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

I think if we could change one thing about supporting new parents… It would be telling them it’s okay to learn alongside your child. You don’t have to have all the answers and this is a new role for you too. And any way we can support mom or dad be the most confident parent that they can be is only going to give back to the child and the family as a whole throughout their lifetime.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. I love that. It’s their first time doing it too.

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Yeah, yeah.

Lauren Lavin:

Where does this go next for you? Does this research lead to further research or what’s… I know you talked about what your fellowship looks like, but are you continuing this research in that fellowship?

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

I think the next area is what does the social support look like from an intervention perspective? We know that social support is so important for parents and these mental health outcomes, but now we’ve identified some problems, which is the easy part. Now we have to find ways to solve them.

Lauren Lavin:

I love it. Thank you, Erin, for chatting with me so much today. I really appreciated it. I learned a lot. This was a new topic to me and I hope that our listeners did as well.

Erin Wissler Gerdes:

Thanks so much, Lauren.

Lauren Lavin:

That’s it for our episode this week. A big thank you to Dr. Wissler Gerdes for joining us and for sharing both your research and personal perspective on the realities of early parenthood. This conversation explored how common experiences like anxiety, burnout, loneliness, and rage can become during the early years of parenting, especially in environments where families often lack meaningful, structural and social support.

One of my biggest takeaways from this episode is that these experiences are not simply individual failures or shortcomings, but they’re deeply connected to the system’s expectations and pressures of modern parenting. As we head into Mother’s Day weekend, we hope this episode serves as both a recognition of the work that parents are doing every single day and a reminder of the importance of building stronger support systems and communities for families. This episode is hosted and written by Lauren Lavin and produced by Lauren Lavin.

You can learn more about the University of Iowa College of Public Health on Facebook. Our podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcast, and SoundCloud. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to support our team, please share it with your colleagues, friends, or anyone interested in public health and maybe especially your mom or some early parents in your life.

Have a suggestion for our team, you can reach us at cph-gradambassador@uiowa.edu. This episode is brought to you by the University of Iowa College of Public Health. Until next week, stay healthy, stay curious and take care.