I have always been a very peaceful, non-threatening person. In fact, I was known as such a softie in college that in a gesture of irony, my friends bought me a T-shirt that said "Cohen the Barbarian." Funny, right? Well, a couple of decades later I find myself pulling that shirt out of the back of my closet and wearing it again. But this time I mean it. Because now I am the mother of two little girls, and if you do anything to hurt them, I swear I will crush you with my bare hands.
Just last week, I was walking down lower Fifth Avenue with my three-year-old, and an oblivious woman on her cellphone swung her giant Gap shopping bag right into my daughter's face. As Molly wailed and rubbed her cheek, I screamed, "Hey, watch it, lady," but what I really wanted to do was shove the cell phone down her throat and then swing the shopping bag around like an Olympic hammer and hurl it right at her head. And how about all those times I board a crowded subway with my five year old and no one gets off their lazy bum to give her their seat. As the train lurches from side to side and I grab the pole with one hand and Bellamy's coat with the other, I glare at all the able-bodied twentysomething men who are off in iPod Lalaland, and fantasize about grabbing them by their collars and tossing them face-first onto the grimy floor. Now try to pretend you don't see us, assholes!
So it really makes me laugh when I think of all the iconic moms I grew up with — Carol Brady, Elise Keaton, Mrs. Partridge — who projected a constant aura of nurturing serenity. Sure, you do get that baby bliss a few hours a day, when you're home, the baby is fed and happy, you're zoning on the couch together in front of Family Feud. But take two steps outside your front door, where there is a world of people who don't really give a shit about your child's safety, comfort and personal space, and you can turn into an adrenaline-charged Mama Bear, ready to take a chunk out of the neck of anyone who comes near her cubs.
Now, maybe it's because I'm a bit of a wimp, or maybe it's just that all those years of practicing yoga and listening to John Lennon albums have kept me from going completely over the edge, but so far I have managed to keep these protective urges under wraps. There have been plenty of nasty glances, a surreptitious shove or two, but no actual violence. However, I can totally relate to those women who do go there (and I have to say, deep down, I kind of admire them). Like the mom who recently posted on UrbanBaby.com that after some loser on the street carelessly flicked his cigarette butt into her daughter's stroller, she marched over and smacked him so hard that his face swelled up and he called the cops. (The cop took one look at the burn mark on the baby's blanket and gave the smoker a ticket for littering).
And I was completely sympathetic when my friend Elise told me about her own mom-on-the-street meltdown: She was crossing Eighth Street with her two month old when a car started backing up right into their path. "He came within an inch of the stroller, and I went nuts," Elise said. "I started pounding on his window and screaming. I really wanted to shatter the window, reach in, and break his arm." Elise's husband calmed her down long enough to let the driver get away with all his appendages still attached to his body, but I bet that guy checks his rear-view mirror for Bugaboos before pulling out of a parking spot these days.
Of course, I feel somewhat conflicted about all of this. In all other areas of my life, I am just as opposed to violence as any left-leaning former English major should be. I don't even like to walk by posters for those Saw/Hostel/Apocalypto movies, much less sit through them, so where is this violent blip in my psyche coming from? I called Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, a professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire who has written a bunch of books about motherhood and stress. As a mom herself, Kendall-Tackett was sympathetic. "What you're describing is a very common phenomenon," she explained. "That urge of protectiveness is such a visceral reaction that it almost bypasses any cognitive awareness." She points out that in new mothers, it may be related to the production of oxytocin, which is the hormone of attachment. "Moms often feel that protective urge before they even feel the first gush of love," she adds. "It's geared into our survival as a species. You see it in a lot of mammals."
This theory makes sense to my friend Jeanne, who says she almost attacked a pediatric intern two hours after her son was born, when he had the nerve to tell her she couldn't nurse her baby because she didn't have any milk (I guess he missed the day in med school when they talked about babies happily sucking down colostrum until the milk comes in). "My husband almost had to hold me back. It's like you've never been that protective of something in your life," Jeanne told me. "You will absolutely kill someone if they mess with your child."
Well, blaming this on biology does make me feel a little better. I picture our Neanderthal ancestors, a hundred thousand years ago, standing guard outside the cave, ready to spring into action to protect their babies from marauding hyenas and crocodiles. Since packs of hyenas and crocodiles generally don't wander the streets of New York, we modern parents simply transfer that maternal instinct into shielding our kids from marauding bike messengers. It is a little disconcerting to know that after all these years of Darwinian progress we are still basically seething cauldrons of survival instincts. But I guess that's how we've made it this far.