Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace

by Ayelet Waldman

In the tradition of recent hits like The Bitch in the House and Perfect Madness comes a hilarious and controversial book that every woman will have an opinion about, written by America’s most outrageous writer.

In our mothers’ day there were good mothers, neglectful mothers, and occasionally great mothers.

Today we have only Bad Mothers.

If you work, you’re neglectful; if you stay home, you’re smothering. If you discipline, you’re buying them a spot on the shrink’s couch; if you let them run wild, they will be into drugs by seventh grade. If you buy organic, you’re spending their college fund; if you don’t, you’re risking all sorts of allergies and illnesses.

Is it any wonder so many women refer to themselves at one time or another as “a bad mother”? Ayelet Waldman says it’s time for women to get over it and get on with it, in a book that is sure to spark the same level of controversy as her now legendary Modern Love piece, in which she confessed to loving her husband more than her children.

Covering topics as diverse as the hysteria of competitive parenting (Whose toddler can recite the planets in order from the sun?), the relentless pursuits of the Bad Mother police, balancing the work-family dynamic, and the bane of every mother’s existence (homework, that is), Bad Mother illuminates the anxieties that riddle motherhood today, while providing women with the encouragement they need to give themselves a break.

Genres: Nonfiction, Parenting, Memoir, Essays, Humor, Feminism, Book Club

224 pages, Hardcover

First published May 5, 2009

About the author

Ayelet Waldman is the author of A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life, Love and Treasure, Red Hook Road and The New York Times bestseller Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace. Her novel Love and Other Impossible Pursuits was made into a film starring Natalie Portman. Her personal essays and profiles of such public figures as Hillary Clinton have been published in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, Vogue, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. Her radio commentaries have appeared on "All Things Considered" and "The California Report."

You can follow Ayelet on Facebook and Twitter.

Love and Treasure is available for purchase here.

Reviews

[christa · Rating 3 out of 5]

According to an informal Gawker poll, Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon have received the second-most votes for literary power couple that make Gawker readers wish they had never learned to read. As of today, they are quite a few percentage points behind Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss, but they have moved up a spot since Waldman's book "Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamitites, and Occasional Moments of Grace" went from draft to publication to the shelves. [She claims they are third-worst in her parenting book that came out just in time to stuff your Mother's Day stockings with a hardcover mommy blog:].

I, of course, disagree with the Gawker findings.

I have a creepy literary couple crush on Waldman Chabon Inc., that started when I found Ayelet Waldman's old blog, a controversial piece of online real estate where she confessed to all sorts of things that riled up Oprah's audience. Namely, that she loved Chabon more than she loved her children. We have that in common. I, too, love Chabon more than I love her children ... granted as soon as Zeke or Rosie or Abe or Sophie craps out a few novels, this is subject to change.

I have no concrete reason for loving this couple. I liked "Wonder Boys," "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" and "Kavalier and Clay." And I have liked Waldman's novels ... although not as much as I've liked her essays -- on her blog and at salon.com. She is a sassafras, that one. Smart, loud, oversharing, opinionated, funny, quirky and contradictory. Together, I have only the image of them that exists in my head. Rooms filled with books, and a Thesaurus tossed like a football between the writers-at-work. Laptops, wine, Sunday newspapers, dinners with gay memoir writers who are so interesting, that they end up vacationing with Waldman Chabon Inc., in Europe.

So, yes. I did a 180 at the teen fiction section and found myself crawling along the baseboards at Barnes & Noble looking for this book, which I chose to read as a memoir instead of a manual. I was hunting for more fodder for the Waldman Chabon Inc.'s romantic Berkley lifestyle file-folder I keep tucked in my brain. [Michael enjoys antique shopping. Ayelet is bipolar.:]

"Bad Mother" is 18 chapters of anecdotes and the lessons Waldman has learned in 14 years of raising children. There is a charming story of how they met [blind date:], and there is the skimmable story of how Zeke was diagnosed with ADHD [Waldman freaked.:] There are stories about how Waldman lost her virginity when she was 14 [to a 20-something. A one-nighter!:] and there are stories about trying to get poor Abe to breast feed. [She didn't:].

There are enough controversial stories to keep Waldman's haters content that they can still hate her: a second-trimester abortion based on the potential that the baby would be developmentally disabled; a bag of condoms left high on her childrens' bathroom shelf; continuing to medicate her moods throughout her final pregnancy.

And there are plenty of reasons for childless fangrrls reading a parenting book as memoir to bust a vessel after a vicious eyeroll -- the way you would if a friend or family member spoke passionately about something that happens in that foreign land called the playground: Waldman calls her childrens' gym teacher to complain that they are playing dodgeball. But since I'm the one calling this a memoir, and she's not, I can't impose my memoir standards.

At her best, Waldman manages to talk parenting within the frame work of fun anecdotes: Her two best essays are about 1) Why she hopes her son is gay; 2) The deep-loin crave for a fifth child. There were enough little Waldman Chabon Inc. lifestyle nuggets to meet my needs.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book took me back to my recent book club meeting. In a tangential conversation, my book club friends and I discussed the self-doubt we sometimes heard from parents our age about their decision not to use corporal punishment with their children. “It’s not the spanking itself,” one friend said. “It’s the whole style of discipline we use. Because if we tried to integrate spanking into our otherwise touchy-feely parenting techniques, it wouldn’t fit. The issue isn’t whether or not to spank; it’s whether we should have adopted the whole discipline package that spanking is a part of.”

This discussion, I think, is indicative of the Gen-X parenting angst that lots of us are experiencing. We fully intended to be more mindful than our parents, many of whom took the, um, seat-of-the-pants approach. Unlike our parents, we read books on how to talk to our children, and how to discipline them, and how to engage their cooperation. Many of us have been or still go to therapy, both to overcome our dysfunctional childhoods (ever notice how practically everybody seems to have had one?) and to ensure that we don’t transfer the dysfunction onto our children. We earnestly believed that integrating all this information would pave the royal road to being a perfect parent.

Disappointment and disillusionment were inevitable, I suppose. Because there’s no such thing as a perfect parent, obviously, and there’s certainly no easy path to that unattainable goal or even to the more realistic goal of being a good-enough parent. And even when you do achieve some success as a parent, it doesn’t always feel good in the moment.

The Sisyphean task of meeting self-imposed impossible parenting standards gives rise to much cognitive dissonance, which may be why some mothers resort to sanctimoniousness – especially when it comes to parents who seem to be eschewing all the effort they’ve been investing. This sanctimoniousness is a major target for Ayelet Waldman in “Bad Mother,” a series of thoughtful essays on the experience of being a less-than-perfect (a.k.a. average) mother and being ripped for it. Many of the essays are repetitive and self-indulgent at times, and as a religious person some of them were difficult for me to relate to. A lot of the essays resonated with my experience, though, and even when Ayelet rambled I didn’t mind accompanying her on her winding train of thought.

Ayelet talks about the flak she received for expressing the unpopular view that she loves her husband more than she loves her children. I actually thought this was kind of interesting. I mean, honestly? I could see why, in many ways, at least some of the time, a husband can be a heck of a lot easier to love. As another adult, odds are that he doesn’t try your patience in the same ways the children do. A husband is (hopefully) mature enough to back off when you need space instead of insisting that you listen to yet another knock-knock joke. And let’s be honest – his conversation is probably a heck of a lot more stimulating than your six-year-old’s. Although I wouldn’t go so far as to say unequivocally, as Ayelet did, that I love my husband more than I love my children, I hear where Ayelet is coming from and I’m not sure why people gave her such a bum rap. I must ask, at the risk of sounding like a knee-jerk feminist: would people have reacted as violently if a man had admitted to loving his wife more than he loved his children?

In another essay, Ayelet talks about her mother’s frustrated feminist fantasies and Ayelet’s initial attempts to live up to them by having a demanding career while her husband stayed home with the baby. Ayelet describes her various successes and failures in this regard: seeking a man who would be a house husband in theory but feeling put off by unambitious men in practice; giving up her career to be home with the kids for a while because she felt she was missing out on their childhood and ultimately pursuing a second, though less demanding, career because being a stay-at-home mom didn’t do it for her. Many women, I think, can relate to these dilemmas. Unfortunately, they may not be lucky enough to land a guy like Michael Chabon who’s both wildly successful and willing to pull his weight at home, or to find a career that offers the right amount of stimulation without completely taking over their lives. Still, although Ayelet does come off as pretty self-congratulatory when it comes to her perfect guy and her still-passionate marriage, she tempers this by being brutally honest about her many failings.

I even liked the essay about Ayelet’s nursing difficulties when her son was born with a malformed palate, and the unsolicited criticism she received from strangers for bottle-feeding her baby. I thought it was a good illustration of Ayelet’s running theme of how judgmental people are when it comes to parenting, and how unfair this can be. Other essays explore Ayelet’s complicated jealous feelings toward her mother-in-law and how they eventually gave way to appreciation; the trials and tribulations of having to do homework with kids; the need to take a step back from imposing your own childhood angst on your children who may not need the protection you desperately want to offer them; Ayelet’s heartrending decision to abort a fetus because of possible genetic abnormalities; the need to believe in your child’s giftedness versus having to face his limitations; the ups and downs of being honest with a child, and more.

This was actually a well-timed book for me as I struggle to entertain my four children who have no day camp to occupy them, in a non-air-conditioned apartment with a husband who is out of town for work and will be for the next few weeks. As I whine and pity myself (and occasionally try to shut out the bickering by hiding in the computer room for a few minutes with e-books and goodreads checking), it was therapeutic for me to read about another imperfect mother’s struggles and her encouragement to rise above the criticism, self-imposed or otherwise, and just do the best you can.

[Sara Beresford · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book completely surprised me. I was prepared to not like it, or to just listen to another person use the 'bad mother' idea to actually let you know that they are a fantastic mother.

In fact, this book was remarkable in its openness and honesty about mental illness, motherhood, and a lot of other uncomfortable/interesting subjects. It contained a few pearls of wisdom, but most of all I am amazed at a person who will just lay it all out there for everyone to see. This chick has guts.

If nothing else, this is the most important thing that came from this book (for me):

"Even if I'm setting myself up for failure, I think it's worth trying to be a mother who delights in who her children are, in their knock-knock jokes and earnest questions. A mother who spends less time obsessing about what will happen, or what has happened, and more time reveling in what is. A mother who doesn't fret over failings and slights, who realizes that her worries and anxieties are just thoughts, the continuous chattering and judgment of a too busy mind. A mother who doesn't worry so much about being bad or good, but just recognizes that she's both, and neither. A mother who does her best, and for whom that is good enough, even if, in the end, her best turns out to be, simply, not bad."

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think most people understand the idea that if you're questioning whether or not you're a good mother, for whatever value of good, then you are, in fact, a good mother. Just as crazy people don't know they're crazy, bad parents don't care whether or not they're parenting well. Waldman disproves this in so many ways it's not even funny.

I decided to read this book after reading the controversy surrounding her statement that she loved her husband more than her children. That didn't seem like a particularly strange sentiment to me. A woman may love her children with every molecule of her being, but they will grow up and go on to have their own independent lives. After that, one hopes, the husband will still be around and the marriage will benefit from maintenance of the love that made the babies. What I expected from the book was some genuine confrontation of the fundamental, ever-present game of second-guessing and worry that is motherhood. What I got was a rambling, self-indulgent, and, at times, openly hateful series of essays about what a good, thoughtful person Waldman is, even though she has children.

Waldman's essays, which mention her children and family but don't particularly adhere to any theme, seem to be contrived to prove what a good person she thinks she is, according to her own standards of goodness. While she and I are diametrically opposed politically (she's a liberal progressive, I'm a conservative libertarian), I chose not to judge her until she wrote that she had taught her children to hate John McCain "as much as they hate Dick Cheney." No, Ayelet, you are not a good mother. Good mothers, no matter how passionate they may be about the world and its issues, do not teach their children to hate.

If you are a liberal progressive who would like to read a bunch of self-indulgent tripe from a very wealthy Jewish woman with more time than sense, please, enjoy the book with my blessing. It's boring, uninspired and the prose is lackluster at best. Frankly I can't believe anybody ever enjoyed this book at all.

[Shelah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I seriously doubt that any woman who gives birth to a baby goes into it aspiring to be a bad mother. But within days, hours, and honestly probably before the baby is even born, we all have moments where we're sure we're not going to be as good at this motherhood thing as we want to be. One of my first bad mother moments came when Eddie bought me flowers to celebrate my coming home from a business trip when I was pregnant. The flowers died, but instead of dumping out the glass they'd been in, I left it sitting out on the counter. The next morning, I grabbed what I thought was a glass of water, but instead it was dead stems and plant food. And I've wondered ever since what kind of damage it inflicted on my kid.

My point is, we all have moments when we worry that we're bad moms. Waldman points out that the standards for good fathers (that they're involved when they're home, that they show up to things when they can, that they wear the Baby Bjorn from time to time) and for good mothers (perfection, constant perfection) are vastly different, and the standards we place on ourselves as mothers are unattainable. So Waldman goes on to show how she, as a mother tries, her best, enumerates what her fears are, and worries that she still falls short.

Waldman is honest in Bad Mother. Perhaps a little too honest sometimes (she talks in a chapter on bipolar disorder that she both fears passing her condition on to her kids and recognizes that it makes her, and other writers, better at what they do because they're often not afraid to overshare). She writes about everything from the crushing boredom she found when she quit her job as a public defendant to stay at home with her oldest, to her fears that her sons will grow up and leave her (and she therefore wishes that they'll be gay), to the way she and her husband still enjoy having sex with each other (and the brouhaha that ensued when she wrote that she loved her husband more than her kids). Much of the book is light, but Waldman also writes about the wrenching decision she and her husband faced when she was pregnant for the third time and an amniocentesis showed the baby might be born with severe disabilities. They eventually decided to abort the baby, and while Waldman feels they made the right decision for their family, Rocketship (their pet name for that baby) has definitely had an impact on Waldman's mothering and the family's dynamic.

Read Bad Mother. Be prepared to laugh, to feel disgusted at times, and to ultimately be glad that Waldman and other women like her are out there who make you feel like the muddling-through you do each day isn't so bad, after all.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ayelet Waldman is a self-confessed bad mother, the only problem being that it only takes a few pages of reading to decide that she's wrong. I felt like I was a bad mother myself as I devoured this book after coming home from the library today, leaving my six children to their own devices. The author's tendency to overanalyze and feel guilt over every minute aspect of her parenting and her much-critized confession that she loves her husband more than she loves her children were easy for me to identify with and drew me right in. I also found the beginning promising, with her idea that we as women tend to assuage our own feelings of guilt at not being perfect mothers by criticizing egregiously bad mothers. However, while the book had beautiful moments (perhaps the titled "occasional moments of grace"), and I appreciated the author's brutal honesty, many of the essays felt rushed, as if a bit more time and another rewrite could have taken them from adequate to stunning. Many of her values differ markedly from my own, perhaps stemming from the fact that I am deeply religious while she is admittedly only nominally so, and so some of the choices she made are the opposite of what I would do, yet I still ended feeling as if she could be my friend, as we both deeply love our families. Some of her statements, while not brilliantly worded, rang true, as when she talks about the unrealistic aspirations we sometimes have for our children, concluding that "the point of a life, any life, is to figure out what you are good at, and what makes you happy, and, if you are very fortunate, spend your life doing those things." I would recommend this if you don't mind an overtly political writer who writes bluntly about issues like sexuality or deciding to abort a fetus with potential abnormalities.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had heard of Ayelet Waldman but had never read her work until this book. Ironically, I've read her husband's (Michael Chabon, Pulitzer-prize winning author).

In this book of essays, she is honest and personal, often at her expense. She doesn't shy away from controversy. She hints at essays she had published elsewhere (like the NY Times) that generated a lot of backlash and press (like saying she loves her husband more than her children). On the one hand, it's good that she doesn't reproduce those essays here, but it left me wanting to know more. I'll have to go look up those essays now so I can see what the fuss was about.

Her book made me nostalgic for Berkeley, where I went to graduate school. Oh, to live in the bastion of liberalism again! I was able to relate to a lot of what she said; I think all of us moms struggle with being a Good Mother. As she writes, "We may be discontented and irritable, we may snap after the sixty-seventh knock-knock joke, our kids may watch three hours of television a day because we're too afraid, after checking our local map of sexual offenders, to send them outside to play, we may have just celebrated the second anniversary of the last time we had sex with our husbands, we may have forgotten to bring a snack to the playground, or, God forbid, brought a snack replete with partially hydrogenated vegetable oils..." The list goes on and on, and it'll make you laugh in recognition and feel less alone.

[Kaethe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Waldman's writing. Much of this I read previously, in Salon's Mothers Who Think column or elsewhere. As a mother I appreciate her point of view because she isn't an ideologue. As a reader, I think she's funny as hell. Also, it must be said that the book lists she published were both very broad and mighty fine.

Library copy

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now that my kids are in their late teens, I feel like I've left that particular battlefield of parenting-whose baby is early on their milestones, what designer wear onesies are in, at home vs. working mom, cloth vs. plastic; breast vs bottle, play dates, classes, narcissistic investment, guilt because you finally gave in and did the d*#! project for the kid since it's already 2 a.m., they're falling on their face & doing what is clearly going to be the worst project of the class (since the other mothers and fathers did their child's for them much earlier in the process or - most guilt-inducing of all actually only supported their child and nurtured their child's inherent brilliance)...well, the list goes on and on.

As Ayelet Waldman points out, parenting is a hot topic. Much of the ground she covers in Bad Mother was familiar is already semi-forgotten by me but she brought it back with a rush. Everyone not only has an opinion, everyone knows it is not merely the best but the only opinion (hardly even an opinion but something more resembling a revelation) on the topic. Anyone who lets their 9 year old walk the quarter block to the deli should be used by ACS. Unless you feel that anyone who doesn't let their child walk that quarter block is suffocating the child and destroying their future chance to be a CEO.

Waldman writes vividly and with a ruthless honesty that often made me squirm and laugh simultaneously. She also tackles more serious topics-culminating in her choice to abort a pregnancy when the results of the amnio are scary. Her honesty about her choice and her feelings as a consequence of that choice had me in tears.

I love being a mom. I loved those early years. Waldman's book reminded me that what I don't miss are the endless ideological battles even the most apparently innocuous choices constantly left one embroiled in.

[BookgirlonGoodreads · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this, and would recommend it to other mothers who like reading nonfiction about motherhood. I didn't agree with everything Waldman says, and her life and opinions are generally about as different from mine as you can get. Despite all that, many of her observations on motherhood rang true for me. Mainly the book is about the expectations we have for mothers and how the bar is set impossibly high. We're doomed to feel like failures because no one could possibly do all the things a "good" mother is expected to do. Her honesty is refreshing, if at times so straightforward that it made me squirm a bit (for example when she talks about nursing her son until he is almost 3, and how they do long, drawn out movie kisses on the lips, and how she hopes he is gay so she will always be the most important woman in his life). Some of that was just icky from my point of view, but the point is that while we are very different women and very different kinds of mothers, I still related completely to her thoughts on society's expectations of a "good" mother. The experience of always feeling like we are falling short as mothers is universal, and that needs to change! Women are very quick to judge other mothers. And Berkeley sounds like an absolutely awful place to live based on her observations in this book.

[mairead! · Rating 4 out of 5]

the last page was !!!!: "The thing to remember, in our quest to do right by our children and by ourselves, is that while we struggle to conform to an ideal or to achieve a goal, our life is happening around us, without our noticing. If we are too busy or too anxious to pay attention, it will all be gone before we have time to appreciate it. The irony is, of course, that by thinking about mindfulness, I could just be setting up another unattainable goal, another way to fail at this impossible of jobs. A Good Mother is a mindful mother. A distracted mother, what is she? Surely you know by now: a Bad Mother. But still, perhaps it’s worth the risk. Even if I’m setting myself up for failure, I think it’s worth trying to be a mother who delights in who her children are, in their knock-knock jokes and earnest questions. A mother who spends less time obsessing about what will happen, or what has happened, and more time reveling in what is. A mother who doesn’t fret over failings and slights, who realizes that her worries and anxieties are just thoughts, the continuous chattering and judgment of a too busy mind. A mother who doesn’t worry so much about being bad or good, but just recognizes that she’s both, and neither. A mother who does her best, and for whom that is good enough, even if, in the end, her best turns out to be, simply, not bad."

[Racheli Zusiman · Rating 5 out of 5]

ספר נפלא. הזדהיתי עם כל מילה שכתובה בו. איילת ולדמן כותבת בצורה כנה, חשופה ומרגשת על חוויותיה כאם, וגם כאישה ורעיה. אני רוצה להיות חברה שלה. אני רוצה לנהל איתה שיחות יומיומיות ארוכות. אני רוצה לשבת איתה בבית קפה ולדבר. אני רוצה להעביר איתה את חופשת הלידה של הילד החמישי ששתינו כבר לא נביא לעולם. ממש ממש אהבתי את הספר הזה.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I wasn't already terrified to be a mother, ... oh wait, I was. This book really helps articulate all the extra baggage that comes along with being a mother. And if it wasn't bad enough, no matter how bad of a mom you think you are, other women seem to not have a problem pointing out to you how badly of a job they think you are doing. Awesome. Oh, and Ayelet, I'm so happy you married the your physical, intellectual, emotional, and literary soulmate, but if I have to hear about how perfect your marriage is one more time, I might throw something at you. Thanks. But besides that, the chapter where she opened up about the real heart of the essay collection, the real tension of the piece, which I will refrain from mentioning so not to spoil it for others, it touched me and challenged me to the core. I grappled with questions of grace and eternity and motherhood and identity, and I found a well of compassion I didn't know I could feel for this woman, and I wouldn't have felt for her if I hadn't gotten to know her and like her through her writing. Like the best writers, she held up a mirror to me, and I had to ask myself some difficult questions that I'm still not sure I know how to answer. It was definitely worth reading. It had me laughing out loud and at times almost in tears. If you'll allow me the cliche, #allthefeels.

[Ravenskya · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't have any of my own children - but I have "aquired" two little boys when I married my husband. Having never been around children I was in for a rude awakening when I discovered that mothering was not at ALL what it appeared to be.

"Bad Mother" is not a book I would have picked up on my own, however I am glad I read it. It's a well written book, and Waldman does have an excellent talent for honest, amusing essays on being a mother and a wife. I did find that many of the areas she touched on resonated in my heart. I was born long after the bra burning days that Waldman lived through and I am not Jewish, nor do I have a lucrative career as an attorney or author, and I don't live in an uber-liberal town filled with good schools. However she WAS able to tap into the side of me that feels like I'm failing as a mother figure to my boys.

Waldman talks about how women in the post-bra burning era have actually set themselves up to feel like failures. We want a career, we believe that we need to work, we also want to be excellent wives, and to be fantastic mothers of perfect children in our fabulously sparkling clean houses. We can't do it - well the vast majority of us can't, there just isn't the time or enough coffee in the world to get it all done, and so we pile the guilt on ourselves making us bitter and unable to appreciate the joys that we do have.

The book contains 18 essays on different aspects of the author's life. These are very honest and personal tales, many are funny, some are heartbreaking, some are thought provoking, but all are honest. This book is not a "how to" or even a vague guide. This book actually reads almost along the lines of a personal series of therapy sessions, as if the author is working through her own fears, faults and shortcomings. Since that is the case - if you share some of these fears this book can actually take a bit of the weight off of your shoulders in the knowledge that you aren't alone in it all.

She discusses the fears we have of losing ourselves in our motherhood - becoming "Tommy's Mom" or "John's Wife" rather then being known for our own contributions. The frustrations of giving up a career and the satisfaction that we would have gained from it. The boredom and maddening feelings that the transition from business woman to mommy can envoke, and the guilt we slather on ourselves for even thinking this way.

I loved the beginning of this book, and I probably would have rated it 4 stars if I had been able to get past my personal hangups of writing her off. I have a hard time feeling sorry for a woman debating on hiring a cleaning lady because of her "feminist" values, or complaining about snarky comments from other Berkley residents, or whining about her choice to give up her prestigious legal career to be a stay at home mom. Most moms don't have the option to hire a cleaning service, or live in Berkley, or even have the option of a legal career. Where I really started to shut off was at the ending of the book when her liberal leanings became the forfront of her writings. I'm registered as an independant and don't believe in either party - and I also don't like to be bashed over the head with party politics from either direction.

If you're not a liberal - you probably won't like this book. The last several essays become extremely liberally biased and some of the poking and prodding about the pros of a gay lifestyle and glory of interracial marriage became enough to make me gag (which is quite a feat considering that I don't have an issue with either.) I would also warn anyone who is extremely pro-life that this book does contain and essay about an abortion and her justification for her choice.

Still - even though I didn't agree with her in-your face political leanings at the end of the book - there were some very touching and eye opening moments that made this book worthy of the read.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow. Well, once again, a book where the author shares personal experiences and feelings to a degree that I find at once brave and shocking. I do not agree with some (most?) of her parenting style/approach, or even the over-sharing that I admittedly took advantage of by reading this book. However, it was well-written in many regards, and the premise actually speaks to my negative reaction to her parenting: We moms should cut eachother a break.
It was at times difficult to read such personal and controversial ideas, but it was interesting to get such a personal perspective. For example, her struggle with what to do when she was (4 months) pregnant for the third time, with a baby the older kids called "Rocketship." Prenatal testing revealed the possibility of an abnormality. Physical abnormality, she felt she could deal with, but the risk of "Developmental delay. That shook me to my core." Her husband really wanted to have the baby, but ultimately he decided that they should abort it as she wished. The idea being, he could live with "her mistake" of aborting a perfectly healthy baby, but if "his mistake" occurred by having a baby that's "not okay" then the "burden" might endanger their marriage, as well as burdening their older children. Pretty intense stuff.
The author makes the interesting point that describing what constitutes a good dad is relatively straightforward and attainable--ie, provides financially and is participatory in the kid's life. what makes a good mother is much more subjective--different people's ideas include: vigilant about nutrition, active in the school & community, on top of making sure the kids have nice clothes that fit well, good about arranging playdates, eager to do fun projects and things with them, etc, etc...

[Dollie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think she does love her children very much and she got a bad rap for her opinions. On the other hand, she HAD to know what she was getting into. Speaking from experience the most ruthless critics on the planet of mothers are other mothers. It stems from insecurity and a need to feel justified in our own choices. Why we just can't live and let live, I don't know. She has four children and they were all pretty young at the same time at one point. My sense is people just didn't believe her: how does one even KNOW their husband no less love him more when juggling a career and four, count 'em, four children. I know it's not the biggest family on the block but I think anything beyond three can enter a new realm of crazy. Parts of the book got a bit self righteous and I am suspicious of the political savvy of a preschooler (but they do live in Berkeley. They probably offer civil rights 101 in first grade.) I doubt Ayelet and I would be friends. She runs with a fairly academically "elite" crowd making her rants border on "whiny" to me. I am sure she would have a willing shoulder to cry on in her she-pack, however and, well, I think I will live and let live!

[Claudia Putnam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bumping to 4 stars bec I find it holds up in my mind over time...

****

It's a stretch to call this literary non-fiction memoir but my shelving system isn't perfect and this is one of those times where I don't know where to put something. This is a collection of personal essays--sometimes expository essays. Stronger when more personal. Some of them I'd give 4 stars and some even 5, but others are less strong and some just weren't that interesting to me personally (no reflection on Waldman or the essay), so my own rating of this collection as a whole is a three. The writing is workmanlike--she's clever and clear, but it's not gorgeous.

Well worth reading, and you can always dive into those that interest you and skip those that do not.

I had resisted it for some time due to the NYT essay, often mentioned in this collection, but not included, in which Waldman said she loved her children more than her husband. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/fas...

It wasn't this statement so much--parents, if they love and want to best protect their children emotionally, SHOULD put their marriages first--as the fact that she also said she thought it would be easier to survive a child's death than her husband's. She wonders if there's something wrong with her in that, and I would say, yes, probably, and also that I hope this belief of hers is never tested in either way. I think most mothers experience their connection to their children in some cellular fashion (literally, there is a cell exchange, and fetal cells do turn up in the mother's body, even in her brain), and the amputation that is a child's death goes so deep. It is hard to imagine the connection one feels toward a husband coming anywhere close, and there being not one bit of hopefulness embedded there somewhere... a bit of hm... what or who might be around the next corner, no matter how much you love your husband and how much of a soul mate there is. There's always more than one soul mate. I think that's as honest as any of the claims to honesty Waldman has claimed to have made.

But that's me, and that's her, and there was a lot I found interesting. I loved the section on bipolar, though I thought she was playing with fire with her medication choices. Antidepressants and no stabilizers for bipolar? People end up suicidal and homicidal that way. And she's wrong/ignorant about lithium, it's effects, and how it's used these days.

Let's face it. We read personal essays because we're nosy. Waldman herself says she's very nosy. But a lot of the things I was most nosy about didn't get addressed. How much money do she and Chabon make, for instance? And who makes what? She says she was supposed to be the breadwinner and to support Chabon's career, so how come she was able to up and quit her job after the first baby? How far was he into his writing career at that point? I know he's been successful, but a lot of successful writers don't necessarily make THAT much money, so it's hard to know how many books you have to sell to be able to afford to support 4 kids in an expensive place like Berkeley with household help and the like. This is one of my things--I would really like for everyone to disclose this kind of information. I am way more interested in money than I am in who she screwed at various times in her life.

Also, she said Chabon wrote at night and planned to take care of kids during the day, but where does sleep fit in? If he quits at 3 AM, and wife goes to work at 7? Just wondering. And when she quit her job and took over the kids, then what did he do? He seems to just disappear at that point.

I would also like to know what went into the decision to have not two but three and then four kids. I mean, these people live in Berkeley, the land of green thinking, and four kids are not exactly politically correct. If you get dirty looks for not using cloth diapers, you surely get dirty looks for having more than two kids. But she never brings this up. If anything she seems to treat 4 kids as a badge of honor, and even to flirt with the idea of having more as if this were nothing to be ashamed of. Surely she knows this is tripping some wires... Is Waldman one to shy from controversy after all? Is she secretly a Mormon?

And why, given that she's bipolar and has a serious genetic disease that she worries her children will inherit (and they certainly do carry and will pass on, the gene pool thanks you very much), would she have kept having these kabillions of children? SHE has a mild form of the disease (though the mixed state version is often the most fatal), but the genetic crapshoot is such that any or all of her children could come up with bipolar I schizoaffective, and yes, it sort of will be her fault, if she knew she had the disease and chose to have children anyway.

It's interesting that she aborted a child because it might have had a mental condition that was alien to her, but chose to have four that might have one familiar to her. A DANGEROUS disease that can bring great suffering, but one familiar to her.

Interesting, interesting, interesting, the little webs of denial and irrationality, when we pretend that we keep no secrets.

[Coming back to edit this, because I was thinking on a run today that I wanted to clarify that I don't second-guess her decision to abort the baby. For a host of reasons--I don't think anyone has any business second-guessing parents on these matters--but one of them is that I deeply trust a mother's instinct. We do share all those cells with our children after all. Just as she knew her subsequent child was healthy despite the scare about it, the fact that she wanted to abort "Rocketship" was in itself probably an indication that it was the right thing to do. Her body knew the truth of her baby's health.]

But overall, I like her life, and you can see what a difference a good husband makes. If you want to stay home, or have a career, or whatever it is. If kids are involved, you need a good husband. It's not just that he does the chores and such. It's also that there's so much financial security and that they use it to create a secure life--they aren't stingy with it or jealous of it, the way some old-money WASP couple might be. If you're free to take care of yourself, do your work however you define it, outsource the least pleasant of the household tasks, and have some joy in your relationship with your husband, who mostly shares your parenting values... well yeah. You can be a not-too-bad mother.

And if I found a man who helped me create an environment with all that, I suppose I'd be terrified of losing him, too.

[Melissa Stacy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 2009, "Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace," by Ayelet Waldman, is a collection of nonfiction essays about Waldman's personal experience with mothering four young children.

I think this book was probably a much better read in the year it came out. Reading "Bad Mother" in 2023, however, this book felt very dated and, sadly, not worth picking up.

Mileage is definitely going to vary with this one, though. This book just really wasn't for me.

Three stars.

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not disagree with most of the main points Waldman seemed to be making with this book. I actually came into the book assuming I would really enjoy it. However, the more I read the more I disliked it. The book does not have any really cogent argument. It is written in 18 chapters, which read more like Salon or Slate blog posts (not surprising, since Waldman used to blog for Salon on mommy topics). These chapters all do have something to do with being a mother, or having a mother or mother-in-law, but they rarely connect to form any larger point beyond "people on the internet are really harsh about other peoples' choices in motherhood, and people shouldn't be like that, but we all do it, including me." I think that the topic itself--expectations of motherhood these days, how the internet shapes our attitudes and discourse, and the constantly changing advice we're given on having and raising kids--could be the making of a great book (and probably already is). But Waldman goes off on her own life, including her life before having kids and her great relationship with her husband, so much that the book is more of a recounting of Waldman's personal experiences than anything greater. Now, this could also be fine, if she made it relatable. I enjoy autobiography, but Waldman's autobiographical writings have nothing on the Mary Karrs and David Sedarises of the world. Closer to the Elizabeth Wurtzels. Waldman is coming from the perspective of a well-to-do white women living in Berkeley, and not much if anything is mentioned about women who can't afford to quit their jobs to become writers and stay home with their kids (if Waldman is a "bad mother," what sorts of mothers are they?). The one stand-out chapter is on Waldman's choice to have an abortion when she discovers that her child has a genetic abnormality. Not many women write openly about their difficult choices, and I was glad she was as honest as she was on that topic.
Then there were the smaller annoyances--Walkdman referring to Britney Spears as an idiot, while at the same time seeming to imply that we shouldn't look down on her, inserting mothers who have murdered their own babies in the same "bad mother" category as Ms. Spears, noting that she only does yoga for wait loss and likes her yoga teacher because she "makes [her] the skinniest", and writing many sentences that seem tailor-made as comment-bait. I really wish she'd had a better editor who could have taken this book and turned it in to something with a point.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Ayelet Waldman’s book Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace after hearing Ms. Waldman interviewed on NPR. I have complained in the past about at least one memorist being reluctant to share her warts with her readers. Ms. Waldman, however, lets us see her as she is, warts and all, with a willingness that she attributes to her bipolarism:

“The bipolar inability to resist the impulse to reveal inappropriately intimate details of one’s life is why there are so many bipolar memoirists. Writers who lie, who try to put themselves in the best possible light, who shy away from the ugliest parts of the truth, don’t in the end teach us very much about anything other than their own narcissism. It’s only when you do the bipolar dance on the razor’s edge of brutal honesty, when you are willing to put yourself in danger, that you can move beyond self-absorption to some kind of universal honesty. And yet, at the same time, indulging one’s bipolar compulsion for self-revelation can all too often end up as solipsism. It’s a thin, thin line, one that I spend a lot of my time worrying about crossing, or regretting having crossed.”

And to Ms. Waldman’s credit, she does indeed seem to be unafraid of the “ugliest parts of the truth,” and so is able to write movingly and honestly (and with humor!) of her life as a mother, wife, writer, and woman. I got exactly what I wanted. And yet...while I was moved by the stories Ms. Waldman tells, and by her piercing analysis not just of herself but of us as well (her sisters in bad motherhood), I was not quite so moved as am I when I read a good novel. But, you know, we turn to reading for many reasons. I don’t need to be profoundly affected each time I pick up a book or a magazine. Sometimes I need to be instructed. Sometimes I need to be entertained. And Ms. Waldman did an admirable job of doing both.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many of the chapters were entertaining, insightful, and thoughtful. The chapters "Breast is Best" (about how mothers "proclaim the superiority of their choices" about child-rearing, "los[ing:] sight of the fact that people have preferences") and "Tech Support" (decrying the "snark-filled cesspit" of the internet) were particularly good. "My Mother-in-Law, Myself" (discussing the inherent weirdness between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law) was also very good. And I loved the very last paragraph of the book, where she defines what she believes to be a "Good Mother."

Other parts of the book were not so good. I found Chapter 11 (describing her choice to have a late term abortion after an amniocentesis revealed a chromosomal defect that could result in birth defects) very upsetting and I never really recovered from it. Chapter 10 also hit me wrong. While preaching tolerance/understanding for others' choices for the first nine chapters, she then writes about her desire that her 14-year-old daughter "love sex" like she does: "The last thing I could handle would be to have Sophie show up one day wearing a gold promise-keepers ring and proclaiming her intention of 'saving herself' for her husband." After a while I got the impression that the author wants to be understood and have her choices respected more than she wants to understand and respect other mothers' choices, particularly when they differ considerably from her own.

(Also, just for Audra's benefit, if I had to hear ONE MORE TIME about how much Michael Chabon does all the housework and cooks all the meals, I would have burned the book. Seriously. Like EVERY SINGLE CHAPTER.)

[Leah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very worth reading--provocative. It features, at its best, original perspectives on issues you've thought about a million times--but never quite thought about in the way Ayelet does.

Two things annoyed me: The if-only-men-did-more-household-chores-they'd-get-more-sex argument (yawn!). And the overly precious telling of her woes at imaging her children growing up and away from her. Not that that isn't fertile territory--only that she doesn't bring anything new to it.

What I do find very brave and particular is her telling of the thinking that went behind her and husband Michael Chabon's decision to abort a challenged fetus. Whether you'd make the same decision or not, the process she and her husband undergo, and her description of her own knowledge of herself and their relationship as players in the decision-making process, ring very true, and reflect a kind of deep personal clarity that is arresting to read and ponder.

I was drawn to this book by an interview Terry Gross did with Waldman on Fresh Air this year (2009). If you like the book, listen to the podcast--you'll find her discussion of abortion moving and frightening; her description of her struggles with bipolar disease is fascinating, as well ("I can spot the other bipolar at a party from across the room--she's the one oversharing about her husband...").

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book of autobiographical essays. It’s about womanhood as much as parenting, and of a sort that rang very true to me. She is funny and wry throughout, when possible; and serious in a non preachy way when called for. The chapter "Sexy Witches and Cereal Boxes" is typical – funny, and very on target regarding early sexual experiences – i.e. “more than a football team, fewer than a marching band”; not “date rape” but “the night I lost my virginity to an asshole.” There is also the chapter “Rocketship”, about her decision to end the life of her fetus after testing showed trisomy. No helpful answers or excuses, just an honest accounting of her experience, which ultimately becomes “a reminder of both joy and pain.” Also good, and poignantly reassuring in light of the author’s Harvard law degree and her husband’s extremely successful career as an author, the chapter “The Life I Want for Them.” This begins by asking “Why is it that when our children fail to meet our unrealistically high expectations—when they behave, instead, like normal, average kids--- we end up disappointed?”

[Elizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ayelet Waldman writes essays about motherhood. While I was excited to hear her point of view--I had heard how she had been bashed for writing that she loved her husband more than her children, and I thought that was an interesting and probably just idea-- 100 pages in I had to put this book down because I couldn't take any more of Waldman's self indulgent rambling. She is often criticized for her excessively personal writing style and her chutzpah; according to her, this is often expressed as "I can't stand Ayelet Waldman." Well it wasn't that I can't stand her per se, but that I can't stand her writing (which being so personal, naturally leads to I can't stand this person). Still, self indulgent and chutzpah can work, but only if they are combined with writing talent. Waldman, alas, is not a particularly talented writer (at least in the essay form) and I sort of feel like the rumors are true--which as I feminist I hate to admit--that she may only have a career in writing (or such a successful one) because she is married to a Pulitzer price winning writer.

[Grada (BoekenTrol) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was.... I don't know how to describe it. So I guess the best way of trying to tell you what I think, is tell you what it did to me.
It made me feel exhausted, rushed, guilty, tired, not good enough, angry. In any particular order, depending on the part I was in.
Mommy Police is apparently the same wherever in the world you are. And the sad thing is, that even when your child(ren) has (have) left home, the feelings/things described in the book don't stop.

Written when I got the book:
Sounds like the perfect book for me: a modern working mother. Old enough to have a traditional mother myself. Wrestling from time to time with what I want, what my child needs and what the world outside my small family thinks I'm 'supposed to do'.

[Simi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh. I thought this book would explore the phenomenon of motherhood and how it is judged and misjudged by different people. But it is actually more of a memoir of a woman who appears to have too much time on her hands and as such gives more thought to whether going to every PTA meeting makes one a good mother.... It seems to me to be mostly the kvetching of an over-privileged liberal Berkeley mom.

[Dalit Kaplan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you for sharing this wonderful book of essays with us. A year after reading this, I experienced severe complications in a pregnancy that ended in a stillbirth. One of the stories described a similar position and I held in my mind the insights drawn from that story during my own nightmare. I think my own experience would have been much worse had I not read the book. A really important read.

[Erin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really disliked this collection of essays. There were 2 or 3 essays (out of 18) that were not totally self-indulgent, whiny, and mainly pointless. Get over yourself, Ayelet! That is 3 hours of my life I will never get back.

[Alexandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author was a hoot. Her style is very camp and American, but she still managed to have me laughing throughout the book. There were parts where she perfectly articulated the physical, tactile nature of your relationship with your baby, that warm, soft 'fairy floss' hair, buttery skin, the long, earnest kisses they give you... it made me preemptively grieve the baby period, which we'll be leaving behind shortly.
I appreciated her attempts at talking about how hard it is for women to find balance, but had trouble relating to her privileged life, and did find her quite elitist. But she's unapologetic and I guess this is part of her charm.

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ayelet Waldman is strident, opinionated, and unapologetic, and I like it. Some chapters I found more moving and palatable than others, but I appreciated this book. It is moving and honest. I was especially touched by her abiding affection for her husband (Michael Chabon), which comes across in every chapter. Her children are lucky to have parents who love each other so deeply.