Book #65: Bad Mother

Title: Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace
Author: Ayelet Waldman

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.