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

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Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, May 5, 2009 - Family & Relationships - 224 pages
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A “hilarious, heartbreaking, and edgy” (Newsweek) memoir on modern motherhood.

In our mothers’ day there were good mothers, indifferent 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. Is it any wonder so many women refer to themselves at one time or another as a “bad mother”?
 
Writing with remarkable candor, and dispensing much hilarious and helpful advice along the way—Is breast best? What should you do when your daughter dresses up as a “ho” for Halloween?—Ayelet Waldman says it's time for women to get over it and get on with it in this wry, unflinchingly honest, and always insightful memoir on motherhood in today's world.
 

Selected pages

Contents

Or Life in Eighteen Pieces
1
Bad Mother
5
The Life She Wanted for Me
21
Free to Be You and I
42
Breast Is Best
58
Tech Support
70
Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle
80
My MotherinLaw Myself
86
Rocketshlp
122
A Nose for Bad News
137
To Each His Own Mother
145
Legacy
154
Darling I Like You That Way
172
Baby Lust
179
The Audacity of Hope
186
The Life I Want for Them
196

Drawing a Line
97
So Ready to Be the Mother of a Loser
103
Sexy Witches and Cereal Boxes
109
Acknowledgments
209
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About the author (2009)

AYELET WALDMAN is the author of the novels Love and Treasure, Red Hook Road, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, and Daughter's Keeper, as well as of the essay collection Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace, and the Mommy-Track Mystery series. She was a federal public defender and taught a course on the legal implications of the War on Drugs at the UC Berkeley law school. She lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband, Michael Chabon, and their four children.

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