My new favorite book

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

The book is amazing. It's the kind of book I wish I'd written. Waldman is a liberal Jewish woman living in Berkeley, a Harvard-trained lawyer who became a stay-at-home mom and then a writer. The premise of the book, basically, is how to alleviate the guilt and the pressure we put on ourselves to be "good mothers." There are 18 essays (for chai, life) and they are all brutally honest, ranging from sassy to glib to poignant to hysterical to very serious. I relate to her pull between being a lawyer and missing her baby, or staying home and going crazy. I share the feminist guilt over being a bad role model for her daughters by letting her husband do all the handy work, and (though hopefully Xander doesn't have any) I really liked her discussion on feeling terrible that she was disappointed when her son was diagnosed with learning disabilities. The most heart-wrenching chapter is when she talks about aborting her third pregnancy after the amnio found severe genetic abnormalities, and how she read a letter "to my community and to the baby that I killed" in temple at Yom Kippur. It left me breathless.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book for any parent, or for anyone who wants to be a parent. Heck, I recommend it to anyone who's a child. I first heard about it when she was interviewed on NPR, and last week it was listed as #25 on Newsweek's list of 50 best books you should read today. If you're interested, here are the reviews in the NY Times and the LA Times.