Waldman, Ayelet

Ayelet Waldman is a fiction and nonfiction writer whose books and editorial columns challenge an idealized and romanticized vision of mothers as self-sacrificing and asexual. In a contentious essay published by the New York Times in 2005, “Truly, Madly, Guiltily,” Waldman famously stated that her children were not the center of her passionate universe. She went even further declaring herself a bad mother and plainly admitting that she loved her husband more than she loved her children. Waldman therefore joined the ever-increasing group of women who are not afraid of declaring themselves bad mothers. Waldman's 2009 best-seller Bad Mothers: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace was partly conceived as a response to the angry letters the author received after ...