Ayelet Waldman, wife of author Michael Chabon, mother of four and author in her own right, discusses on NPR’s Fresh Air, her trials of feeling that she’s not measuring up to what a “good mother” as defined by the late 20th early 21st century ideals.
Many of these beliefs and qualities are shaped by the feminism of the late 1960’s, and the decades that followed that yielded more rights for women. Waldman also honestly describes what it felt like to make the conscious decision to leave her career as a public defender and go home and become a full-time wife and mother.
Waldman is mainly known for her Mommy-Track Detective Series, a set of mysteries that centers on Juliet Applebaum, a former public defender who traded in her law career to stay at home with her daughter, Ruby.
Much like Waldman, and while at home Applebaum goes on to have other children. Unlike Waldman, Applebaum adds to her resume as stay-at-home mom, her work as a private detective.
Waldman’s 38-minute interview offered a breath of fresh air, in that I was amazed at how much her fiction chronicles her personal life. Her most recent publication, a memoir, “Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace“, appears as perhaps a culmination of what she had presented in fictional form in her previous works, with personal revelations to which readers may be able to relate.
I have not read the memoir, yet I resonated with much of what Waldman offered, most specifically, the rant she is said to describe in her memoir where she criticizes her mother and other feminists for having “…lied to those of our generation…” (I’m 48 years old) regarding our ability to have it all as beneficiaries of women’s rights and equality.
I often feel that I’ve been lied to, misled at the least, not simply by the feminists, but by our culture in general that still, to this day, and despite our present economic crisis, wants to at least imply that if you work hard enough you can have it all, or better yet, The American Dream that is in and of itself a metaphor for achieving it all.
After working for almost ten years wherein I earned my MA in Psychology and a license to practice psychotherapy, I came home to be a full-time wife and mom. Unlike Waldman, I did so more at my husband’s urging. I had just given birth to our third child, who is now ten. My eldest who is presently 21 was then 11. And our middle that is 16 was then 7.
Having undergone a tumultuous pregnancy with the baby threatening to come 10 weeks early, we felt very lucky that all had turned out well. That coupled with the academic struggles our middle daughter whom we later learned was dyslexic and also has a mild form of bipolar disorder, and our eldest who was entering puberty, made my husband’s request most practical.
A surgeon who is also a modern husband committed to equality in marriage and involved fatherhood, he was despite that becoming overwhelmed. Time and money trumped the ideology with which I had been raised, that is, “Never let yourself become financially dependent on a man.”
As a psychotherapist in training and work, I had seen first hand in both the high school where I had worked, in my private practice and my time spent with incarcerated women and men, that the single most important thing I could give my children is my constant and unconditional presence that was not dictated by someone else’s clock, but theirs and mine.
Now with our 21 year-old set to graduate college in two weeks and her plans sealed for entering graduate school in the fall, I do not regret my decision.
My choice to come home also provided time for me to pursue writing in more detail. While interning as a psychotherapist, I sat down to write an essay that on typing the first word became a novel. Writing that novel, that I now realize is paranormal trilogy, allowed me moments of freedom from family, clients, the rigors of training to become a psychotherapist, and my own psychotherapy, that allowed me to explore myself in ways I’d never considered.
During this journey I have discovered so much. And continue to do so. This is why I write.
I encourage you to listen to Ayelet’s interview.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103794433&sc=emaf
And share how it is you came to writing.