Bad Mother

That's the title of Ayelet Waldman's book, coming out this May. Remember when I teased you with it? It's really so cool to even have it. I keep ogling it. The top of the front cover reads: Bound Manuscript—Not For Sale. As in, nobody else has a copy yet. As in, I am privy. As in, the heady scent of power has gone to my head and I have forgotten what I was going to say.

Oh, yes.

The full title:

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

Though Ayelet (pronounced I-yell-it, which makes her even cooler, and probably louder, than I had imagined), has given me free reign to say whatever and tell whatever I want about her book, I prefer the teasers. I also want to hear what you think.

In her first chapter she sets up two of our cultural signifiers: Good Mothers and Bad Mothers. Basically, Good Mother equals complete self-sacrifice. Bad Mother equals selfishness (per our cultural discourse—not per Waldman, just to be clear).

And then she recaps our cultural obsession with Bad Mothers. The heinous Bad Mothers like Andrea Yates who drowned her five children in Texas. Or Susan Smith who drove her two children into a lake in South Carolina. She talks about the discourse used to describe their crimes. That rather than treat them as anomalous cases or speak of their specific mental issues, we (mostly other women/mothers) talk about their base selfishness.

And then she asks why we obsess about them and why we talk about that selfishness in such a bloodthirsty manner—that 'Bad Mothering.'

She posits that it is because on our turf and in our own lives, we battle these guilty feelings of regret over selflessness or guilty feelings of not enough selflessness. Either way, moms are damned. Either way, 'mom guilt' is lethal and toxic (my own thoughts).

And therefore she wonders if, even if only for a moment, some of that guilty burden isn't assuaged by watching (lambasting) someone who is "worse, far worse, than we are."

And I buy it. Wholeheartedly. It's spectacle. The old art of spectacle. I often think of the Paris Hilton craze in the same way. She's not that interesting. Why the obsession? Could it be because she has become the poster child of the dangers of having too much money? And therefore does she make all of us living in mediocrity and even poverty feel okay about our status? Even though there are thousands of rich kids doing just fine, living responsibly, we have made her the rich kid poster child. Spectacle. Better than anti-depressants any day of the week. Definitely better than self-reflection, God forbid.

But I am always suspicious of witch hunts. I always smell the stench of repression on the hunters.

I don't believe that Waldman writes to vindicate the wrongs of the above mentioned heinous crimes. I believe her only question is, What can we learn about ourselves, as a culture, as mothers, by our own reactions to them? By how we talk about them?

What thinkin'?