Waldman, who has said "I think that I am an exhibitionist" has written many personal essays for online and print publications on a variety of topics, including aspects of motherhood, such as how women criticise each other's mothering (that is, the "mommy wars"), combining paid work with motherhood and how the upbringing of those raised in a post-feminist era clashed with the reality of having to make professional sacrifices. Her essays have also explored the sexuality of mothers and of young people, homework, extended family life, body image, aging, literary hoaxes, and Jewish life. Although most of her non-fiction is personal, she has also written on aspects of the criminal justice system.
These essays have been published in a former regular column in
Salon.com and in newspapers and magazines, such as including
The New York Times,
The Guardian,
The San Francisco Chronicle ,
Elle Magazine,
Vogue,
Allure,
Cookie,
Child,
Parenting,
Real Simple,
Health and other publications. Waldman has also recorded radio essays on
All Things Considered,
The California Report and other radio programs.
Controversial essay about marriage
Waldman is noted for the controversy that followed the publication of her 2005 essay "Motherlove". The essay was first published in the anthology
Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race and Themselves, where she thought it would have only a small readership. However, it was reprinted in the Modern Love section of the
New York Times in March 2005 under the headline "Truly, Madly, Guiltily." It can be read online here. The essay is ostensibly about how she is the only young mother she knows who is “getting any”, but it explores Waldman's conviction that a woman should consider her spousal relationship more important than her relationships with her children and that a hierarchy of love is essential to a stable and healthy marriage. In the essay, Waldman famously wrote “I love my husband more than I love my children”, that she could survive the death of her children, but not the death of her husband and summarised her ideal family dynamic as follows: “He [husband Michael Chabon], and I, are the core of what he cherishes . . . the children are satellites, beloved but tangential.”
Waldman's essay led to extensive and vitriolic debate, on television shows like "The View", on internet blogs, in coffee shops and elsewhere. Some people even threatened to report Waldman to the Department of Social Services in relation to the perceived mistreatment of her family. On the other hand, some of Waldman’s correspondents approved of her comments, regarding them as similar to the Biblical exhortation to "Cleave unto your spouse". Of the debate, Waldman has said “It sounds very naive to say I had no idea, but the real truth is I had no idea”.
Oprah Winfrey, who said she was “very brave” for speaking out, invited Waldman onto her television show, to discuss her views on love, marriage, and motherhood. Waldman reports that one woman in the (mostly hostile) audience leapt at her yelling "Let me at her".
Michael Chabon revisited the controversy in an interview appearing in the January 2006 issue of
Pages. He suggested that criticism from the "slagosphere" is responsible for suppressing the publication of challenging and thought-provoking writing.
"Bad Mother" collection
After Waldman complained about the response to her controversial essay, a friend (Daniel Handler) suggested she write a book about it. In 2009, Waldman published a collection of her personal essays in the collection
Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace.
The book argues that no woman can be a perfect mother, that, in fact, competitive, neurotic parenting, and having unrealistic expectations may be damaging to children. Waldman contends that society (particularly women, in what she calls the "Bad Mother police") are too hard on other women’s parenting skills. There is a strong theme of maternal ambivalence in the book: Waldman has said “If you give up this career that you’ve strived for your whole life, then what you’ve given it up for had damn well better be perfect”.
The book includes chapters on the criticism by women of the mothering by other women, feminism, motherhood and associated anxieties including about breastfeeding, marriage, sexuality of mothers and teenagers, homework, mental illness, the loss of her unborn child and her relationship with her mother-in-law. The book was a New York Times best-seller and generally it received favourable reviews. Excerpts are published online here, here and here.
Contributions to anthologies
Waldman has contributed non-fiction to several anthologies, including:
- Girls who like boys who like boys: true tales of love, lust and friendship between straight women and gay men (2007) edited by Melissa de la Cruz and Tom Dolby
- The Modern Jewish Girl's Guide to Guilt (2005) edited by Ruth Andrew Ellenson
- Because I said So: 33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race and Themselves (2005), edited by Kate Moses and Camille Peri
- America's prisons: opposing viewpoints (2006)
- I married my mother-in-law and other tales of in-laws we can't live with and can't live without (2006) edited by Ilena Silverman
Blogs
For a short time in 2004 and 2005, Waldman wrote a controversial blog under the title "Bad Mother". This was in the early days of the form. Her topics included sexuality, gay rights, motherhood and her bipolar disorder. She said “A blog like this is narcissism in its most obscene flowering. But it's necessary. As a parent your days are consumed by other people's needs. This is payback for driving back and forth to gymnastics all week long.” On her reaction to the criticism that her blogging engendered, she has said "It's ridiculous to be so willing to expose myself and at the same time be so hypersensitive. Those are two contradictory impulses no one person should have." After an incident where she hinted at suicidal thoughts, she decided to discontinue the blog. Although she found it therapeutic way to channel frustrations — likening the experience to “slashing my wrists and haemorrhaging all over the computer screen” — she found it was having a deleterious effect on her writing.
Waldman blogged on the 2008 Democratic National Convention, and had a blog on her own website from 2008 to 2009 on a variety of subjects.