Ayelet Waldman
Ayelet Waldman
Ayelet Waldmanis an Israeli American novelist and essayist. She has written seven mystery novels in the series The Mommy-Track Mysteries and four other novels. She has also written autobiographical essays about motherhood. Waldman spent three years working as a federal public defender and her fiction draws on her experience as a lawyer...
NationalityIsraeli
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth11 December 1964
CountryIsrael
kids class parent
Gym class was, of course, where the strongest, best-looking kids were made captains and chose us spazzes last. More important, it was where the figures of supposed authority allowed them to do so. Forget the work our parents did molding our minds and values. Everything fell apart as soon as we put on those maroon polyester gym suits.
parent certain fallibility
As a parent, the only thing I am absolutely certain of is my own fallibility.
kids long parent
My kids are incredibly secure. More and more of their friends' parents are divorcing, but my kids have absolute confidence that we'll stay together forever. That goes a long, long way.
jobs children parent
There are times as a parent when you realize that your job is not to be the parent you always imagined you'd be, the parent you always wished you had. Your job is to be the parent your child needs, given the particulars of his or her own life and nature.
amendment construct names terms
Names are important in terms of how you construct your characters' identity, ... But the First Amendment is more important than anything.
easy fuss kids life strongly
But I really feel strongly that our kids do way too much homework. The research is on my side. It's easy to make a fuss when you're right. That can be the tagline of my life: 'It's Easy To Make A Fuss When You're Right.'
fantasies fighting involved ready unpopular
The thing is, my fantasies about being a parent always involved fighting for my unpopular child, doing for her what my own parents couldn't do for me when I was a girl. I am so ready to be that little girl's mother.
approach fact fear matter mistake people proclaim raises sight simply tolerate
Another parent's different approach raises the possibility that you've made a mistake with your child. We simply can't tolerate that because we fear that any mistake, no matter how minor, could have devastating consequences. So we proclaim the superiority of our own choices. We've lost sight of the fact that people have preferences.
assume gay intimate maintain men people relationships shop straight
How many straight men maintain inappropriately intimate relationships with their mothers? How many shop with them? I want a gay son. People laugh, but they assume I'm kidding. I'm not.
feeling openly people writes
Usually I try not to read that stuff. For someone who writes openly about her life, I have the thinnest skin. I don't like feeling that people don't like me. It makes me very upset.
books-and-reading next till wait
If they want to be someone who is not loathsome, they'll have to wait till the next book.
consumes maternal subject written
I've always written about maternal ambivalence. It's the subject that consumes me.
mother children faithful
By presenting a faithful and honest record of my experience as a mother, I hope to show both my readers and my children how truth can redeem even what you fear might be the gravest of sins.
kids faces sometimes
I've sometimes thought that it's only by recalling that desperate devotion my kids once felt for me that I can maintain my own desperate devotion in the face of their adolescent sneering.