Free Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace by Ayelet Waldman

He’s proud of how much of the housework and child care he does, and I think I’m a crappy mother. Sigh. How much self-awareness would it take for me to stop internalizing the chorus of the Bad Mother choir?
    In the first two categories, we agreed that, for example, I score a 9 on laundry, and he scores a 1, he wipes me out in the putting-to-bed category, and we let the mow-and-blow guy deal with the garden. There was a moment of discord around the bill-paying item, but Michael was finally forced to acknowledge that having not paid a bill in fifteen years, he cannot possibly be said to have earned a 2. Gross overestimations were accordingly erased and the appropriate figure inserted. He wished I would get down on the floor and play with the kids more, I wished he took more responsibility for making their doctors’ appointments.
    I heartily recommend that my male correspondents take the survey. It manages to reveal essential truths about your marriage and family without—at least in our case—making you angry. It makes you realize how much there is to do, how really endless the tasks are, and how hard it is to imagine, whatever your circumstances, doing it alone. Gentlemen, maybe after doing that load of whites and getting the resulting blow job, you can do the survey with your wives. I promise you’ll both learn something.
    As many of my other (generally female) correspondents take great pleasure in reminding me, there are lots of ways in which I am hardly the ideal mother and wife, lots of ways in which my family surely suffers because of my ineptitude and personality defects. And it’s not because of
me
that we manage this housework thing so well. It’s Michael, and the mother who trained him, who are the engineers of our happiness. It’s also not just the two of us (and, yes, the cleaning service) who do the work. We’ve expanded this notion of shared household responsibilities to our children. Every one of them, even the little one, has a job. Sophie sets the table for dinner, and provides unlimited babysitting services. Zeke takes the garbage to the curb every week, clears the table, and gives his younger siblings their baths. Rosie is responsible for straightening up the shelf on the porch where we keep our shoes and (when she remembers) for feeding the dog. And Abe helps Zeke on garbage night, helps Rosie clean her room, and periodically goes through the yard picking up trash.
    They work and we work because we, like Carol Channing, want the days of our lives to seem sunny as summer weather. So when there’s housework to do, we make sure and do it together.
    * I’m as guilty of this as any wife. Never once has Michael loaded the dishwasher according to the system that it took me years—literally years—to perfect. More often than not, I shove him aside and redo it myself. Frankly, my method is quite clearly the only way to load a dishwasher, not to mention the only way to make sure the little arms don’t snap off those French onion soup bowls. And it’s not like I haven’t given him detailed instructions about the system dozens, even hundreds of times. Honestly, how hard is it to remember to put the bowls on the top rack?
† With the exception, of course, of the aforementioned loading of the dishwasher. And folding towels, too. They just look better in the linen cupboard if you first fold them in thirds. And yes, even the washcloths, although I suppose I could muster a little flexibility on that issue.

4. Breast Is Best
     
    O nce, when my son Abraham was six weeks old, I was standing in line at my local bakery. I had him in a sling, and I was feeding him. The sling’s fabric was twisted and my hair was caught in the knot, but the baby had finally taken his bottle, and I was loath to adjust anything for fear of disturbing our tenuous peace. I rocked a bit on my heels. The baby paused in his sucking, and I held my breath.
    Suddenly a voice behind me said, “You know, breast is best.” I turned. The