When Ayelet Waldman polled an unscientific sampling of her friends and family, the consensus was that a Good Mother is all of the following:

'She remembers to serve fruit at breakfast, is always cheerful and never yells, manages not to project her own neuroses and inadequacies onto her children, is an active and loved member of the community who volunteers, she remembers to make playdates, her children's clothes fit, she does art projects with them, and enjoys all their games. And she is never too tired for sex.'

Is it any wonder so many women refer to themselves at one time or another as a 'bad mother' ? Ayelet says it's time for women to get over it and get on with it.

Covering topics as diverse as the hysteria of competitive parenting (whose toddler can recite the planets in order of their distance from the sun?), the relentless pursuits of the Bad Mother police, and the bane of every mother's existence (homework, that is), Bad Mother illuminates the anxieties that riddle motherhood today, while providing women with the encouragement they need to give themselves a break.