Fresh Air from WHYY, May 5, 2009 · Four years ago, novelist Ayelet Waldman sparked a controversy — and wound up on Oprah to defend herself — when she wrote in an essay that she loved her husband more than her children.

Now, in the memoir Bad Mother, Waldman details the fall-out of that essay, as well as what she calls "the perils and joys of trying to be a decent mother in a world intent on making you feel like a bad one."