Waldman spent three years working as a federal public defender and her fiction draws on her experience as a lawyer.
[2] After the Six-Day War in 1967, the family moved back to Montreal, then Rhode Island,[3] finally settling in Ridgewood, New Jersey, when Waldman was in sixth grade.
Waldman has written various online and print articles about mothering[23] while at home on maternity leave after the birth of her first child[15][28] and again after she left her job as a public defender.
[32] Waldman has said that her first mystery work, eventually published as Nursery Crimes, was her first attempt at creative writing,[12] describing it as her first piece of fiction "aside from my legal briefs.
"[13] Like Waldman, Juliet is a 5-foot-tall (1.5 m), red-headed former public defender with a nocturnal writer for a husband, who has become a stay-at-home mother but finds it boring.
Daughter's Keeper, published in 2003, drew on Waldman's experience as a criminal defense lawyer and representation of drug offenders.
[12] It features a young woman, Olivia, who inadvertently becomes involved in the trafficking of drugs and her relationship with her emotionally reserved mother.
The book is also about the impact of federal drug policy, particularly mandatory minimum sentencing, on the criminal justice system.
[5] Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, published in 2006, is about a Harvard-educated lawyer with a precocious stepson who loses a newborn child to SIDS.
[44] Don Roos wrote and directed a film based on the novel,[45] starring Natalie Portman, Lisa Kudrow and Scott Cohen.
[16] Waldman has written many personal essays for online and print publications aspects of motherhood, such as how women criticize each other's mothering (that is, the "mommy wars"),[52] combining paid work with motherhood, and how the upbringing of those raised in a postfeminist era clashed with the reality of having to make professional sacrifices.
[60] In 2016, Waldman and her husband Michael Chabon, in collaboration with the "Breaking the Silence" organization, initiated the production of an anthology that includes articles written by writers from around the world about the Israeli occupation, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War.
As part of the project, about 50 writers visited Israel, including Dave Eggers, Colm Tóibín and Mario Vargas Llosa.
[63] Her 2005 essay "Motherlove" 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.
[53] Waldman's essay led to extensive and vitriolic debate,[51][64] on television shows like The View,[65] on internet blogs,[11][66] in coffee shops, and elsewhere.
[67] Some people even threatened to report Waldman to the Department of Social Services in relation to the perceived mistreatment of her family.
[22] Oprah Winfrey, who said she was "very brave" for speaking out,[14] invited Waldman onto her television show to discuss her views on love, marriage, and motherhood.
[22] In 2009, Waldman published a collection of her personal essays, Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace.
[69] The book argues that no woman can be a perfect mother,[29] that, in fact, competitive, neurotic parenting and having unrealistic expectations may be damaging to children.
[71][72][73][74] A Really Good Day was published in January 2017 and documents Waldman's taking microdoses of LSD to help cope with her debilitating mood and anxiety disorders.
[77] Jennifer Senior of the New York Times noted that Waldman "is wielding her powers of provocation to goad us into an uncomfortable but necessary conversation.
[82] On 26 April 2024, Waldman was arrested by Israeli police (along with six others, including three rabbis) as she tried to take food to Palestinians inside Gaza.