By the same author
Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids, and Life in a Half-Changed World
Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Peggy Orenstein is the author of Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap and Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids, and Life in a Half-Changed World. A contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, her work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Elle, Vogue, Discover, MORE, Parenting, Mother Jones, Salon, and the New Yorker. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, Steven Okazaki, and their daughter, Daisy Tomoko.
READING GROUP GUIDE
Peggy Orenstein was never sure she wanted to have children—she loved her life the way it was. And through her work, as an acclaimed journalist and the author of Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap and Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids, and Life in a Half-Changed World, Orenstein had seen exactly how difficult parenting can be, how easy it is for women to lose themselves in their newfound status as mothers. So it’s no surprise that it took five years of marriage—and countless discussions with her husband, who did want kids—before she finally made up her mind that yes, she was ready to be a mom. And then she got breast cancer.
Over the next six years Orenstein did almost everything humanly possible to have a baby, starting with “fertility sex” and escalating to high-tech Assisted Reproductive Technology (sometimes involving the purified urine of postmenopausal Italian nuns), along with several attempts at international adoption. The story of how she finally does become a mother is funny, honest, and deeply, achingly accurate. Any woman who has ever struggled with infertility or questioned her own maternal instincts will laugh—and cry—in recognition on every page.
For discussion
1. The subtitle of this book covers many of the milestones on Orenstein’s journey to motherhood. In your opinion, which was most significant? Why?
2. On page 3 Orenstein says, “I’d had no idea how easy it would be to lose all sense of reason, to do things I swore I never would to become a mother, then go further beyond that.” Have there been instances in your life when you have done this, whether or not they are fertility related?
3. Orenstein’s husband, Steven, wants children because, as he says on, page 8 “I think of life as kind of like an amusement park...If you’re going to go, you should ride every ride at least once. And having kids is like the big, scary roller coaster. You can have a good time without riding it, but you would’ve missed a significant part of the experience." Is this an apt description of parenthood?
4. In explaining her ambivalence about motherhood, Orenstein says on page 11: “The issue wasn’t whether I wanted to turn into my mother if I had a child or even whether I feared I would; it was that I believed I should” What did she mean by that? How did her experience researching her books color this expectation? How do you feel about motherhood in regard to your own mother?
5. Many of Orenstein’s concerns seem to be about identity—as one woman says to her on page 97 “Once you become a mother, you’re only a mother.” In your experience—as a mother, a friend, a daughter—how has that proved true? And false?
6. What does feminism have to do with Orenstein’s journey to motherhood? What about class issues? Politics?
7. The idea of destiny plays a large role in Orenstein’s thinking. How did it affect her decisions? Have there been times in your own life when you believed destiny was a key factor?
8. Shrines of one sort or another also recur throughout the book. Why do you think there are so many different kinds of fertility-related totems? Do you think they helped Orenstein in her quest, or encouraged her obsession, or served another purpose entirely?
9. Reread Orenstein’s definition of the Eishet Chayil, “the original woman who does too much,” on page 49. How have the implications of the term changed over the years? Do you consider yourself a modern-day example? If not, do you know someone who is?
10. Discuss Steven’s role in this story. Does your opinion of him change, and why? Why do you think their relationship was able to withstand so many years of stress?
11. In Japan, which has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, there are shrines where women can honor their aborted or miscarried fetuses. Compare the Japanese approach to fertility, abortion, and miscarriage with our own. Which did Orenstein feel more comfortable with, and why? What about Steven? And you?
12. What is your understanding of the term “wagamama” page 97? How does it apply to women in this country compared to how it applies in Japan?
13. Discuss the significance of Orenstein’s trip to Hiroshima, beginning on page 116. How does it relate to the idea of destiny?
14. Compare Orenstein’s attitude toward adoption to her husband’s. Why does it seem like a relatively simple decision for one, but not the other? How do their attitudes change over time, and why?
15. On page 225 Orenstein is upset when a friend suggests that “Everything happens for a reason.” Why was she bothered by this assertion? How do you feel about it?
16. At the very end of the book, on page 226 Orenstein says, “Mine is the luck of realizing that happiness may only be the respite between bouts of pain and so is to be savored, not taken as an entitlement. I suppose I’ve finally understood the concept of wabi-sabi.” Reread her definition of the term on page 126 —what do you think helped her to finally understand it? Is that a good thing? How might wabi-sabi apply in your own life?
Suggested Reading
Adopting After Infertility by Patricia Irwin Johnston; Love and Infertility: Survival Strategies for Balancing Infertility, Marriage, and Life by Kristen Magnacca; Unsung Lullabies: Understanding and Coping with Infertility by Janet Jaffe, David Diamond, and Martha Diamond; A Little Pregnant: Our Memoir of Fertility, Infertility, and a Marriage by Linda Carbone and Ed Decker; Sweet Grapes: How to Stop Being Infertile and Start Living Again by Jean W. Carter and Michael Carter; The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage, edited by Cathi Hanauer; Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family by Catherine Newman; The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women by Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels
Peggy Orenstein is the author of Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap and Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids, and Life in a Half-Changed World. A contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, her work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Elle, Vogue, Parenting, Discover, More, Mother Jones, Salon, and the New Yorker. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, Steven Okazaki, and their daughter, Daisy.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indeed a lucky woman. I have always had friends, family, and colleagues who supported and guided me, held hope for me when I had none. I send you all my deepest love.
In particular I’d like to thank Suzanne Gluck, who with equal skill advised me on writing a book proposal and calming a fussy newborn; Bloomsbury s Gillian Blake (editor extraordinaire) and Karen Rinaldi (who shares my opinions about Manhattan in the 80s); all of the Orensteins and Okazakis; Barb Swaiman; Eva Eilenberg and Eric Stone; Ruth Halpern and Marc Halperin; Peg-bo Edersheim Kalb; Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon; Sylvia Brownrigg and Sedge Thomson; Susan Faludi; Kate Moses; Susanne Pari; Laurie Abraham; Elly Eisenberg; Dan Wilson and Diane Espaldon; Sandy and David Brown; Larry and Beth Brown (and all the kids); Rachel Silvers and Youseef Elias; Karen Stabiner; Terry Hong; Judy Fred Campbell; Jay Martel and Sarah Hemphill; Catherine Taylor; Lucy and Paula Arai; Risa Kagan; Katarina Lanner-Cusan; Marcelle Cedars; Rebecca Epstein; Madeline Licker Feingold; Ari and Kristin Baron; Brandon Wu; Kay Itoi; Sara Corbett and Mike Paterniti; Doug McGray and Carrie Donovan; Doug Foster (despite the move); Annie Lamott (despite the Barbie); David Fallek; Fumiyo Kawa-mura; Connie Mat
thiessen; Lisa, David, and Donna Cericola; Julia Eilenberg; Michael Pollan; Deirdre English; Susannah Grant; Natalie Compagni Portis; Teresa Tauchi; Peggy Northrop; Neal Karlen; Aaron Brusso; Elliot Dorff; Deborah Gordon; Debra Condren; Lori Gottlieb; Lilly Krenn; Charlotte and Ken Gray; Anna and Marty Rabkin; Robert Bokelman; Susan Kawamoto; Kent and Mari Nagano; and Karen Nagano and Kenji. Thanks also to Ilena Silverman, Katherine Bouton, and Gerry Marzarati for their encouragement and patience, and to Ingrid Rubis for her gift with children.
The Japan Society’s United States-Japan Media Fellows Program and the Asian Cultural Council awarded me generous travel and research grants. Special thanks to Ruri Kawashima for easing the transition to Tokyo, and to Veronica Chambers and Jonathan Alter for championing my Fellows nomination. I could never repay the charming and insightful Mihoko Iida for her patience with my endless dumb gaijin questions. And a most heartfelt domo arigato goizaimasu to all of those who helped me navigate Hiroshima, including the tireless Tomoko Watanabe (after whom Daisy Tomoko is named), Masako Un-ezaki, Yumi Nekomoto, Katsukuni Tanaka, Michiko Yamaoka, and the many other hibakusha who gave so generously of their time; the Tanimoto family, and especially Koko Tanimoto Kondo, who has brought love into the lives of so many.
My love, too, to Kai-chan, wherever you are, whoever you are. I think of you often and wish you joy.
And most important, my gratitude to and for Steven Okazaki and Daisy Tomoko Orenstein Okazaki, who remind me every minute of every day that grace happens.
Praise for Waiting for Daisy
“Moving and bittersweet, Waiting for Daisy is as funny, thoughtful, biting, reflective, as filled with fruitful self-doubt and cautious exuberance, as its author.”
—Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
“An absolutely wonderful book. I couldn’t put it down: it reads as easily and yet with as much texture as a novel. As always, Orenstein is both so smart and so human as she tells her story—and ours, too—about her marriage, career, indecision, breast cancer, and whether or not she can, and wants to, and ought to, get pregnant. Sometimes the writing is wrenching, sometimes very funny, but always profoundly honest and engaging.”
—Anne Lamott, bestselling author of Operating Instructions
“Add to the best literature of motherhood Peggy Orenstein’s searing account of her six-year quest to have a child. The story of what she put her body through is beautifully and movingly rendered, but it’s her honesty in examining her own mind and heart that make Waiting for Daisy such a courageous and unforgettable book. I was enthralled.”
—Ann Packer, author of The Dive from Clausen’s Pier
“A gripping memoir of one woman’s quest for a baby.. .honest, fascinating, and wholly enlightening.”
—Cathi Hanauer, author of Sweet Ruin
and editor of The Bitch in the House
“Just when you think there is no more to say about the comedy and tragedy of infertility, Peggy Orenstein comes along and changes your mind. This may be the most honest book written about the tsunami of emotion that hits women when what should come most naturally—reproduction—becomes instead one vast, expensive science experiment, and one more likely to fail than not. Orenstein—whose obsession with getting pregnant (after breast cancer and the loss of an ovary, no less) almost derails her career, her marriage and her sanity—is terrific at exploring the struggle of the intellect and the heart: As a feminist, she’s always said she won’t be defined by motherhood, but there she is in the bathroom, frantically poking her insides to determine if today’s cervical mucous is gorgeous.’With its startlingly mundane happy ending, Daisy is a fine meditation on what it means to live a fulfilled life.”
—People
“Waiting for Daisy is riveting...It’s no small feat to write a page turner that gives away the ending on the dust jacket, but Waiting for Daisy is more than just the Perils of Peggy. Orenstein has written a memoir, a confession, a polemic and a love story all at once, describing the most frantic and confusing period of her life with clarity and candor.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Peggy Orenstein’s journey [is] suspenseful [and]...unsparing... the book describes Orenstein’s rapid descent into the surreal community of the subfertile.. .It’s to Orenstein’s considerable credit that even when she’s naked from the waist down, she never really takes her reporter’s hat off, applying the same measured scrutiny to a junior-high-school boyfriend with a brood of 15 or the plight of women left barren and disfigured by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima as she does to her own ultimately happily resolved situation...Orenstein’s interrogation of her own profiteering pregnancy retinue comes across as a welcome, even necessary exposé.”
—New York Times Book Review
“‘Waiting’ for Daisy? No term as passive as waiting’ begins to describe how Peggy Orenstein clawed her way to motherhood like a climber scaling Mount Everest in a gale-force blizzard... caustically funny, the author brings alarming frankness to a familiar story of baby lust run amok.”
—Boston Globe
“The story of author Peggy Orenstein’s struggle with infertility is riveting, but what really makes her new memoir such a compelling read is her refreshing honesty about the complicated emotions many women face on the path to motherhood.”
—Parenting
“A raw, funny and poignant memoir...she writes keenly and with humor about the difficult road her quest takes. By the time I reached the end of the book, I was crying into my latte. Orenstein’s memoir is not just hers; it is the story of a generation of women who dared to wait for motherhood, took risks to achieve it and were brave enough to question their decisions every step of the way.”
—More
“Funny, self-knowing and sometimes wise...The, outcome of this story may seem obvious, but that’s less important than how Orenstein gets there.”
—Chicago Tribune
“[Orenstein] treats her efforts to become a mother with intelligent skepticism and a brazen sense of humor (a quality not often found in Repro Lit)...Unlike many women who have written about the experience of trying and failing to have a baby, Orenstein doesn’t leave her feminism at the door. She writes frankly about her initial reluctance to become a mother and traces the complicated evolution of her feelings from no! never!’ to single-minded passion. Once launched on the all-consuming path, she makes stops that will be familiar to many of her readers...But her voice makes all the difference in the world. Far from the anguished, often reverential, super-serious tone of Internet discussion groups...One of the best things about this book is that when she succeeds in her quest, Orenstein refuses to take refuge in the smug pieties so prevalent in fertility discussions. When a friend tells her that everything happens for a reason, Orenstein bristles (bless her!)...As Daisy moves on through life, and her mother and father move with her through the parenting maze, it would be interesting to hear Orenstein’s intelligent, skeptical voice ruminate on the next stages. For if any writer has the verve and tenacity to supersede the typecasting of Mommy Lit, it’s Orenstein.”
—Washington Post
“Peggy Orenstein is an accomplished journalist, and she skillfully and vividly tells this tale in which, after eight months of failing to conceive, a very intelligent, well-educated woman succumbs to the blandishments of fertility specialists...she writes far better and more coherently than the other writers of her cohort who have worked this beat, Naomi Wolf and Susan Faludi. She is also more humorous...She is never less than good at portraying the ‘descent into the world of infertility’...unlike Faludi and Wolf, Orenstein can think enough outside the feminist box... Stay tuned for the next installment.”
—First Things
“The author has a curious, tenacious mind and a courageous spirit, both of which are much in evidence here. But what makes the book really riveting is the spectacle of Orenstein—a devoted, polemical feminist—coming to terms with her powerful nee
d to be a mother...[a] painfully honest journey...She tells the truth about it, and in doing so gives us a complex, endearing and deeply feminist book.”
—Raleigh News and Observer
“You don’t have to be coping with infertility yourself to fall in love with Orenstein’s memoir of the long and difficult road to parenthood...Her persona is irresistible. She is funny, irreverent, blunt and ever aware of what is happening to her mentally and physically.”
—Arizona Republic
“Ebullient, heart-wrenching, and honest, Daisy delves into how the pain of trying to conceive can fray even the happiest marriage. Part of Orenstein’s genius is how she stretches her subject like a rubber band to write engagingly about single-by-choice Japanese women (they’re called parasites’), rituals marking miscarriage and abortion, and the courage of a Hiroshima survivor whose face was destroyed. Funny and wise, Waiting for Daisy is a page-turning delight.”
—Cookie
“Orenstein’s account of her six-year quest to have a child (with multiple miscarriages and rounds of IVF treatments) will have you in awe of her resolve—and cheering when her baby finally arrives.”
—Life
“Inspiration and solace come in copious quantities in Peggy Orenstein’s dazzling new memoir, a heart-rending account of her six-year quest to conceive a child. [Orenstein] recounts an Olympian odyssey to motherhood that includes daunting obstacles (three miscarriages, breast cancer, infertility treatments, alternate therapies, possible adoption, an imperiled marriage) while also racing along with the pulse-pounding tenseness of a thriller. So remarkable is Orenstein’s account that it seems likely to become the platinum standard for memoirs regarding couples struggling to become parents. Waiting for Daisy becomes instant required reading for them and those who follow them down that hope-laden pathway with so many confounding forks...Orenstein does an excellent job in describing the progression of medical treatments during her quest, what they promised, what they entailed, how they felt. But the greatest strength of her memoir is her resounding ability to surmount the far greater writing challenge—capturing the rocky emotional landscape she and her husband traversed... Waiting for Daisy accomplishes many valuable things in just 226 pages. But one of the most valuable is fostering profound respect and empathy for couples who endure great struggles trying to become parents.”
Waiting for Daisy Page 20