Book description
Buffeted by one jaw-dropping obstacle after another, Orenstein seeks
answers both medical and spiritual, all the while trying to save a
marriage threatened by cycles, appointments, procedures, and
disappointments. Her journey takes her around America and as far as East
Asia - on the way she visits an ex-boyfriend who now has fifteen
children; encounters 'parasite singles' in Tokyo, women who are
rejecting marriage and motherhood in favour of shopping sprees and
foreign travel; and shares stories with survivors of the atomic bomb in
Hiroshima.
The world's professional women are only now beginning to become aware of
the risks and realities of 'having it all', and Orenstein's saga unfolds
as infertility is developing into a boom industry, with over a million
women a year seeking treatment. Waiting for Daisy
is a profoundly honest, wryly funny report from the front, a story
about doing all the things you swore you'd never do to get something you
hadn't even been sure you wanted; it's about being a woman, about trying
to become a mother, and above all, about the ambivalence, obsession and
sacrifice that characterises the struggles of so many modern couples.
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 USA Today
, Elle
, Vogue
and the New Yorker
, among others. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, Steven
Okazaki, and their daughter, Daisy.
