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Joyce Maynard Learns to Respect Privacy

In last Sunday’s New York Times Modern Love column, author Joyce Maynard wrote about trespassing into the e-mail account of her 22-year-old daughter, Audrey. The daughter had temporarily relocated to the Dominican Republic when her communications home were abruptly and, to Maynard, ominously silenced. From reading the correspondence, Maynard learned that her daughter was embroiled in a personal dilemma—one that she apparently needed to resolve without involving her mother. After justifying the invasion of her daughter's privacy ("I dreamed my daughter was running ... her face a mask of grief"), Maynard goes on to tell Modern Love readers the details of her daughter's very emotional crisis, including results of her HIV tests.

Maynard has, apparently, always had difficulty with boundaries. In 1972, when she was 18, the writer published a confessional essay in the Times about her generational perspective (sample: “Marijuana and the class of '71 moved through high school together”) that brought her national attention. She was later criticized about her 1999 memoir that excruciatingly detailed her teenage affair with then 53-year-old novelist J.D. Salinger. Maynard also auctioned off her love letters from the reclusive author.