Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting

by Pamela Druckerman

“In the U.S. sometimes I have the feeling that if it’s not difficult for you, you have to feel bad about that,”

I stay in the hospital for six days, which is standard French practice. I see no reason to leave. There is fresh-baked bread with every meal (no need to leave for a croissant) and a sun-dappled garden where I steal away for walks. The extensive in-room wine list includes champagne.

They view learning to sleep as part of learning to be part of the family, and adapting to what other members of the family need, too.

In the French view, having the self-control to be calmly present, rather than anxious, irritable, and demanding, is what allows kids to have fun.

(Sadly, I think she assumes I’m doing the same trick and doesn’t offer me one.)

lol

We American parents—as Piaget discovered—tend to be more interested in having kids acquire concrete skills and reach developmental milestones. And we tend to think that how well and how quickly kids advance depends on what their parents do. That means that parents’ choices and the quality of their intervention are extremely important. In this light, baby sign language, prereading strategies, and picking the right preschool understandably seem crucial. So does the never-ending American search for parenting experts and advice.

Others believe in exposing children to a variety of tastes, colors, and sights, simply because doing so gives the children pleasure.4 This pleasure is “the motivation for life,” one of the mothers says. “If we didn’t have pleasure, we wouldn’t have any reason to live.”

Our task is to understand what has happened,”

Why are middle-class Americans so skeptical of day care?

For us Anglophone mothers, the length of time that we breastfeed—like the size of a Wall Street bonus—is a measure of performance.

we all know that our breastfeeding “number” is a concrete way to compete with one another. A mother’s score is reduced if she mixes in formula, relies too heavily on a breast-milk pump, or actually breastfeeds for too long (at which point she starts to seem like a crazed hippie).

In middle-class circles in the United States, many mothers treat infant formula as practically a form of child abuse. The fact that breastfeeding requires endurance, inconvenience, and in some cases physical suffering only increases its status.

There’s no risk of Bean’s getting jabbed by a hip bone when I bounce her on my lap. I have skinny aspirations, though.

Frenchwomen work not just for financial security but also for status. Stay-at-home moms don’t have much, at least not in Paris. There’s a recurring French image of a housewife sitting sullenly at a dinner party because no one wants to talk to her. “I have two friends who don’t work. I feel like nobody is interested in them,” Danièle tells me. She’s a journalist in her early fifties with a teenage daughter. “When the kids are grown up, what is your social usefulness?”

Frenchwomen also openly question what their own quality of life would be if they looked after children all day.

“The logistics of making sure everyone gets to where they need to be at the correct time has been the best use of the skills I acquired in Operations Management class in business school,” she says.

Simon and I are thrilled whenever we get invitations: it’s free babysitting, followed by a cocktail party.

That ghost in the French mothering machine is, I think, how Frenchwomen cope with guilt.

For American mothers, guilt is an emotional tax we pay for going to work, not buying organic vegetables, or plopping our kids in front of the television so we can surf the Internet or make dinner. If we feel guilty, then it’s easier to do these things. We’re not just selfish. We’ve “paid” for our lapses.

they remind one another that “the perfect mother doesn’t exist . . . we say this to reassure each other.”

“I felt sick to leave her, but I would have felt sick to stay with her and not work,”

What really fortifies Frenchwomen against guilt is their conviction that it’s unhealthy for mothers and children to spend all their time together.

They believe there’s a risk of smothering kids with attention and anxiety, or of developing the dreaded relation fusionnelle, where a mother’s and a child’s needs are too intertwined.

“If your child is your only goal in life, it’s not good for the child,” Danièle says. “What happens to the child if he’s the only hope for his mother? I think this is the opinion of all psychoanalysts.”

Wow. These French mothers are voicing everything that has been in my heart and soul for years.

Adults are supposed to say bonjour to one another, too, of course. I think tourists are often treated gruffly in Parisian cafés and shops partly because they don’t begin interactions with bonjour, even if they switch to English afterward. It’s crucial to say bonjour upon climbing into a taxi, when a waitress first approaches your table in a restaurant, or before asking a salesperson if the pants come in your size. Saying bonjour acknowledges the other person’s humanity. It signals that you view her as a person, not just as someone who’s supposed to serve you. I’m amazed that people seem visibly put at ease after I say a nice solid bonjour. It signals that—although I have a strange accent—we’re going to have a civilized encounter.

“What’s that?” I ask the doctor. She moves the wand over a bit. Suddenly another little body pops onto the screen, with its own heartbeat, head, and legs. “Twins,” she says. This is one of the best moments of my life. I feel like I’ve been given an enormous gift: two pizzas. It also seems like a very efficient way for a woman in her late thirties to breed. When I turn to look at Simon, I realize that the best moment of my life may be the worst moment of his. He appears to be in shock. For once, I don’t want to know what he’s thinking. I’m giddy from the idea of twins. He’s blown over by the enormity of it. “I’ll never be able to go to a café again,” he says. Already he foresees the end of his free time. “You could get one of those home espresso makers,” the doctor suggests.

A few days later, a midwife from the same PMI stops by and stands with me as I’m changing Joey’s diaper. His poop, she declares, is “excellent.” I take that to be the official view of the French state.

“For me, the couple comes before the children,”

“The couple is the most important. It’s the only thing that you chose in your life. Your children, you didn’t choose. You chose your husband. So, you’re going to make your life with him. So you have an interest in it going well. Especially when the children leave, you want to get along with him. For me, it’s prioritaire.”

I’m starting to suspect that French parents may be right in giving less praise. Perhaps they realize that those little zaps of pleasure kids get each time a grown-up says “good job” could—if they arrive too often—simply make kids addicted to positive feedback. After a while, they’ll need someone else’s approval to feel good about themselves. And if kids are assured of praise for whatever they do, then they won’t need to try very hard. They’ll be praised anyway.

Interesting