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

by Pamela Druckerman

Parents don’t have to specifically teach their kids “distraction strategies.” Mischel says kids learn this skill on their own, if parents just allow them to practice waiting. “I think what’s often underestimated in parenting is how extraordinary . . . the cognitive facilities of very young kids are, if you engage them,” he says. This is exactly what I’ve been seeing French parents doing. They don’t explicitly teach their kids distraction techniques. Mostly, they just seem to give them lots of opportunities to practice waiting.

The goûter helps explain why those French kids I saw at the restaurant were eating so well. They were actually hungry, because they hadn’t been snacking all day. (Adults might have a coffee, but rarely a snack. A friend of mine who was visiting France complained that he had a hard time finding any adult snack food.)

The critical assumption is that while the baby has his own rhythm, the family and the parents have rhythms, too. The ideal, in France, is finding a balance between these two. Votre Enfant explains, “You and your baby each have your rights, and every decision is a compromise.”

the American Question. It was: How can we speed these stages up? Piaget’s answer was: Why would you want to do that? He didn’t think that pushing kids to acquire skills ahead of schedule was either possible or desirable. He believed that children reach these milestones at their own speeds, driven by their own inner motors.

Rousseau thought children should be given space to let their development unfold naturally. He said Émile should be “taken daily to the middle of a field; there let him run and frisk about; let him fall a hundred times a day.” He imagined a child who is free to explore and discover the world and let his senses gradually “awaken.”

Awakening is about introducing a child to sensory experiences, including tastes. It doesn’t always require the parent’s active involvement. It can come from staring at the sky, smelling dinner as it’s being prepared, or playing alone on a blanket. It’s a way of sharpening the child’s senses and preparing him to distinguish between different experiences.

A University of Texas study found that with all this awakening, French mothers aren’t trying to help their kids’ cognitive development or make them advance in school. Rather, they believe that awakening will help their kids forge “inner psychological qualities such as self-assurance and tolerance of difference.” 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.”

“Do you know the surest means of making your child miserable?” he writes. “It is to accustom him to getting everything. Since his desires grow constantly due to the ease of satisfying them, sooner or later powerlessness will force you, in spite of yourself, to end up with a refusal. And this unaccustomed refusal will give him more torment than being deprived of what he desires.” Rousseau says the biggest parenting trap is to think that because a child can argue well, his argument deserves the same weight as your own. “The worst education is to leave him floating between his will and yours and to dispute endlessly between you and him as to which of the two will be the master.”

The ideal of the cadre is that parents are very strict about certain things but very relaxed about most everything else.

Dolto’s core message isn’t a “parenting philosophy.” It doesn’t come with a lot of specific instructions. But if you accept that children are rational as a first principle—as French society does—then many things begin to shift. If babies understand what you’re saying to them, then you can teach them quite a lot, even while they’re very young. That includes, for example, how to eat in a restaurant.

Dolto insisted that the content of what you say to a baby matters tremendously. She said it was crucial that parents tell their babies the truth in order to gently affirm what the babies already know. In fact, she thought that babies begin eavesdropping on adult conversations—and intuiting the problems and conflicts swirling around them—from the womb. She envisioned (in the presonogram days) a conversation between a mother and her minutes-old baby going something like this: “You see, we were waiting for you. You’re a little boy. Maybe you heard us saying that we wanted a little girl. But we’re very happy that you’re a little boy.”

For Dolto, “the child’s best interest is not always what will make him or her happy, but rational understanding,”

what a child most needs, according to Dolto, is “a structured inner life able to support autonomy and further growth.”

Dolto insisted that children have rational motives, even when they misbehave, and she said that it’s the job of parents to listen and grasp these motives. “The child who has an unusual reaction always has a reason for having it. . . . Our task is to understand what has happened,” she says. Dolto gives the example of a small child who suddenly refuses to continue walking down the street. To the parent, it just seems like sudden stubbornness. But to the child, there’s a reason. “We should try to understand him, and say, ‘There’s a reason. I don’t understand, but let’s think about it.’ Above all, don’t suddenly make a drama out of it.”

Kids don’t learn to read in a crèche. They don’t learn letters or other preliteracy skills. What they do is socialize with other kids. In America, some parents mention this to me as a benefit of day care. In France, all parents do.

It’s the French cadre model yet again: kids get firm boundaries, but lots of freedom within those boundaries. And they’re supposed to learn to cope with boredom and to play by themselves. “When the child plays, he constructs himself,”

The crèche also teaches kids patience. I watch as a two-year-old demands that Mehrie pick her up. But Mehrie is cleaning up the table where the children have just had lunch. “For the moment I’m not free. You wait two seconds,” Mehrie says gently to the little girl. Then she turns to me and explains: “We try to teach them to wait, it’s very important. They can’t have everything right away.”

The caregivers speak calmly and respectfully to the kids, using the language of rights: you have the right to do this; you don’t have the right to do that. They say this with that same utter conviction that I’ve heard in the voices of French parents. Everyone believes that for the cadre to seem immutable, it has to be consistent. “The prohibitions are always consistent, and we always give a reason for them,”

What’s different about French moms is that they get back their pre-baby identities, too. For starters, they seem more physically separate from their children. I’ve never seen a French mother climb a jungle gym, go down a slide with her child, or sit on a seesaw—all regular sights back in the United States and among Americans visiting France. For the most part, except when toddlers are just learning to walk, French parents park themselves on the perimeter of the playground or the sandbox and chat with one another

Some French parents store toys in the living room. But plenty don’t. The children in these families have loads of playthings, but these don’t engulf the common spaces. At a minimum, the toys are put away at night. Parents see doing this as a healthy separation and a chance to clear their minds when the kids go to bed.

It’s not just the physical space that’s different in France. I’m also struck by the nearly universal assumption that even good mothers aren’t at the constant service of their children, and that there’s no reason to feel bad about that.

In France, the dominant social message is that while being a parent is very important, it shouldn’t subsume one’s other roles. Women I know in Paris express this by saying that mothers shouldn’t become “enslaved” to their children.

The French equivalent of a playdate is that I drop off Bean at her friend’s house, then I leave. (My Anglophone friends assume I’ll stay the whole time.) French parents aren’t curt; they’re practical. They correctly assume that I have other stuff to do. I sometimes stay for a cup of coffee when I return for the pickup.

by the time a child is three, French birthday parties are drop-offs. We’re supposed to trust that our kids will be okay without us. Parents are usually invited to come back at the end for a glass of champagne and some hobnobbing with the other moms and dads.

Today’s American mothers spend much more time on child care than parents did in 1965.6 To do so, they have cut back on housework, relaxing, and sleeping. Nevertheless, today’s parents believe they should be spending even more time with their kids. The result is enormous 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.

The difference is that French mothers don’t valorize this guilt. To the contrary, they consider it unhealthy and unpleasant, and they try to banish it. “Guilt is a trap,” says my friend Sharon, the literary agent. When she and her Francophone girlfriends meet for drinks, they remind one another that “the perfect mother doesn’t exist . . . we say this to reassure each other.”

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. Children—even babies and toddlers—get to cultivate their inner lives without a mother’s constant interference.

The French logic seems to be that if children can speak clearly, they can also think clearly. In addition to polishing their spoken grammar, the government’s booklet says a French child learns to “observe, ask questions, and make his interrogations increasingly rational. He learns to adopt a point of view other than his own, and this confrontation with logical thinking gives him a taste of reasoning. He becomes capable of counting, of classifying, ordering, and describing . . .”

Part of what the French obsession with bonjour reveals is that, in France, kids don’t get to have this shadowy presence. The child greets, therefore he is. Just as any adult who walks into my house has to acknowledge me, any child who walks in must acknowledge me, too.

“Kids who ignore people, and don’t say bonjour or au revoir, they just stay in their bubble. Since parents are dedicated to them already, when will they get the sense that they are there to give, not just to receive?”

Saying “please” and “thank you” puts children in an inferior, receiving role. An adult has either done something for them or the child is asking the adult to do something. But bonjour and au revoir put the child and the adult on more equal footing, at least for that moment. It cements the idea that kids are people in their own right.

In France, the same advice to keep reproposing foods to babies is elevated to a mission. Parents take for granted that, while kids will prefer certain tastes over others, the flavor of each vegetable is inherently rich and interesting. Parents see it as their job to bring the child around to appreciating this. They believe that just as they must teach the child how to sleep, how to wait, and how to say bonjour, they must teach her how to eat.

the French approach to feeding kids: if you keep trying things, you eventually come around to liking most of them. Steingarten discovered this by reading up on the science of taste. But middle-class French parents seem to know it intuitively and do it automatically. In France, the idea of reintroducing a broad range of vegetables and other foods isn’t just one idea among many. It’s the guiding culinary principle for kids. The ordinary, middle-class French parents I meet are evangelical about the idea that there is a rich world of flavors out there, which their children must be educated to appreciate.

French kids don’t get a huge amount of chocolate; it’s a small bar, or a drink’s worth, or a strip in a pain au chocolat. They eat it happily and don’t expect a second helping. But chocolate is a nutritional fixture for them, rather than a forbidden treat.

I’m not sure exactly when I started serving my kids meals in courses. But I now do it at every meal. It’s a stroke of French genius. This starts with breakfast. When the kids sit down, I put plates of cut-up fruit on the table. They nibble on this while I’m getting their toast or cereal ready. They can have juice at breakfast, but they know that for lunch and dinner we drink water.

American parents—myself included—are often deeply ambivalent about being in charge. In theory, we believe that kids need limits. This is a truism of American parenting. However, in practice, we’re often unsure where these limits should be or we’re uncomfortable policing them.

France feels like a different planet. Even the most bohemian parents boast about how strict they are and seem unequivocal about being at the top of the family hierarchy. In a country that reveres revolution and climbing the barricades, there are apparently no anarchists at the family dinner table.

it’s easier to loosen the screw than to tighten the screw, meaning that you have to be very tough. If you’re too tough, you loosen. But if you are too lenient . . . afterward to tighten, forget about it.”

how do parents build this cadre? The process of constructing it does occasionally seem harsh. But it isn’t just about saying no and establishing that “it’s me who decides.” Another way that French parents and educators build the cadre is simply by talking a lot about the cadre. That is, they spend a lot of time telling their kids what’s permissible and what’s not. All this talk seems to will the cadre into existence. It starts to take on an almost physical presence, much like a good mime convinces you there’s actually a wall. This ongoing conversation about the cadre is often very polite. Parents say please a lot, even to babies. (They require politeness, too, of course, since they understand what’s being said.) In defining limits for kids, French parents often invoke the language of rights. Rather than saying “Don’t hit Jules,” they typically say, “You don’t have the right to hit Jules.” This is more than a semantic difference. It feels different to say it this way. The French phrasing suggests that there’s a fixed and coherent system of rights, which both children and adults can refer to. It also makes clear that the child does have the right to do other things.

Another phrase that adults use a lot with children is “I don’t agree,” as in, “I don’t agree with you pitching your peas on the floor.” Parents say this in a serious tone, while looking directly at the child. “I don’t agree” is also more than just “no.” It establishes the adult as another mind, which the child must consider. And it credits the child with having his own view about the peas, even if this view is being overruled. Pitching the peas is cast as something the child has rationally decided to do, so he can decide to do otherwise, too. This may help explain why mealtimes in France are so calm. Instead of waiting for a big crisis and resorting to dramatic punishments, parents and caregivers focus on making lots of small, polite, preventative adjustments, based on well-established rules.

When I ask French parents what they most want for their children, they say things like “to feel comfortable in their own skin” and “to find their path in the world.” They want their kids to develop their own tastes and opinions. In fact, French parents worry if their kids are too docile. They want them to have character. But they believe that children can achieve these goals only if they respect boundaries and have self-control. So alongside character, there has to be cadre.

American parents like me often view imposing authority in terms of discipline and punishment. French parents don’t talk much about these things. Instead, they talk about the éducation of kids. As the word suggests, this is about gradually teaching children what’s acceptable and what’s not. This idea that you’re teaching, not policing, makes the tone a lot gentler in France. When Leo refuses to use his silverware at dinner, I try to imagine that I’m teaching him to use a fork, much like I’d teach him a letter of the alphabet. This makes it easier for me to be patient and calm. I no longer feel disrespected and angry when he doesn’t immediately comply. And with some of the stress off the situation, he’s more amiable about trying. I don’t yell, and dinner is more pleasant for everyone.

the current French “liberal education” dictates that the child should ask before touching or taking these things. Marcelli approves of this asking, but he says the parents’ response should almost always be yes. Parents “should only forbid him every once in a while . . . because it’s fragile or dangerous. But fundamentally, [the parent’s job] is to teach the child to ask before taking.”

“Give willingly, refuse unwillingly,” he writes in Émile. “But let your refusal be irrevocable. Let no entreaties move you; let your ‘no,’ once uttered, be a wall of brass, against which the child may exhaust his strength some five or six times, but in the end he will try no more to overthrow it. Thus you will make him patient, equable, calm and resigned, even when he does not get all he wants.”

giving kids a degree of independence, and stressing a kind of inner resilience and self-reliance, is a big part of French parenting. The French call this autonomie (autonomy). They generally aim to give children as much autonomy as they can handle. This includes physical autonomy, like the class trips. It also includes emotional separation, like letting them build their own self-esteem that doesn’t depend on praise from parents and other adults.

The French believe that kids feel confident when they’re able to do things for themselves, and do those things well. After children have learned to talk, adults don’t praise them for saying just anything. They praise them for saying interesting things, and for speaking well. Sociologist Raymonde Carroll says French parents want to teach their children to verbally “defend themselves well.” She quotes an informant who says, “In France, if the child has something to say, others listen to him. But the child can’t take too much time and still retain his audience; if he delays, the family finishes his sentences for him. This gets him in the habit of formulating his ideas better before he speaks. Children learn to speak quickly, and to be interesting.”

“excessive praise . . . distorts children’s motivations; they begin doing things merely to hear the praise, losing sight of the intrinsic enjoyment.”