'Bringing Up Bebe': Why the French make better parents (no offense)
-
Pamela Druckerman -- French parents don't behave as overgrown children. -
Share with others:
This engaging work of self-declared "investigative parenting" will strike like a stiletto heel into the quivering gelatin of middle-class parental anxiety. Pamela Druckerman, an American journalist and mother of three in Paris, sends word that, once again, Americans are messing up their kids and another culture is superior. The media buzz machine is already in overdrive.
But unlike last year's incendiary device, Amy Chua's "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," Ms. Druckerman's modest manifesto should not put well-meaning parents on the defensive. If they're open to reason, they'll take "Bringing Up Bébé" as a message of liberation: Don't sacrifice your life in a quest for a child's happiness. In fact, kids become happier if you don't try to manage their every move.
"I'm 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," writes Ms. Druckerman. "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." (Having logged time in Paris playgrounds, thanks to the wisdom of marrying a French woman, I can confirm the author's field observation.)
Ms. Druckerman does not, however, detect a laissez-faire attitude. French parents first lay down le cadre, as defined in the book's opening glossary: "Cadre (kah-druh) -- frame or framework. A visual image that describes the French parenting ideal: setting firm limits for children but giving them tremendous freedom within those limits."
As a trained journalist, Ms. Druckerman adds proper caveats: Much of her personal experience is in decent parts of Paris; not every parent or child in France is perfect; not all Americans are clueless. She acknowledges that French families benefit from subsidized professional day care and preschools, not to mention essentially free health care and college (for now).
But as she conducts research and reviews the French literature of child-raising, she correctly divines that a certain cadre is accepted across French society. It results in the "invisible, civilizing force" that makes French kids not throw food in restaurants and not throw tantrums when it's time to leave the playground.
The cadre means that French children must not only say "please" and "thank you," but also bonjour and au revoir to adults at every encounter (none of our "Can you say hello, Tyler?"). French kids must learn to wait -- no constant snacking, no immediate fulfillment of capricious needs to keep the social peace. The offspring of the French nation learn to cope with the word "non." (" 'You must teach your child frustration' is a French parenting maxim.") At mealtimes, they eat a smaller version of what adults eat and must try everything -- no ordering off the menu for a monochrome diet of noodles.
First Published February 8, 2012 12:00 am
