Bringing Up Bebe
When American journalist Pamela Druckerman has a baby in Paris, she doesn’t aspire to become a “French parent.” French parenting isn’t a known thing, like French fashion or French cheese. Even fRench parents themselves insist they aren’t doing anything special.
Yet the French children Druckerman knows sleep through the night at two or three months old, wile children of her American friends take a year or more. French kids eat well-rounded meals that are more likely to include braised leeks than chicken nuggets. Her American friends spend their visits resolving spats between their kids, but her French friends sip coffee while the kids play.
Motherhood itself is a whole different experience in France. There’s no role model for he harried new mom with no life of her own. French mothers assume that even good parents aren’t at the constant service of their children, and there’s no need to feel guilty about this. They have an easy, calm authority with their kids that Druckerman can only envy.
Of course, French parenting wouldn’t be worth talking about if it produced robotic, joyless children. In fact, French kids are just as boisterous, curious and creative as Americans. They’re just far better behaved and more in command of themselves. While some American toddlers are getting Mandarin tutors and pre-literacy training, French kids are -by design- toddling around and discovering the world at their own pace.
With a notebook stashed in her diaper bag, Druckerman – a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal – sets out to learn the secrets to raising a society of good sleepers, gourmet eaters, and reasonably relaxed parents. She discoves that French parents are extremely strict about some things, and strikingly permissive about others. And she realizes that to be a different kind of parent, you don’t just need a different parenting philosophy. You need a very different view of what a child actually is.
While finding her own firm, non, Druckerman discovers that children – including her own – are capable of feats of understanding and autonomy that she’d never imagined.
ISBN: 9780143122968
Author: Pamela Druckerman
