Bringing Up Bébé

My son was born in London but raised in Paris until he was two.  This gave me a couple of years to study the French approach to child-rearing, long enough to notice they were doing something right. They were relaxed. Their children sat through an entire meal without pouring sugar on the table, knocking over glasses, throwing fits. French mothers seemed to have mastered the balance between loving attention to their children and basic self-respect. They were calm but set clear, consistently enforced boundaries around matters like eating and sleeping.  Actually, understanding that the French had a unique approach to child rearing didn't take me two years, only two minutes in the neighborhood pharmacy.

It was my second month back at work and my beloved Alex had been restless the two previous nights. I hadn't slept a wink.  I was pooped.  With my son in the stroller, I staggered down the street to the pharmacy and approached the trim, bespectacled pharmacist.  I was thinking that if I could pop a few more vitamins or some magic energy elixir, I'd be able to make it through the day.

"I'm beat," I explained. "He isn't sleeping well. I'm back at work and I'm having trouble staying awake."

"Ah," she said sympathetically, looking down at the adorable bundle in the stroller and smiling. "You just need a baby sedative."

"Baby sedative!" I was instantly consumed by a delicious mix of horror, guilt, fear and admiration for French ingenuity. "You give sedatives to babies?!!"

"Of course," the pharmacist calmly explained.  "It doesn't hurt them, it helps you sleep and a happy mother is a happy baby."

She handed me a tiny bottle of liquid relief.  Both my son and I slept much better that night and were happier for it.  I was more relaxed and patient, able to both work and enjoy him more.  He was rested, playful and happy with his mommy.  Voila!

I mention all this two decades later because someone has finally taken a good look at how the French raise their children and written a book about it. Why do French children seem to be better behaved than our own? This was the question that started  Paris-based writer Pamela Druckerman's on her quest to understand French parenting and the result is "Bringing up Bébé," being published in the United States later this month by Penguin Press.  (It's already out in the UK as "French Children Don't Throw Food.")

Druckerman wasn't interested in writing a book to make us feel bad by telling us how much better the French are at raising their children. Rather, she went about deconstructing in a very funny way which parental behaviors lead to such well-behaved, yet totally normal, exhuberant, curious, giggling kids.  This interview in The Guardian offers a look at both the content of the book and the charming humor of the writer.  I wish I'd had it 20 years ago.  Pick it up.