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

I don't have a baby. I'm not sure I ever will. Despite this, I found this pleasant memoir intriguing and even somewhat useful. By the end, I myself was almost considering raising children. The French have a lovely culture surrounding parenthood that suggests adult life needn't end with the birth of a child. With proper boundaries in place, parents can continue to live their own lives while caring for their new young family. This, frankly gave me a lot of hope.

Rather than having many sets of competing and conflicting (and anxiety-inducing) parenting philosophies like in the U.S., parents in France seem to take a few basic things for granted. One of these things is that babies are people who are capable of learning things; another is that the baby must fit into the family, not be the center of it, so that adults still have "adult time." French parents also believe in the importance of teaching their kids to cope with frustration by having to wait for things; ultimately, this makes them "calmer and more resilient."

There is the idea of the "cadre," a strict framework within which children have a lot of freedom. Parents consider themselves to be teachers rather than police, and there is a word - show more "betise" - for minor acts of naughtiness that may be corrected but aren't deserving of punishment. French parents aim for "l'equilibre" (balance) but don't subsume their identities in their children, or feel as guilty as some American parents (particularly moms) do for working or taking time for themselves.

The chapters about sleeping and food provide an excellent guide that American parents can use just as well as French ones. The chapters about day care are less applicable, as there is no system in the U.S. that compares to the French creche (except the American military day care system). The U.S. doesn't even have a national standard for day care. Druckerman writes, "France has less feminist rhetoric, but it has many more institutions that enable women to work." show less

I feel like I had French parents. Actually, I grew up in Ohio, with parents who were an eclectic melange of would-be hippie born slightly too late, and stern Midwestern Germanicism. But somehow, at least according to Druckerman's assessment of French parenting, this appears to have given my mom a very French outlook.

Now all of a sudden I see why I felt out-of-sync sometimes with the preschool mom set. French mothers don't bring snacks to the park. They assume you'll eat at mealtimes. You don't have to eat all of your food, but you have to try a little of everything. They like activities, but they think a certain amount of boredom is good for a kid, and that, above all, parents need time to enjoy each other's company, and to do their show more own thing. These concepts seem like the stuff of my childhood, and I assumed, common sense. But Druckerman is right, they DO clash with the modern American way of parenting sometimes. And they shouldn't.

I loved this book. I loved watching Druckerman come of age as a parent. It was like having a secret window into what my mom must have done. It gives me hope for the future. show less

Finally! An American book on parenting that makes sense! Like Dominique in the book, I am Druckerman's doppelganger: raised in France, I now live and raise my child in North America. Like her, I was torn between what culturally made sense to me and what I was observing around me. Despite getting influenced by my environment (incipient guilt, lack of authority), I mostly stuck to my French roots, namely when it came to having time to myself, encouraging autonomy and explaining the whys and importance of limits.
Reading Druckerman was both a cultural validation and a reminder that - for the most part - it is possible to have well-behaved children. Her sense of humour, curiosity and honesty made the read all the more compelling and show more entertaining, an all around delight both for information and pleasure.
I highly recommend this book for mothers-to-be and mothers of young children. show less

I’ve been gravitating toward parenting books ever since my daughter was born, and this one caught my eye immediately. The author hooked me from the beginning. Like her, I also found myself dying to know why French children are so much better behaved than North American kids. And while I can’t say I came away with any earth-shattering revelations, I greatly enjoyed the reading experience. Many of the techniques French parents use seem to come down to common sense: don’t hover, teach patience, live your own life, don’t let your entire world revolve around your children, maintain your authority in a loving way, and parent with confidence. French moms don’t believe in the myth of the perfect mom - they know she doesn’t exist. show more But they use the tools they have at their disposal to parent to the best of their abilities. And for them, that’s enough. Their children respect them and love them, but they also embrace independence very early on. They’re allowed to explore and learn and make mistakes. I found myself nodding along with much of the book, and I really enjoyed the conversational style in which it was written. This was as much an ex-pat memoir as it was a parenting manual, and I walked away after turning the last page feeling like I’d just had coffee with the author. Highly recommended! show less

I love the title of the British edition of this book: French Children Don't Throw Food (I would guess that's a tip of the hat to Mireille Guilliano's French Women Don't Get Fat).

While my parenting days are long behind me, I applaud the sensible French who don't let Little Napoleon run the house, run his parents ragged, and make all innocent bystanders smile through gritted teeth while looking for the nearest, quickest escape hatch.

I don't have much in common with Pamela Druckerman, but enjoyed her self-deprecating writing style. Some people have criticized her for writing only about upper-middle-class parents in Paris, who may not be typical of the majority of French parents, but that's the milieu Druckerman was living in, so I won't show more quibble with that.

An interesting read, and some young parents or parents-to-be would undoubtedly pick up some good tips they could put into practice. show less

I was curious about the buzz this one received and since I’m pregnant, it seemed to be the perfect time to check it out. I went into it assuming that Druckerman’s argument would be that everything French is better. I was prepared to take that with a grain of salt and move on. Instead I discovered that, although she was living in Paris, she wasn’t a huge fan of France or the French. That being said, she was in awe of French parenting and the seemingly effortless success they had raising their children.

Druckerman approaches the whole subject as a journalist, not as a mother desperate to figure out what works. I appreciated her factual approach. She included anecdotes about her own experiences, but relied more heavily on what she show more learned from other French mothers. I thought it was fascinating to learn what cultural differences are ingrained in French and American parents, respectively.

There is plenty that I know wouldn’t work with my particular style. The sheer pressure put on women to look perfect as quickly as possible after giving birth is a bit overwhelming, but there were plenty of other things to learn from. I loved seeing how the day cares in France, called a crèche, work. Where American day cares have a negative stigma attached, crèches are the opposite.

BOTTOM LINE: Interesting and informative. There are a few parenting styles that I hope I’ll keep in mind as I attempt to find what works best for my family. I particularly liked the French approach to encouraging your kids to eat a wide variety of food and sleeping through the night as early as possible. show less