Opinion

French people don’t make better parents

Every few years, a book comes out detailing how inferior Americans are when compared with our obvious betters: the French.

First, it was “French Women Don’t Get Fat” — which infuriatingly insinuated that while French women consume richer food than us plebeian Americans, they somehow also manage to stay slimmer.

Next was “What French Women Know: About Love, Sex, and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind,” instructing naive American women to emulate les françaises in matters of flirting and sex — and to give a gallic shrug of their shoulders when men don’t call them back.

The latest book in the category of French-people-do-it-better is “Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting,” by Pamela Druckerman.

It’s the lowest blow yet.

We may be fat and emotional — but bad parents we are no
t.

In its attempt to show the superiority of French parenting, the book makes use of such eyeroll-inducing lines as: “When I asked French parents how they disciplined their children, it took them a few beats just to understand what I meant. ‘Ah, you mean how do we educate them?’ they asked.”

You silly Americans! Don’t you know that all discipline is about l’éducation?

I can see the disapproving French stare from here.

There are notes on the French way of child-proofing, such as, let the child touch the oven, discover it’s hot and never do it again.

C’est pas grâve, non?

And the French way of avoiding guilt — that is, simply not to feel guilty.

Druckerman really rubs salt in the wound when she notes that “French babies I meet mostly sleep through the night from two or three months old.”

She’s terribly judgmental. If your kid isn’t sleeping through the night at that tender age, then you have done something wrong.

It never occurs to her that American parents live in a society with different expectations and different rhythms. It also never occurs to her that the French children she praises for their remarkable self-control often grow up to be stoic French adults who might not admit their unhappiness to a researcher with the same openness as an American.

The book’s most basic flaw, however, is that it’s a self-help book that criticizes the idea of self-help books. Druckerman’s a good writer, able to weave an interesting story about an overachieving American living in Paris who learns to let go and be a better mother, but the message doesn’t come together. The French parents she meets insist mothers must learn to follow their intuition, but the concept of the book is that American intuition isn’t quite as intuitive as that of the French.

Ultimately, any instruction to American women to be more like the women of another culture will fail — especially when it involves parenting. Few women enjoy being instructed on how to be better mothers.

Some things are too sensitive to criticize, especially by French people not well- known for their tact.

Karol Markowicz blogs at Alarming News.