Are French mothers superior?
So, I was going to write about the new, overhauled lunch standards for American schools this week. But then quite a few bloggers became enamored with “Bringing Up Bebe,” a book due out Feb. 7, by former Wall Street Journal reporter Pamela Druckerman.
Like several other writers (Judith Warner, formerly of The New York Times, and Adam Gopnik, of the New Yorker come to mind), Druckerman had a baby in Paris and discovers that child rearing in France is quite different from child rearing in the United States.
In a nutshell, French moms are both more relaxed, and stricter, Druckman says. They teach their kids to sleep though the night earlier. They’re less likely to give in to their kids’ every whim. They cook better, healthier meals.
I’m not a French mother. But I’ve been a French kid. Though I missed the infant and toddler years, I grew up in France from age 8 to 18 (and lived there until I was 23). So I’ve gotten plenty of exposure to the results of this particular child rearing philosophy.
Druckerman is right that French kids eat better and are generally better behaved. She’s also right that French parents aren’t as tied up into their kids’ lives. But what she doesn’t see is that American kids, in my experience, are way more self-confident than their French counterparts. They’re bolder, more daring.
What Druckerman also seems to ignore is that to raise American kids the French way would take a major social upheaval here in the United States. Let me explain.
Yes, French women don’t have to do all the crazy things American moms do. But that’s because college entrance is not a competitive process there. I am not kidding. In the United States, there are moms who start building their kids’ resume in preschool, piling on a ton of activities, such as music, sports, charity work, and so on. All to get junior into an Ivy League school. One of the scientists studying this phenomenon dubbed it “the rug rat race.”
Full disclosure: my 6-year-old takes piano lessons, ceramics and theater. But I don’t think it’s going to get her into Yale Drama or the Rhode Island School of Design. It just keeps her busy until I get home.
In France, everyone gets into the university of their choice (which, by the way, generally aren’t nearly as good as their U.S. counterparts). There are a handful of competitive higher education institutions, but admission is strictly based on GPAs and test scores, not on whether you play the piano and run a soup kitchen. I’m not saying it’s better. I’m saying that it allows parents not to go crazy over their kids’ resumes at a tender age.
Also, it’s a lot easier to be relaxed about taking care of your kid when you have a whole safety net to help you out. France has universal preschool, though access to day care for children under age 3 can be devilishly hard and expensive, especially in big cities. Then when the kids are of school age, they’re in school from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Most schools also run after-hours programs until 6 p.m. Some schools hold Saturday morning classes as well. So women don’t have to choose between working full-time and working part-time. They also don’t have to constantly think about how they’re going to fill their kids’ schedules until they come home.
French women (and men) also benefit from a 35-hour work week and have a minimum of five paid weeks of vacation a year—and on average seven weeks of vacation, according to Paul Krugman from The New York Times. That’s plenty to spend quality time with your kids—and then some quality time on your own. By contrast, American parents constantly struggle to squeeze in a few hours with their children on their days off—which they may not even have.
And one more thing: French women entered the workforce much earlier than their American counterparts, since the industrial revolution in fact, especially in big cities. Even before then, women worked alongside men in the fields and on the farm. So there is no real tradition of staying home with the kids. I think most American women can think back to their moms staying home. For most French women, a working mother has been a reality since at least the 1950s—and even before than in working class families. (That’s even more true in Eastern Europe, BTW).
Finally, I would argue that French women’s more detached attitude toward their children has a flip side. A well-known and influential French philosopher, Elizabeth Badinter, is openly opposed to any campaigns and policies that encourage breastfeeding. And the French president recently referred to breastfeeding as slavery. Yikes!
Finally, I’d say that all this is only true for a certain slice of the population: the educated, fairly well-off middle class. I spent about half my childhood in a working-class neighborhood outside of Paris. I can tell you that most of our parents were too busy worrying about putting food on the table and paying the rent to give much thought to child rearing philosophies.
In France and in the United States, all these questions don’t really matter if you’re unemployed, or barely employed, or juggling two jobs. They also don’t matter much if you’re from an immigrant population that has a completely different philosophy of childrearing. And you only have to look at the economic crisis in Europe right now to wonder how long all its family-friendly policies will endure.
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