Is It Best To Raise Our Children Like The French?

There is nothing like seeing yourself through the eyes of a foreigner. Cross-cultural literature, at its best, offers a mirror to peer and gape at in awe or disbelief. It can also be an occasion for cheap point-scoring. It seems that Pamela Druckerman‘s latest book, French Children Don’t Throw Food, has achieved both. In championing French parenting over the “anglophone” way, she has triggered a heavy artillery backlash. Coy French parents, embarrassed by such praise, and Anglo-Saxon expats in France have been quick to retaliate. If you think the French way is great, think again, they say: you haven’t seen its dark side.

It won’t surprise anyone to learn that the French approach to parenting is indeed unique. To start with, in France motherhood doesn’t define women to the same extent. It is a function they perform, not a raison d’etre. British women therefore often assume that French mothers are aloof and detached from their children. They are not. They just refuse to be slaves to their offspring; they have, frankly, other important things to do in life. Breastfeeding is not necessarily one of them. The Guardian