Monday, February 6, 2012

Parenting hopes and dreams

We read a really interesting article in this weekend's Wall Street Journal comparing French parenting to American parenting, and the resulting toddlers.  The article is written by Pamela Druckerman, an American mom, living in France, and it's the kind of article that makes me think I CAN have the kind of children I want (French todlers) instead of the kind I'm afraid of having (American toddlers).

Why French Parents Are Superior

Soon it became clear to me that quietly and en masse, French parents were achieving outcomes that created a whole different atmosphere for family life. When American families visited our home, the parents usually spent much of the visit refereeing their kids' spats, helping their toddlers do laps around the kitchen island, or getting down on the floor to build Lego villages. When French friends visited, by contrast, the grownups had coffee and the children played happily by themselves.

She wrote a book about it, Bringing Up Bebe, and it's coming out tomorrow, published by The Penguin Press. You can read a great review of it (from the WSJ) here: Parenting A La Mode, or, in tomorrow's WSJ.

Get your own copy here.

2 comments:

Cody said...

Hi Kerry! That's looks like a really interesting book. I like the excerpt that you posted. Some of the things she mentions seem kind of funny though. Like, not breast feeding for very long simply because "it's so hard to look chic while attached to a guzzling infant." I really like the idea of comparing the behaviors of American children to those in other countries. We can definitely learn a lot from other cultures!

Jessika said...

I thought the article was interesting too. At least you know that cuteness and well-behaved runs in your family since Erin's had Hannah! I mean, seriously, you can't get much cuter than that. Don't know how you don't commute from Sacramento to be close to that!