Pamela Druckerman

“She'll thank you when she's thirty and can still fit into her high school jeans.”

“Babies are designed to cry when they need something and mothers are designed to respond.”

“French parents don't worry that they're going to damage their kids by frustrating them. To the contrary, they think their kids will be damaged if they can't cope with frustration. They also treat coping with frustration as a core life skill. Their kids simply have to learn it. The parents would be remiss if they didn't teach it.”

“Walter Mischel says the worst-case scenario for a kid from eighteen to twenty-four months of age is "the child is busy and the child is happy, and the mother comes along with a forkful of spinach..."The mothers who really foul it up are the ones who are coming in when the child is busy and doesn't want or need them, and are not there when the child is eager to have them. So becoming alert to that is absolutely critical.”

“The French believe that kids feel confident when they're able to do things for themselves, and do those things well. After children have learned to talk, adults don't praise them for saying just anything. They praise them for saying interesting things, and for speaking well.”

“When I ask French parents what they most want for their children, they say things like "to feel comfortable in their own skin" and "to find their path in the world." They want their kids to develop their own tastes and opinions. In fact, French parents worry if their kids are too docile. They want them to have character. But they believe that children can achieve these goals only if they respect boundaries and have self-control. So alongside character, there has to be cadre.”

“[French] Parents see it as their job to bring the child around to appreciating this [food]. They believe that just as they must teach a child how to sleep, how to wait, and how to say bonjour, they must teach her how to eat.”

“When I tell her about the expression "MILF" ("Mom I'd like to Fuck"), she thinks it's hilarious. There's no French-language equivalent. In France, there's no a priori reason why a woman wouldn't be sexy just because she happens to have children. It's not uncommon to hear a Frenchman say that being a mother gives a woman an appealing air of plentitude (happiness and fulness of spirit).”

“One reason for pausing is that young babies make a lot of movement and noise while they're sleeping. This is normal and fine. If parents rush in and pick the baby up every time he makes a peep, they'll sometimes wake him up.”

“My first intervention is to say, when your baby is born, just don't jump on your kid at night," Cohen says, "Give your baby a chance to self-soothe, don't automatically respond, even from birth.”

“Like the French, he starts babies off on vegetables and fruits rather than bland cereals. He's not obsessed with allergies. He talks about "rhythm" and teaching kids to handle frustration. He values calm. And he gives real weight to the parents' own quality of life, not just to the child's welfare.”

“But in real life, the ideal Parisian woman is calm, discreet, a bit remote, and extremely decisive.”

“Within a few hours of meeting him, I realized that "love at first sight" just means feeling immediately and extremely calm with someone.”

“Yet the French have managed to be involved without becoming obsessive. They assume that even good parents aren't at the constant service of their children, and that there's no need to feel guilty about this. "For me, the evenings are for the parents." one Parisian mother tells me. "My daughter can be with us if she wants, but it's adult time.”

“It quickly becomes clear that having a child in France doesn't require choosing a parenting philsophy.”

“French parents are very concerned about their kids. They know about pedophiles, allergies, and choking hazards. They take reasonable precautions. But they aren't panicked about their children's well-being. This calmer outlook makes them better at both establishing boundaries and giving their kids some autonomy.”