Why our lousy child-rearing wouldn't cut it with the French
A visiting author is bringing Seattle a message about the wisdom of French parenting practices. Maybe we could have better behaved American kids, and adults.
faungg (Fang Guo)/Flickr (Creative Commons)
Given recent rubs in U.S. and French relations — Bush administration diss’s of “old Europe,” congressional renaming of French fries (“Freedom fries”), and the on-going European debt crisis — one might turn the famous and famously skeptical biblical phrase, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” into, “Can anything good come out of France?”
Pamela Druckerman, an American writer living and raising kids in France, offers an enthusiastic “Yes” to that question in her insightful and entertaining book, Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting. (Druckerman is in town on Monday, March 5, for a 7 p.m. book reading and signing session at Elliott Bay Book Co.).
Early on in Bringing Up Bébé Druckerman offers this observation: “It’s increasingly clear to me that quietly and en masse, French parents are achieving outcomes that create a whole different atmosphere for family life. When American families visit our home, the parents usually spend 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. There are always a few rounds of crying and consoling. When French friends visit, however, we grown-ups have coffee and children play happily by themselves.”
In case the foregoing scenario might suggest otherwise, Druckerman assures us, “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.”
Take boundaries, for instance, as it relates to the matter of snacks and eating. French kids don’t snack all day. While American parents can hardly imagine going anywhere without a bag of Goldfish, Cheerios, raisins or apple slices, as if starvation were imminent, there is by-consensus only one official snack time in France. It happens at 4:30 p.m. It’s called the goûter (pronounced gooh-tay, handy glossary included). What this means, among other things, is that when French kids sit down to eat, whether at home or in a restaurant, they are hungry.
This plays into Druckerman’s puzzled observation, in her opening vignette, that “French children don’t throw food.” Eating out with their families, they eat and they talk. They are “cheerful, chatty and curious.” What’s up with that?
Not only does the one snack a day as opposed to all-day munching or grazing mean that kids are hungry when they sit down for dinner (where vegetables are served first), it also means they have learned to delay gratification and develop self-control. “Could it be,” asks an astonished Druckerman, “that making children delay gratification — as middle-class French parents do — actually makes them calmer and more resilient? Whereas middle-class American kids, who are in general more used to getting what they want right away, go to pieces under stress?”
Moreover, French parents seem to think that for their kids to spend some time alone each day, time that is unstructured, is a very good idea. Otherwise how will children learn to entertain themselves, to develop resilience and cope with frustration?
In some ways what Druckerman is observing is another instance of good intentions gone awry. The American parenting patterns that seem to be working less well than their French counterparts are fueled by the desire to give kids time and attention, to respond to their needs and wants, and to see that their young lives are as full and enriched by activities as possible. The intentions are good. But the results? Well, the results often seem to be kids that need constant attention and planned activities all the time but are a little short on internal resources.
How did we come to this pass? And how did the French avoid it? In a word, "calm." French parents seem calmer, less anxious, less apprehensive about getting it all absolutely right.
A corollary of this is the more highly competitive nature of life and parenting in the U.S. American parents, at least of a certain socio-economic class, see parenting as yet another competitive sport with the "Harvard" or "Stanford" sticker on the car the winner’s prize.
We place a lot of emphasis (and take a lot of pride) in their kids acquiring skills early, whether its playing a violin at 4, reading at 3, or writing their first short story, for publication, at age 5. French parents — not so much. They tend, without a lot of thought about it or anxiety, to focus more on how kids operate in a group, on social skills, as well as their ability to think and speak reasonably well.
As another illustration Druckerman reports that while in the U.S. we have two so-called magic words, "please" and "thank you," the French have four. To the equivalents of our two, they add “bonjour,” (hello or good day) and “au revoir” (good-bye). Moreover, French children are expected to address all adults with a respectful "bonjour" and "au revoir." It’s a small thing, but it’s a way of getting a kid out of him or herself, noticing and appropriately acknowledging others. In an interview on KUOW with Ross Reynolds, Druckerman said this simple practice has a way “of rescuing a child from his or her own selfishness.”
Beneath the many contrasts Druckerman draws is a deeper one, between a traditional and non-traditional and more individualistic society. Certain traditions — the goûter, what Druckerman dubs La Pause (not jumping when children burp or fuss), and respect expressed in greetings — are just part of the taken-for-granted world. Less traditional, Americans tend to be making it up case-by-case and as they go with the help of an astonishing, and often self-contradictory, array of experts purveying advice, methods and plans. The reliance on experts and their frequently changing advice, as opposed to shared practices and inherited wisdom, is both fueled by and produces our higher American levels of anxiety.
Another difference is that parents in France seem to think of themselves, perhaps without using the word, as their children’s educators. They are teaching their kids things like trying different foods, developing taste, exercising patience, coping with time alone, going to bed at a fixed time, and practicing little social graces. It’s their job. Moreover, the assumption is that kids need formation. They don’t arrive socialized. It’s what parents do. American parents seem, by contrast, to be less self-confident in their parental role and more likely to take their cues from the kids themselves. Again, good intentions that may have gone awry.
Druckerman’s fun read is of value not just for what it offers about child-rearing, but for its implicit comments on some of the more problematic aspects of adult life in America these days.
One of Druckerman’s conversation partners, another ex-pat, observes, “Certainly the impression one has is that self-control has gotten increasingly difficult for kids (in America).” Not only, however, for kids.
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Comments:
Posted Thu, Mar 1, 2:27 a.m. Inappropriate
This sounds like an interesting book and one can always learn from other cultures but the arguments seem to have an element of the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. One wonders whether there is a counterpart French author who spent a few years in an upper-middle class Seattle neighborhood and is now making the rounds of French cities promoting US parenting styles that have led to polite self-reliant US kids with lemonade stands, college funds and an ethic of hard work who enter adulthood motivated to make a difference in the world with their own resourcefulness rather than relying on the state to meet all their needs while working no more than 35 hours a week.
Posted Thu, Mar 1, 9:46 a.m. Inappropriate
French parents eat butter, get universal health care, have a significant amount of paid time off to take care of their kids and even get state assistance to help with the laundry. French parents pay taxes to support an excellent public school system, the likes of which doesn't exist in America.
For anyone else who is sick of French parents, Tiger parents or any other parents, read this: http://www.blogher.com/french-parents-are-superior-fact-most-other-parents-are-better-you-are
Posted Thu, Mar 1, 9:57 a.m. Inappropriate
A review of past books:
"Sharks don't get cancer"
Sharks get cancer.
"French women don't get fat"
French women get fat, so do the men, and French physicians are quite concerned about obesity in their country.
So now we have another book comparing French yuppies to America generally. Wasn't it tiger moms last year? Chinese school performance looks real good when they banish whole groups of lower-class Chinese from cities and then compare Chinese yuppies to America generally.
And the French have their own problems with their own healthcare. Their medicaid is called CMU couverture maladie universelle, and good luck accessing healthcare with it. French private physicians balance bill more and more as reimbursements drop. And Medicins Sans Frontieres has run clinics within France itself, for their own immigrant communities that can't get healthcare in France....at all.
Look it up, nice thing about the Internet is you can follow the French press and the French medical organizations.
Their stats look nice, and an American yuppie gets a nice experience, when their own banieues are ignored and they compare their yuppies to our slums.
Posted Thu, Mar 1, 10:28 a.m. Inappropriate
Let's see, Washington State has set up a Department of Early Learning for many good reasons, some of which have much to do with how quickly America is splitting into two America's -- the very rich and upper middle class and the divide over to the poor and lower economic classes. We do not fund early education programs at all, or very poorly, and that shoots our entire society in the proverbial foot. We have a rising high school dropout rate while we have increases in college attendance (before the 2006 cuts to higher education started).
We'll hear all sorts of "the French are this and the USA slums are the reason for that," but the bottom line, TODAY, around this country, in Seattle, 2:45, West Lake, there is an Occupy Education movement that speaks to this country's demise on other levels. These French and British bashers can take some solace in the fact that the One Percent have gutted those respective countries' social safety nets, the moral and economic imperatives of the social contracts citizens, the 70 percent have deemed necessary for society, culture, democracies.
UW has a great series of departments looking at Zero to Five as the most important years for bringing up baby-child-student-citizen. That is, in the home and, yes, in pre-kindergarten and child care facilities. What happens in the womb is also another wildly elegant study set --
http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/11/opinion/paul-ted-talk/index.html
You can read Nobel Prize economist James Heckman's work on the value of a collective society -- yes, the USA is still United in so many words -- putting more resources in early learning, early development. It's 7 percent minimum rate of return to this collective society if we invest in day care and pre-kindergarten programs that allow teaching, play, socialization.
So, yes, gloat at human misery, if you bashers want: PIGS are going badly (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain), but so is the rest of the world because of unchecked felonies by the One Percent. Youth are representing the large portion of the unemployed, and now straddled with debt with a bachelor's -- $1.2 trillion student loan debt in the USA today. But how we raise kids is key -- that early learning is vital. So much research shows that remedial and special education after 3rd grade costs so much more and loses out on big time results. Spencer and his misanthropic misapplication of Darwin's survival of the fittest ain't going to cut it in a participatory democracy, so, yes, we have to pay for unwed mothers' children getting decent early education. Pay now, or really pay later.
So go to Elliott Bay Books before vulture capitalists gobble up that indie bookstore. Listen to the author. Ask questions. Spew your hate at your own risk: some of the studies on early education show that cognitive skills are not as important as soft skills -- impulse control, group work, understanding time and consequences, self-reliance, not giving up, perserverance. So many blog or letters to the editor writers -- I am a journalist -- and many students -- I am a community college teacher -- demonstrate all the traits of bad early learning. New York spends $70 million in the SUNY system a year for remedial math and writing and reading when that money should be equaled or doubled for early learning. Shoot that chancellor of the SUNY systems says fund early education NOW.
Give Heckman a try, and support funding K-12, and Pre-K, good Head Start, Thrive By Five, Child Care professionals, teachers. Get real.
http://www.heckmanequation.org/
"Anyone looking for upstream solutions to the biggest problems facing America should look to Nobel Prize winning University of Chicago Economics Professor James Heckman's work to understand the great gains to be had by investing in early and equal development of human potential."
http://www.heckmanequation.org/content/resource/day-slides-lecture-given-professor-heckman-spertus-institute
Highlights of Heckman's recent talk --
6. The Problem:
a. The skills of our people are a major source of productivity for the
economy. The livelihoods of most people depend on their skills and
on the compensation they receive for those skills.
b. Skills in any modern society are the major determinants of social
advantage and disadvantage.
c. The importance of skills has become more pronounced in our age
of globalization and skill-biased technical change where the wages
of high skilled labor have increased much faster than those of less
skilled labor.
d. At the same time, America’s rate of producing skilled workers has
slowed. The high school dropout rate has increased for cohorts
born after 1950.
e. Two Americas have emerged.
f. Growing inequality in incomes and in social inequality. By
conventional measures, our inequality is now very close to that
of Mexico and has increased a lot in the last 40 years.
10. What We Are Doing Now and Why It is Not Effective
a. At the present time, our social policy has largely focused on fixing
schools. (Diane Ravitch’s sarcastic line about the Billionaire Boys
Club)
b. The evidence on the success of school reforms is at best mixed.
c. By no means are all charter schools more effective than public
schools. The latest evaluations show that 20% are better; 20% are
worse and most—60%—about the same.
d. Surely we can and should do better in our schools.
e. But, in light of the Coleman Report and a vast body of scholarly
literature that arose after that, fixing the schools by hiring better
teachers, monitoring them, reducing classroom sizes, and improving
access to the Internet is unlikely to be enough.
f. Families on their own and in their interaction with schools are major
producers of skills.
g. Gaps in the abilities that play important roles in determining diverse
adult labor market and health outcomes open up early across
socioeconomic groups.
Public officials need to recognize the Importance of what are sometimes
called “soft skills” or “character”.
a. An emerging body of evidence shows that, as is intuitively obvious
and commonsensical, much more than smarts is required for
success in life.
b. Cognitive skills measured by achievement tests are important but so
are the socio-emotional skills often called character traits:
- Motivation
- Sociability; ability to work with others
- Attention
- Self Regulation
- Self Esteem
- Ability to defer gratification
- Health and Mental Health
c. The evidence on “soft” skills is hard. They matter—they can be
shaped.
d. Along with cognitive skills, they determine success in school and in
the labor force and in life.
Consider disparities by education.
The more educated earn more, work more, and have better health and
healthy behavior.
Posted Thu, Mar 1, 10:30 a.m. Inappropriate
a. An emerging body of evidence shows that, as is intuitively obvious
and commonsensical, much more than smarts is required for
success in life.
b. Cognitive skills measured by achievement tests are important but so
are the socio-emotional skills often called character traits:
- Motivation
- Sociability; ability to work with others
- Attention
- Self Regulation
- Self Esteem
- Ability to defer gratification
- Health and Mental Health
c. The evidence on “soft” skills is hard. They matter—they can be
shaped.
d. Along with cognitive skills, they determine success in school and in
the labor force and in life.
Consider disparities by education.
The more educated earn more, work more, and have better health and
healthy behavior.
Posted Thu, Mar 1, 10:01 p.m. Inappropriate
Are you through, PaulKirk?
The French method of raising children is what US parents did in the mid-20th century. No more, no less.
Posted Fri, Mar 2, 8:42 a.m. Inappropriate
Perhaps Crosscut's editors could give Mr. Kirk his own column so he'd be easier to avoid.
Posted Sat, Mar 3, 10:39 p.m. Inappropriate
sarah90 and dbreneman have said all I needed to say other than nice read Mr. Robinson
Posted Sun, Mar 4, 10:04 p.m. Inappropriate
I'm saving PaulKirk's column to read again before my next dental appointment.
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