I remember reading this book and having the same thoughts you've basically laid out. I thought, sure the kids are sleeping for long stretches, but let's not get carried away. And I agree, that my main takeaway from the book was to value instilling good habits, even teaching things to your children over time, which you expect them to maintain as they grow older. I've used that theory since most of my kids have been small and I have never regretted that they could fall asleep by themselves, or that I expected them to not have meltdowns after a certain age, etc. I feel like so much of our parenting culture today is a big pendulum swing. We see or interpret historic errors in parenting and then swing too much to the opposite side of mandatory breastfeeding or co-sleeping for the first five years. I don't think any of that is wrong, but it is weird that we accept one way or another as a universal expectation.
Yeah, it definitely feels like a lot of it is overcorrection for the errors, real or perceived, of older generations. What I find amusing but also incredibly frustrating is that so many people who subscribe to today’s “gentle parenting” practices seem to think they are the ones who have finally cracked parenting, who know how to do it right, who are going to raise kids who are totally well adjusted and untraumatised. Like sure we know some stuff now that we didn’t know before but also, parents have been thinking they have it figured out since the dawn of humanity haha.
Isn't that the truth! The whole problem is children are their own wild, individual selves and we're are own imperfect selves. It's never going to be perfect.
What’s your meltdown age? Haha. I am very tired of Instagram influencers saying that every obnoxious behavior is “developmentally appropriate,” so you shouldn’t do anything about it.
Haha, the thing with developmentally appropriate is that developmentally appropriate doesn't necessarily mean peak behaviour or that it's impossible to expect more. For example, my teenagers. It's developmentally appropriate for them to say a bunch of stupid things, but it's my job to teach them what stupid things are appropriate, inappropriate, or just stupid but allowable. I don't want them just being developmentally on par. With toddlers it depends on what he is capable of, but probably for most of my kids beginning when they're two and a half - three we'd expect non-meltdown behaviour most of the time in public etc. unless there were extenuating circumstances, i.e. hunger! I'm not saying my kids were perfect and never melted down, but the whole point of parenting is you're teaching kids over time good habits and behaviour. So some of my kids got the hang of it faster than others, but the expectation stayed the same. Gosh, does this even make sense?
This was SUCH an interesting read! I borrowed the book from my library twice in my early motherhood and then…never read it 😅 I really love reading about the difference attitudes and experiences with pregnancy and birth, but there also seems to be a strange idealism (at least in America) about how it’s approach in other counties and cultures so I’m sure that colored the author’s approach a bit too. I appreciated hearing your perspective and experience!
So interesting!! I listened to this book a couple years ago and was intrigued and so taken aback by some of her anecdotes... but also couldn't put it down. haha
I read this so long ago (before my first! She's 10!!) but I agree that the thing I thought most valuable to input into my own parenting was the sense that parenting shouldn't be the end-all-be-all-sacrifice that American social media parenting portrays it as. It's okay to make your baby sleep on a schedule so you don't have a breakdown! It's okay to use formula if breastfeeding is too difficult and pumping is a nightmare! It's okay to (insert a bunch of other things) for the sake of the mom. I think that part still needs to be emphasized to a lot of the polarizing stuff you can find on IG/social media.
Yeah, I think there’s so much shame around mums making decisions that take account of their own needs, and even just wants! Like, mums are allowed to want to stop breastfeeding for convenience or whatever, that’s ok! It’s frustrating because I feel like a lot of the narrative these days talks about the importance of maternal mental health and well-being, but then the tone of the parenting advice kind of flies in the face of that...
Ha, the 4yo has a Mickey Mouse book he got from one of those free library box things and I’ve told him he can keep it in his bedroom and look at it in bed but I’m not reading it to him 😆
Some of them are interesting enough stories in theory, but the writers just drag them out beyond belief. It’s like they had to stretch to make a word count.
😆😆 that will be my next step lol. I told her once she knows how to read, she can read herself as many Mickey Mouse stories as she wants. This is a real library book, so it has to go back eventually, thank goodness.
I remember reading her book while I was pregnant with my first (and only) and finding it fascinating. There doesn't seem to be much that illuminates cultural differences more than the experiences of pregnancy and early motherhood! Our daughter had terrible colic would only sleep if she was held, and I remember thinking back on that book and wanting the French mothers referenced to come observe my baby. 🫠
It sounds wonderful to have so much agency for making your own choices without the emotional baggage we often have here in the US. I am sorry, though, that there was so much negative emphasis put on your weight. Is French culture generally very negative towards being overweight (whilst pregnant or otherwise), or is that a perpetuated stereotype?
Oh, it’s totally real. Fatness is seen almost as a moral failure, or at least a character defect. Maybe things are changing a little bit now, but there’s still a looooong way to go.
For some reason, I read 'you don’t gain that much weight from one meal!' with a French accent. Mdr, pas du tout étonnée! I got pregnant while in the UK, went to have my baby in Rwanda (Africa) until she was 5 months old, and now I'm living in the US. I'm grateful that I could avoid the pressure of the Western world surrounding motherhood and its myriad do's and don'ts. In Africa; Le Rwanda dans mon cas, the mantra is " do what you can with what you have, as long as the baby and yourself are ok". C'est un peu comme la mentalité à la française selon laquelle la vie ne s'arrête pas lorsque l'on donne naissance et le bébé (doit) survivre on way or another. Bien sûr, on a également beaucoup plus d'aide(...)
J’adore le franglais, ça me fait trop plaisir 😅 ma belle mère me dit souvent que c’est bcp plus difficile d’être maman en France qu’en Bénin. On pense qu’on a tous figured out dans les pays occidentaux mais évidemment ce n’est pas le cas
I am so excited you are writing about this! My first was born in December and I read this book just before I had him and as I was reading this I thought of you and had considering asking your thoughts on it....which sounds odd as I don't know you but I have been following you for a while! Cannot wait for the posts to come :)
I am curious to hear your thoughts on the eating part. I definitely would love for my little one to be an adventurous eater and not picky and she made it sounds like that is how every French child is.....which I assume is not quite accurate, but happy to be wrong :)
I look forward to the rest of this series! I'm American but I've lived in the UK for 14 years now and have had all 3 of my babies here at its interesting to contrast that with the US and France. I never read this book but saw it circulating and was intrigued!
Oh cool, it'd be fascinating to get an insight into your experience as an American in the UK. Here I've grouped UK and US together as Anglo cultures, and I think there is a lot of crossover but also some significant differences.
This ended up longer than I intended, but once I got going I couldn't stop, lol. Here are some of my observations from the UK:
Pregnancy:
Lots of emphasis on safety (drinking, smoking, eating) but very little on weight gain - to the point it was never mentioned to me.
Birth:
Many births occur in midwife-led units in the hospital, and even in a consultant-led unit a midwife will always be present and at least partnering with the consultant in the birth.
Culturally there is a big trend for 'natural' and low intervention births, and while there is no judgement for desire for more intervetions (I had an elective c-section for my third and received no second-guessing from medical staff) there is also a real support for unmedicated births (and home births) because these cost the NHS less.
Breastfeeding:
Definitely a huge push for breastfeeding. I tried with my first two and ended up formula-feeding both of them (went straight to formula with the third) and this remains one of the hardest choices I had to navigate as a mum. I *still* find myself asking ‘Could I have tried harder? Could I have done anything else to make it work?’ By the time I got to my third, I was more comfortable stating my plans and preferences (‘I plan to formula feed’) and was always met with affirmation, but I felt I would’ve been second-guessed a lot more if it had been my first or second, as though I wasn’t truly sure what I was talking about. (That said, one midwife after my second baby told me about how she ended up formula feeding one of her babies and it was totally fine and not to stress about it too much - I was very grateful for her!)
Infant sleep:
Co-sleeping is very popular, and it’s expected that a baby will be sleeping in the same room as the parents for at least the first 6 months of life. If anything, sleepless nights are a badge of honour for parents often well into the toddler years! We gently sleep-trained our babies and were very grateful for it, but didn’t really publicise it widely because that wasn’t a super popular way of going about things. (Are we getting sleep now that we have a 6, 3 and 1 year old? Now that's a different question.)
I read this book when I was pregnant with my first in Fréjus, France, in 2019. I had a lot of different priorities from the author (didn’t want crèche, didn’t want epidural, knew I wanted to breastfeed for at least a year, wasn’t living in the city, etc etc) but I found the book helpful in preparing me for a lot of the cultural pushback I was going to get in these areas. I ended up having three babies in France and by the third (which was a home birth, VERY un-French) felt pretty confident with my unconventional choices. By then I had a lot of practice politely arguing with French professionals. I’ll admit, sometimes my American accent came in handy so I didn’t seem so much as a difficult patient or whatever but just a quirky foreigner.
Oh and the weight thing! I will never forget how my heart sunk when the doctor during my first pregnancy proclaimed “vous gagnez trop” with a stern expression. I managed to squeak out a question about how much weight was too much, exactly, and he just waved me away and handed me the phone number for a nutritionist.
It's fun to hear from another Anglo expat! Are you still in France?
Haha, I know exactly what you mean about the "quirky foreigner" benefits - I definitely feel that sometimes people are more forgiving because they just assume I'm a depraved Brit who doesn't know better...
Even though I live here, I have definitely felt that way too. Basically feeling like I didn’t try hard enough, research enough, etc etc. It’s really frustrating and I think I’ll always carry a bit of that with me.
Yes! This is so true re the (sometimes) Catholic attitude to c-sections. I'm attempting a vbac soon, but at peace if it needs to be another c-section. Also my c-section birth was incredibly redemptive and healing and holy for me, so just goes to show that you don't need a "natural" birth for that kind of experience!
I remember reading this book and having the same thoughts you've basically laid out. I thought, sure the kids are sleeping for long stretches, but let's not get carried away. And I agree, that my main takeaway from the book was to value instilling good habits, even teaching things to your children over time, which you expect them to maintain as they grow older. I've used that theory since most of my kids have been small and I have never regretted that they could fall asleep by themselves, or that I expected them to not have meltdowns after a certain age, etc. I feel like so much of our parenting culture today is a big pendulum swing. We see or interpret historic errors in parenting and then swing too much to the opposite side of mandatory breastfeeding or co-sleeping for the first five years. I don't think any of that is wrong, but it is weird that we accept one way or another as a universal expectation.
Yeah, it definitely feels like a lot of it is overcorrection for the errors, real or perceived, of older generations. What I find amusing but also incredibly frustrating is that so many people who subscribe to today’s “gentle parenting” practices seem to think they are the ones who have finally cracked parenting, who know how to do it right, who are going to raise kids who are totally well adjusted and untraumatised. Like sure we know some stuff now that we didn’t know before but also, parents have been thinking they have it figured out since the dawn of humanity haha.
Isn't that the truth! The whole problem is children are their own wild, individual selves and we're are own imperfect selves. It's never going to be perfect.
What’s your meltdown age? Haha. I am very tired of Instagram influencers saying that every obnoxious behavior is “developmentally appropriate,” so you shouldn’t do anything about it.
Haha, the thing with developmentally appropriate is that developmentally appropriate doesn't necessarily mean peak behaviour or that it's impossible to expect more. For example, my teenagers. It's developmentally appropriate for them to say a bunch of stupid things, but it's my job to teach them what stupid things are appropriate, inappropriate, or just stupid but allowable. I don't want them just being developmentally on par. With toddlers it depends on what he is capable of, but probably for most of my kids beginning when they're two and a half - three we'd expect non-meltdown behaviour most of the time in public etc. unless there were extenuating circumstances, i.e. hunger! I'm not saying my kids were perfect and never melted down, but the whole point of parenting is you're teaching kids over time good habits and behaviour. So some of my kids got the hang of it faster than others, but the expectation stayed the same. Gosh, does this even make sense?
Yes, makes total sense!
This was SUCH an interesting read! I borrowed the book from my library twice in my early motherhood and then…never read it 😅 I really love reading about the difference attitudes and experiences with pregnancy and birth, but there also seems to be a strange idealism (at least in America) about how it’s approach in other counties and cultures so I’m sure that colored the author’s approach a bit too. I appreciated hearing your perspective and experience!
So interesting!! I listened to this book a couple years ago and was intrigued and so taken aback by some of her anecdotes... but also couldn't put it down. haha
I read this so long ago (before my first! She's 10!!) but I agree that the thing I thought most valuable to input into my own parenting was the sense that parenting shouldn't be the end-all-be-all-sacrifice that American social media parenting portrays it as. It's okay to make your baby sleep on a schedule so you don't have a breakdown! It's okay to use formula if breastfeeding is too difficult and pumping is a nightmare! It's okay to (insert a bunch of other things) for the sake of the mom. I think that part still needs to be emphasized to a lot of the polarizing stuff you can find on IG/social media.
Yeah, I think there’s so much shame around mums making decisions that take account of their own needs, and even just wants! Like, mums are allowed to want to stop breastfeeding for convenience or whatever, that’s ok! It’s frustrating because I feel like a lot of the narrative these days talks about the importance of maternal mental health and well-being, but then the tone of the parenting advice kind of flies in the face of that...
One decision I’m enjoying recently is that I will only read one or two short Mickey Mouse stories per day haha
Ha, the 4yo has a Mickey Mouse book he got from one of those free library box things and I’ve told him he can keep it in his bedroom and look at it in bed but I’m not reading it to him 😆
Some of them are interesting enough stories in theory, but the writers just drag them out beyond belief. It’s like they had to stretch to make a word count.
😆😆 that will be my next step lol. I told her once she knows how to read, she can read herself as many Mickey Mouse stories as she wants. This is a real library book, so it has to go back eventually, thank goodness.
I remember reading her book while I was pregnant with my first (and only) and finding it fascinating. There doesn't seem to be much that illuminates cultural differences more than the experiences of pregnancy and early motherhood! Our daughter had terrible colic would only sleep if she was held, and I remember thinking back on that book and wanting the French mothers referenced to come observe my baby. 🫠
It sounds wonderful to have so much agency for making your own choices without the emotional baggage we often have here in the US. I am sorry, though, that there was so much negative emphasis put on your weight. Is French culture generally very negative towards being overweight (whilst pregnant or otherwise), or is that a perpetuated stereotype?
Oh, it’s totally real. Fatness is seen almost as a moral failure, or at least a character defect. Maybe things are changing a little bit now, but there’s still a looooong way to go.
For some reason, I read 'you don’t gain that much weight from one meal!' with a French accent. Mdr, pas du tout étonnée! I got pregnant while in the UK, went to have my baby in Rwanda (Africa) until she was 5 months old, and now I'm living in the US. I'm grateful that I could avoid the pressure of the Western world surrounding motherhood and its myriad do's and don'ts. In Africa; Le Rwanda dans mon cas, the mantra is " do what you can with what you have, as long as the baby and yourself are ok". C'est un peu comme la mentalité à la française selon laquelle la vie ne s'arrête pas lorsque l'on donne naissance et le bébé (doit) survivre on way or another. Bien sûr, on a également beaucoup plus d'aide(...)
J’adore le franglais, ça me fait trop plaisir 😅 ma belle mère me dit souvent que c’est bcp plus difficile d’être maman en France qu’en Bénin. On pense qu’on a tous figured out dans les pays occidentaux mais évidemment ce n’est pas le cas
I am so excited you are writing about this! My first was born in December and I read this book just before I had him and as I was reading this I thought of you and had considering asking your thoughts on it....which sounds odd as I don't know you but I have been following you for a while! Cannot wait for the posts to come :)
If you have any particular questions I’ll be happy to answer them!
I am curious to hear your thoughts on the eating part. I definitely would love for my little one to be an adventurous eater and not picky and she made it sounds like that is how every French child is.....which I assume is not quite accurate, but happy to be wrong :)
I look forward to the rest of this series! I'm American but I've lived in the UK for 14 years now and have had all 3 of my babies here at its interesting to contrast that with the US and France. I never read this book but saw it circulating and was intrigued!
Oh cool, it'd be fascinating to get an insight into your experience as an American in the UK. Here I've grouped UK and US together as Anglo cultures, and I think there is a lot of crossover but also some significant differences.
This ended up longer than I intended, but once I got going I couldn't stop, lol. Here are some of my observations from the UK:
Pregnancy:
Lots of emphasis on safety (drinking, smoking, eating) but very little on weight gain - to the point it was never mentioned to me.
Birth:
Many births occur in midwife-led units in the hospital, and even in a consultant-led unit a midwife will always be present and at least partnering with the consultant in the birth.
Culturally there is a big trend for 'natural' and low intervention births, and while there is no judgement for desire for more intervetions (I had an elective c-section for my third and received no second-guessing from medical staff) there is also a real support for unmedicated births (and home births) because these cost the NHS less.
Breastfeeding:
Definitely a huge push for breastfeeding. I tried with my first two and ended up formula-feeding both of them (went straight to formula with the third) and this remains one of the hardest choices I had to navigate as a mum. I *still* find myself asking ‘Could I have tried harder? Could I have done anything else to make it work?’ By the time I got to my third, I was more comfortable stating my plans and preferences (‘I plan to formula feed’) and was always met with affirmation, but I felt I would’ve been second-guessed a lot more if it had been my first or second, as though I wasn’t truly sure what I was talking about. (That said, one midwife after my second baby told me about how she ended up formula feeding one of her babies and it was totally fine and not to stress about it too much - I was very grateful for her!)
Infant sleep:
Co-sleeping is very popular, and it’s expected that a baby will be sleeping in the same room as the parents for at least the first 6 months of life. If anything, sleepless nights are a badge of honour for parents often well into the toddler years! We gently sleep-trained our babies and were very grateful for it, but didn’t really publicise it widely because that wasn’t a super popular way of going about things. (Are we getting sleep now that we have a 6, 3 and 1 year old? Now that's a different question.)
Looking forward to your next post!
Fun read! I look forward to the next posts.
I read this book when I was pregnant with my first in Fréjus, France, in 2019. I had a lot of different priorities from the author (didn’t want crèche, didn’t want epidural, knew I wanted to breastfeed for at least a year, wasn’t living in the city, etc etc) but I found the book helpful in preparing me for a lot of the cultural pushback I was going to get in these areas. I ended up having three babies in France and by the third (which was a home birth, VERY un-French) felt pretty confident with my unconventional choices. By then I had a lot of practice politely arguing with French professionals. I’ll admit, sometimes my American accent came in handy so I didn’t seem so much as a difficult patient or whatever but just a quirky foreigner.
Oh and the weight thing! I will never forget how my heart sunk when the doctor during my first pregnancy proclaimed “vous gagnez trop” with a stern expression. I managed to squeak out a question about how much weight was too much, exactly, and he just waved me away and handed me the phone number for a nutritionist.
It's fun to hear from another Anglo expat! Are you still in France?
Haha, I know exactly what you mean about the "quirky foreigner" benefits - I definitely feel that sometimes people are more forgiving because they just assume I'm a depraved Brit who doesn't know better...
Exaaactly. And then you just slyly use that to your advantage. Ha!
No, we left six months ago!
Even though I live here, I have definitely felt that way too. Basically feeling like I didn’t try hard enough, research enough, etc etc. It’s really frustrating and I think I’ll always carry a bit of that with me.
Yes! This is so true re the (sometimes) Catholic attitude to c-sections. I'm attempting a vbac soon, but at peace if it needs to be another c-section. Also my c-section birth was incredibly redemptive and healing and holy for me, so just goes to show that you don't need a "natural" birth for that kind of experience!