Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting by Pamela Druckerman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Bringing Up Bébé is full of the collective parenting wisdom of the French, not just from luminaries such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Walter Mischel and Françoise Dolto (who was also covered extensively in the book), but also from Druckerman’s interview subjects who offered many interesting anecdotes.
However, this is not a recommendation to ditch your parenting approach in favour of the French way of parenting, which might sound a tad too laissez-faire, if everything in her memoir is accurate. There are also some things that you might not readily agree because of what you’ve read elsewhere (e.g. the part about praising your kids). Read this book less to be inspired, more to be entertained. One annoying thing, though, is the author’s tendency to use transitional words like “au contrariaire”, “to the contrary” almost ad nauseam.
This edition also comes with “Bébé Day by Day: 100 Keys to French Parenting”. If you’re too lazy to read the entire book, you can skip to this section, which provides a gist of practically everything you would have read.
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