Parenting à la française (per Schwartz)

I’ve been on a French kick recently —and it seems like I’m in good company. I recently finished Karen LeBillon’s French Kids Eat Everything and now I’m reading Bringing Up Bébé. LeBillon’s book has definitely made me think about both my own parenting-food habits and those of our nation at large (i.e. why must we snack all the time?). But the public response to these books (both of which had article-length versions of their contents in major newspapers) has made me think about bigger issues as well. To wit: why are we American parents so interested in different “national” approaches? Last year, the Tiger Mom and “Chinese-style” parenting, this year French-style—pour quoi? 

Coming back to Schwartz’s choice paradoxes (as I so often do!), I think one big reasons is that American parents feel overwhelmed  by the number of choices that confront them as parents. As if having a newborn child weren’t already dramatic enough—we have added all kinds of extra questions about how to approach things. Which I get—heck, I think it’s kind of fun exploring approaches! But it can also be too much. Way, way, too much. And what happens (coming back to Schwartz) when people are overwhelmed by choice? They either a) don’t make choices or b) make bad choices based on easy-to-assess categories and  c) we make choices that we later regret at disproportionate rates) .  When it comes to dealing with your kids, option A isn’t really much of a choice. After all, you have to feed them something, somehow. But in the absence of a really clear underlying approach, most of us end up parenting on the fly. Which would be fine if that meant we were parenting from our hearts and minds. But often, it ends up being by instinct. Child hungry+tired parent=easily obtainable, child-pleasing food choice (i.e. low quality snack food).

In searching for a simple parenting philosophy, we know that our own country offers too many options— enter the foreign approach. It’s simple! It’s clear! Everyone in the [superior nation of your choice] does it! It works! American pragmatism meets our cultural inferiority complex and simplifies the choices in the process. What’s interesting to me is that we realize that we need a more authoritative way to approach our children—we sense that being their friends isn’t going to cut it—for us or them. But we’re not quite sure how to do that yet. So all these books aren’t a simple solution to our national parenting ills. But –I hope—they’re making us think about finding simple approaches to raising healthy, happy, and (dare I say it?) good kids—as well as “above average” ones.  I just hope we avoid the Scylla and Charibdis temptations that there’s either a) a magic bullet out there when it comes to raising perfect kids or b) it doesn’t really matter what you do.  In the meantime, vive la différence!