To really like the book "French Children Don't throw food"

[catgirl1976]

I am sure some of them do and the title is a bit (like French Women Don't Get Fat - I am sure lots do) - and I find the author annoying and think I would dislike her IRL, and I think the "French" attitude to BF is not righ......but these issues aside..........

I've just read this and I loved it. DS is 15 weeks now and I wish I had read it before he was born as I think I would have handled his sleep / waking differently.

He does sit nicely in restaurants though (smug).

It has got rid of my guilt about the fact I will be going back to work in 3 weeks and putting him in nursery and the fact that I combination feed. I love this book :)

It seems like relaxed, common sense, sensible parenting to me

Catgirl sorry but if you feel guilt that is your problem. I'm on here and feel no guilt about anything. You choose how you feel about something, if you let complete strangers on a board or a mad French woman in a book influnence this then you have bigger problems.

Well I don't really Kate, but I am amazed by the amount of judging of other people that goes on and when you have just had a baby and are very tired and hormonal, having people going beserk at you for formula feeding, going back to work, leaving them to go for an evening out or whatever can be a little .

I think most parents worry about whether they are doing the right thing or the best thing. I think that's normal. It's just on a forum like this there are a lot of people with very strong views who are more than happy to tell other parents they are doing things wrong. And that can lead to people feeling defensive about their choices when they shouldn't. The books view was refreshing in that sense.

It's not just strangers on the internet influencing you though, it's people in real life, your family and friends, not to mention HVs and doctors, and all the advertising and everything else you are exposed to. This all creates very definable social norms, some of which are incredibly emotionally manipulative because they are tied to the idea that you are failing your baby if you depart from them.

I did ditch the guilt, eventually, but it took a while.

Guilt is one of the most powerful mechanisms of social control and conformity. It's not really surprising that so many people struggle with it.

I rarely feel guilty. However, I find it impossible to do anything at all when my heart isn't totally in it, IYSWIM. Which kind of precludes me doing anything that could induce guilt. I am aware that my morals are all over the place by any generally recognised standard. I'm an à la carte sort of girl...

Same here Bonsoir. I ditched the guilt on BF when I couldn't get my little boy to feed properly and he got so jaundiced he nearly ended up back in hospital. I'm happy I went back to work when they were 6 months old and never felt bad or upset about them in nursery.

My name is catgirl

I had an epidural
I combination feed
I sometimes co-sleep
I am going back to work when DS will be 18 weeks old

I don't feel guilty for any of the above. :)

In general do women feel guilt more often than men?

I don't feel guilt really either. I either go for it or not. If I go for something I put lots into it and if I don't I just let it go.

I don't know if women feel more guilt overall, but I expect they probably feel more in terms of bringing up children as it is still largely seen as a womans responsibility.

No one asks a man how he feels about returning to work after having children or how they will affect his career etc.

I had an induction as well as an epidural. Dozing through half the labour is a great way to go!

I feel guilty about not feeling guilty.

I seem to be surrounded by RL mothers who talk about guilt in relation to parenting and their DC so I sometimes fake it.

*Glittertwins - that sounds lovely

Apparantly I did tell the MW I had had enough, she could go now as I was going to have a sleep, but for some reason she ignored me :)

DH cannot get over the fact that some women feel guilty about taking pain relief for the single most excruciatingly painful event they will ever experience

I had lots of unnecessary guilt but not about the epidural. Hell no.

I thought the book was amusing, although her point of view is definitely the over precious first time american/english mum.

I do think that French mothers are far less eager to subsume themselves in the home and children.

I have met very few SAHM's since I arrived in Paris whereas in London and Dublin I knew lots.

Oh god bsshbosh me too! I typed your post out and deleted it because I felt guilty for admitting I don't have The Guilt

oh, snapsnap. I am sorry, and I should probably just let it go...but really - are SAHM's just 'subsuming themselves in the home and children'? This seems like a bit of an insult to a great many SAHMs who have made the choice (not to mention those for whom it is not their first choice!) for reasons that so often are complex and thoughtful...
oh blah.

brdgrl - I know what snapsnap means and I don't think it is a blanket insult to all SAHMs. French society conspires against French women letting themselves wallow in several fleece-covered post-partum pram and park filled years, and I do think it is for the better. Not that I think French women's lives are easy or any kind of model to emulate as a whole.

Well if it makes you feel better about your choices you will like it- we all do this.

However

Have you seen how french kids behave in school- secondary.They have real discipline issues with them and a lot have no respect for authority figures according to my French teacher friend and what I observed when there. I know you get that in the UK too but the French exchange students we had were often somehow more nonchalent in their lack of respect for teachers than their UK counterparts.
My relative who moved to France long ago and raised her family long ago explained that the French often ( GENERALISATION COMING but in line with the kind of views this book is somewhat admiring of)have a bit of a - my child's needs are not more important than my needs attitude. She recalls her freind just shutting her toddler son in his cot whilst they had lunch and merrily shut several doors between her and her wailing son, ignoring his wailing for up to 2 hours whilst she savoured her lunch and glass of wine-" He must learn that this is maman's time" was her logic.He was in nursery for long days from day one, not always just so mum could work..... The son is now 18.
He has serious anxiety issues, and sees a shrink weekly.
May have happened anyway of course but the point is.......I do not look to the French for inspiration on the parenting front if that is the best they can offer.

I admit I haven't read the whole thread, but I have to say some of the worst manners I've ever seen have been those of French children, my dd looked like an angel in comparison.

I think that French parenting is quite repressive (à la French Children Don't Throw Food) in the early years and means that children behave well around adults. Where French parenting (and education - school is a big culprit here) falls down is in teaching children to behave nicely with their peer group. My DD is in Y3 in a French school and I think that the way French children play together leaves an awful lot to be desired.

Oh that's interesting Bonsoir -- how so? Do you mean they are nasty to each other?

My DS is only two so I'm quite interested in how things might change going forward...

That is interesting, as I would have expected, given the high levels of early and fairly full time nursery attendance, that they would actually be better socialised and better at interacting with each other.

Interesting that this would seem to not be the case in your experience Bonsoir

I am not sure that the "making the children" wait thing is uniquely French, and the no such thing as the perfect mother.

David Winnicott was a British paediatrician who introduced the concept of "the good enough mother" which was about this sort of thing.

Donald Winnicott...

Bonsoir - interesting. Could it be because they haven't learned from their parents that respect is a two-way street? If children think that respect goes one way only - children have to respect parents but parents don't have to respect children - then mutual respect maybe won't feature so much in children's own dealings with other children.

While there's a lot that I like about British parenting (I live in the Czech Republic), I do think that expectations of children in the UK are often too low - that children will misbehave in restaurants, or lose it if they don't all get to unwrap a layer in Pass the Parcel. There's a laudable focus on what is developmentally appropriate behaviour, but sometimes too little ambition with regard to helping children out of it, although Dr. Sears (for example) is pretty clear on the need for the latter.

That said, parents probably have all sorts of other expectations of their children that they don't even realise they have. And then someone comes along and says "Your child is so good at X" and the parent thinks - why yes, so they are, because it probably never occurred to us not to teach them X from an early age.

I think French society is generally quite low on respect for others while being high on respect for rules. Which means that casual social interaction of the kind children have together without adult supervision is pretty primitive and that social interaction between grown adults is often ridiculously formal; the intimacy born of true respect (or perhaps the respect born of true intimacy?) fails to materialise.