Book of the week: Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting by Pamela Druckerman

Once again, the word from abroad is that Americans are raising their children all wrong and that a different, older culture knows better.

(Penguin, $26)

Here comes another bomb in the international parenting wars, said John Allison in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Once again, the word from abroad is that Americans are raising their children all wrong and that a different, older culture knows better. “But unlike last year’s incendiary device, Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” this “modest” manifesto from an American mother living in Paris should reduce parental anxiety rather than raise it. Granted, Pamela Druckerman’s indictment is stinging: By coddling and micromanaging their offspring, U.S. parents are both making themselves miserable and raising selfish, ill-mannered brats. In Druckerman’s preferred French model, parents establish a framework for appropriate behavior—le cadre—to teach kids both limits and self-sufficiency.

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