Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting

Druckerman’s book only focuses on middle- and upper-class families, thus painting an inaccurate picture of French life and childrearing by leaving out the governmental systems that allow French parents to be less resource-strained than their US counterparts. The book tends to blame American parents for what Druckerman sees as a flawed approach to childrearing, rather than pointing out how much more precarious family life in the US is from a financial perspective. 

Druckerman does mention certain systemic aspects of French parenting like publicly funded daycare and parental leave but does not go into detail about just how dramatic the impact of these policies is. In France, paid maternity leave is mandatory: Women are legally entitled to six weeks of pre-birth leave and 10 weeks postpartum, with these numbers increasing for multiple births (in Drucker’s case, having twins would have meant 26 weeks of leave), birth complications, and for each successive child. Four days of paternal leave is also mandatory, with 24 more days available to be taken at any time during the child’s first six months. This policy, which guarantees that parents will still have their jobs when leave is over, is quite different from US law. In the US, there is no federal right to paid leave, and the 12 weeks of unpaid leave allowed by law does not always guarantee continued employment afterward. This huge discrepancy accounts for much of the difference in attitude toward parenting that Druckerman observes in the two countries. 

In France, public daycare is widely available and free, allowing women to return to work without the financial burden of paying for childcare. Conversely, in the US daycare is a tremendous expense and is often unavailable in the quantity and quality that parents would prefer; families with fewer resources often cannot hire babysitters, sign children up for extracurricular activities, cook from scratch, or perform the kind of regimented parenting Druckerman recommends. 

Finally, France has universal healthcare policies, in which medical care is not dependent on having a job and is instead a right that all citizens can access. In contrast, healthcare in the US is challenging for families from some socio-economic backgrounds; even with the Affordable Care Act of 2010, some parents struggle to provide this basic necessity for their children. Drucker accepts France’s universal healthcare as a given and does not consider how the situation in the US could affect her critique of American parenting styles.