Aug 25

Aug 25 Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting

About the book

Author: Pamela Druckerman
Publisher: Penguin Press

More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.

Buy and support indie bookstores (+ I earn a small commission):
Bookshop.org (print) | Libro.fm (audio)

My Review

I’m not one of those new parents who’s rushing out to read a bunch of parenting books, but this was given to me as a gift by a close friend who told me it gave her a path forward out of the trenches when she had a newborn, so of course I read it. It’s not a perfect book by far, but there is a lot of good stuff in here.

This book’s thesis — that NOT making your life 110% about your child and leaving space for you as a person — was extremely validating. Especially in the face of American parenting culture, which often looks more like martyrdom. It validated a lot of my instincts that some people on the internet might have told me were selfish or wrong. The idea that it’s genuinely better for my child to learn how to wait rather than have her every need catered to or every word listened to absolutely immediately? So freeing.

The chapters on sleep were also interesting, especially because they aligned really nicely with everything my husband and I had already learned in the Taking Cara Babies newborn class (which I HIGHLY recommend).

(Finally, beware there is definitely some fatphobia here. I wasn’t a huge fan of the chapters that examined “bouncing back” culture. If you’re sensitive or vulnerable to that kind of thing, be advised.)