Fuel has been added to the long-burning fire between Anglos and Francos, this time over parenting skills.
Further to the 2004 dieting book French Women Don't Get Fat, an American ex-pat in Paris has penned French Children Don't Throw Food in which the mother-of-three, Pamela Druckerman, claims French kids are better behaved than those across the Channel, and those across the Atlantic for that matter.
How do the French moms manage to raise kids who "sleep through the night at two months, are not picky eaters, do not throw tantrums in the supermarket and go to bed without making a fuss" -- all the while looking so cool and sexy.
Ok, so Druckerman may be playing on a bundle of generalisations and stereotypes, but is there any truth to be gleaned from her cultural compare and contrast? Or is she simply hoping for the kind of controversy that clearly worked in Tiger Mom Amy Chua's favour? Cha-ching.
What it boils down to for the author is Discipline. Discipline with a heavy hand, it seems. Unlike the mollycoddling Brits and Yanks (and Canucks?), the French aren't above a smack to la fessée. A swift spank. You won't find any naughty step a la Jo Frost in their repertoire.
No doubt Druckerman assumes she is within her right to generalize at large based on her small pool of Parisian friends and neighbours. She claims the French rarely see a child as its own little person in their own right, but a small human being ready to be formatted or encadré, by parents and the state school system.
"If we empathise too much with our children that it becomes intolerable to punish or limit them, this is terrible for the child," says Dr Caroline Thompson, a Paris-based child psychologist and family therapist who grew up in America. "If you believe your main objective is to be liked by your child, you are in big trouble."
Is any merit to this argument or is it utter piffle? Can we learn anything from the Gallic parenting style?
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