On Just Being Laid-Back, Maybe French and Sensible

I never bought into the racket completely. (Just a little bit. I wear fleece; I went to a nice liberal arts college. I have weaknesses and predispositions. I did Isis. I registered for the fancy stroller.)

And then I read this piece, sent around by a great mom I know who has a kid Andy's age.

Disclaimer: I haaa-aaa-aaate the headline of this article. Why French Mothers are Superior. Must’ve been written by a scandal-seeking American. It plays right into mom-petition: As if one way of parenting is “superior,” as if you can gird yourself against the vagaries of life methodically and via comparisons. Click now! Be better!

But my gut, my good sense, tells me that no way of parenting is “superior" and no way is “inferior,” relatively speaking, unless it involves force-feeding your kid French fries and Luna bars (regardless of gender) just so you can get through a conference call. Which I’ve done.

We’re so anxious to classify and document and analyze and validate our experiences, and to what end? I understand wanting to commiserate and share tips and advice and humor and tales of vomit and odiferous diapers and in-ground hairs. That’s why I have this blog. But so often, in the mom-esphere, self-expression is a guise for self-justification or one-upmanship. Why? Is it for the benefit of the child who needs a well-read mom —or for the mom who needs to cement her identity, to justify the fact that she no longer does yoga 7 days a week or goes out every night or works as much as she once did?

You can slap sociological names on it, you can throw up blogs under the premise of trying to “help!” and “share!” and so on, but.. . I’m going to call it like I see it: Moms often share their secrets because they want to intellectualize and validate their existence in a world where, hell, there’s not a lot of multi-syllabic conversation going on, and there are no "correct" answers. There's a lot of competition out there, but why? Why are we so nervous, so desperate to do right?

I don’t think that this impetus exists solely among moms, but I think it might exist here more acutely, because motherhood involves so much sacrifice. It involves shedding a bit of our identity for the greater good of another who gives nothing but granular excrement back until about 12 months. Anyone who would dare take issue with this hasn’t tried to fit into an old pair of jeans post-pregnancy or run out the door for drinks with friends with a couple curdled pieces of vomit clinging to the Banana Republic shirt. On a purely sartorial level, you lose a bit of yourself when you become a mother, to say nothing of the emotional, physical, mental.

Anyway: This article has been making the rounds in one of my mom’s groups, and it’s about how the French raise their kids. Yes, yes, the French. The French do everything better – the women don’t even get fat, and they drink gallons of wine each night, and eat chocolate, and sleep til noon.

Hate them, but I love this piece. These lucky bitches are right on. It plays right into my deeper instincts—the ones I sometimes try to quell when I feel like moms are looking at me at Toddler Town when I’m not shadowing Andy every minute, or rationalizing with him like he’s an adult when he interrupts a conversation, or telling someone that, yes, I occasionally feed him Iceburg lettuce and soup from a can—a glorious, quick, metallic can.

These women make their kids wait their turn. They do not hover. Their children’s lives revolve around them. And, sure, it’s helpful for the parent to train a child this way on a visceral level. But it’s also beneficial for the child to realize early that, no, they are not the center of the universe. Who is?

Andy’s a kid. I want him to wait his to turn, to excuse himself when interrupting, to play independently when I’m working or busy and – most of all – to understand delayed gratification. Understanding that will only make adulthood that much easier. And if it means being firm and sometimes appearing a little bit "neglectful," or maybe a bit less trendily on the scene, so be it.

I guess it’s so easy to make princes or princesses of our kids, to make the world revolve around them, because we love them so much, and because they are ours and they are special and soft and good. And of course: They are children. We should preserve for them that special innocence and mirth. We should change them when dirty, dry them when wet, hug them when sad.

But I’m not going to sacrifice my Friday nights with a friend because I think Andy might feel abandoned, or lonely, or because my husband won’t know what to give him for dinner. They’ll figure it out. Maybe someone will eat a tube of pepperoni.

Our kids are children, not little appendages made gods. Sometimes their food will not be fresh. Sometimes nobody will listen when they speak. Sometimes it’s bedtime after 9, food out of a jar, and a scowl instead of a smile, because we had lives before them and we will have lives after them—and because we are human.

If only so many adults understood this fundamental lesson.