Oh now this is just...

So with the continual cooking of the child I helped create in Kami's tummy, I find myself looking at parenting styles. So when I read this Wall Street Journal article, from a lady who wrote a book called "Bringing Up Bebe" trying very hard (and very unsuccessfully) to say that she does not necessarily want to be French, I was intrigued.

The core of the book is summed up with this quote from the WSJ:
When American families visited our home, the parents usually spent much of the visit refereeing their kids' spats, helping their toddlers do laps around the kitchen island, or getting down on the floor to build Lego villages. When French friends visited, by contrast, the grownups had coffee and the children played happily by themselves.

She manages to probably irritate not only her American audience ("You American Pigs have no idea what you're doing" - paraphrased, of course) AND her French audience ("Rest assured, I certainly don't suffer from a pro-France bias. Au contraire, I'm not even sure that I like living here. I certainly don't want my kids growing up to become sniffy Parisians." - Word for word). Impressive.

Anyhow. The way Mrs. Druckerman seems to explain it, every household with a child is like Wal-Mart at noon on a Saturday. If I go into a Wal-Mart at noon on a Saturday, I will rip my hair out and urinate on the pogo sticks, just out of spite. From the article - and yeah, I'm thinking about getting the book, and just this simple fact irritates me to no end - there are two options: Raise the Tasmanian Devil, or raise a psychopath.

As long as you're not there when the psychopath comes to collect his due, it's a much quieter parenthood - and I am terrified to admit that I rather enjoy a quiet existence, something that I can pretty much write off come July, until 2030. There has to be a happy medium between what Druckerman describes as an American parenthood (ironic, for someone who does not currently live in America) - and a French parenthood, where they just leave their kids alone and let them figure out how to do crap on their own. I suppose the big difference is the level of engagement, and avoiding the whole Just Doing Things For Your Kids Because It's Easier Than Trying To Deal With Them.

But what do I know? I am very happily not-French, and I don't have a kid (yet).